Burritos, and Guacamole, and Bikram- O MY!

Foursquare has a new video on their logged out Homepage which I have embedded below (HT AboutFoursquare). The video promises that you can find great burrito places to enjoy with friends, and  "Don't forget to work off that burrito by doing an hour of bikram yoga next door."

Challenge: think of something more gross than eating a big guac-filled burrito and then doing bikram yoga.  I did a little research on the subject and even Hot Yoga of Delaware specifically recommends against:

we recommend that you do not eat a big burrito right before class. In fact, you’ll probably be better off with no large meals for 2-3 hours prior to practice.

Here's the video:

Are there, perhaps, other recommendations that would be better?  How about a great boot camp class in the park and a post-workout smoothie? 

Hi! I want to learn more about foursquare! from foursquare on Vimeo.

Do Trade Shows Matter?

Peter Kafka of all things D wrote The Apple in The Room  in 2006 (also re-posted it this morning on Twitter), but with the rise of social media, it’s become more and more true.  Companies have an end around CES. 

Some have lamented the departure of Microsoft from the show.   If anything, Microsoft’s departure as the anchor of CES shows its decline but also how far behind the curve MS really can be.

Since companies create their own media channels, they have much more flexibility about when and how they communicate product news- both big and small. An age of real time and more transparent corporate comms also means companies can publish and shape a message all year long, at will.

The article's points about the smart devices, really the Internet of Things trend, have changed the important players. Meaningful, differentiating innovation – the kinds of WOW I WANT THAT features consumers want – happen so frequently outside the pavilion or dates of the show.  

CES used to be an event for the journalists to carry the message to consumers.  But now consumers don't need the journalists (not exclusively, anyway) to tell them what is cool this year.  Also,  important industry announcements are increasingly coming at places like TC Disrupt and the Launch conference. So yes, CES failed to keep pace with the industry but I am not sure it had a chance against the tide.

My experience at SXSW last year was very different from the previous year.  In 2010, it felt like being at the center of the universe and the cusp of very important trends.  At SXSW 2011, we saw more or less the continuation of the same trends, but the Interactive festival has gotten so crazy, so big, so commercial, I wonder if the big brand dollars that have flocked to the event have sapped it of some of the weirdness that made it great.  

And trade shows have been replaced by Brand Shows: the biggest games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty are now so large they have their own conferences. These events are media channels, concentrated pockets of support for the product, hungry for news.  The attendees are motivated and they want to BUY STUFF.  They are powerful message multipliers.  The scale and style of these kids of gatherings will vary by brand but if you have that, why wait for CES?

A great wide warzone full of nuclear brothers?

Watched Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead a 1995 classic, and was particulalry struck by this quote (which is more or less humourous in context) and its relevance to technology. By the year 2000...I don't know.\

Rather than a racially-polarized warzone, Urban america has had a more commerically driven fate, with a transformation that made it hip to live in Bushwick or in an industrial building converted to condos.  in the last few years, with the impact of wireless communications and the destruction/revival of cities like Detroit, or the reinvestment in Downtown LA that has gentrified parts the "innner city"- all these cities represent technology consumption enabled by population density, rather than a warzone devoid of it.

Baby Sinister: The fact of the matter is by the year 2000 every city will be black. Thanks to the fax, the modem, conference call, federal-f**king express, the beast will be able to conduct his business from his home in the white suburb leaving the city a great wide warzone full of nuclear brothers.

Rooster: That's what I'm saying man, the fax, modem, FTD...

Baby Sinister: What the f**k you talking about, FTD? Rooster: You got to have flowers in the warzone, Baby.

Options Tax Treatment Reminds us of Broken Incentives

From today's "But NObody Pays That" post on tax treatment for corporattuibs and the wealthy, those who can afford to manage their income for strategic tax avoidance:

“These options gave executives a highly leveraged bet that stock prices would rebound from their 2008 and 2009 lows, and are now rewarding them for rising tides rather than performance,” said Robert J. Jackson Jr., an associate professor of law at Columbia who worked as an adviser to the office that oversaw compensation of executives at companies receiving federal bailout money. “The tax code does nothing to ensure that these rewards go only to executives who have created sustainable long-term value.”

Yes, a highly leveraged bet.  Yes, paid off on the rise in stock prices  and yes rewarding execs who may or may nor have creted susainable long term value.  Thjose are all true.  I think the article unfarily targets Mel Karmazin, whose tenure with the embattled SiriusXM represents management of significant risks.  The mechanics of rising tides - which governemtns world-wide have been instrumental in rising -  do lift all boats, and it is troubling that we need the tides to rise in order to have the appearance of investor confidence.  As the markets freak out time and time again, what goal are we amanaging toward? Are we managing for value?  For whom?

The (mis)alignment of US Tax policy, compensation incentives, and the martket should not be an indictment of Karmazin or others like him.  The critique of the market and the way the few are able to profit from its gyrations remains. But let's examine our need for the apprarance of stability and confidence, for the appearance of growth?  Stroing products, made over the long term, producing customer value, are the way out, not the feckless consumption of lattes and Barbie dolls on credit.  It's a sad and despareate fact that we all need the market to appear to rise- and bailed out the global financial system to ensure it.

According to the Senate Joint Committee on Taxation there is $25 billion in revenue for the treasury at stake with these deductions - and the implicit subsidy from US Taxapayers to employers who use options for compensation is no fun at all. Balancing the budget probably won't happen a nickel here, a dime there - let's face it, $25 billion over 10 years is a drop in the bucket of trillions - but aligning the tax code in more productive ways could certainly help.

 http://nyti.ms/vx14m7

Does Using HootSuite Kill Your EdgeRank?

There are so many myths about what fans like, but we're strarting to understand that what one person sees on Facebook or Twitter reallys isn't predictable- their graph will determine what they see, and Facebook now gives brands more headachess than ever for getting into the newsfeed.  

A possible answer to this is the rising numebr of studies which use the facebook API, and largwe scale data collection, to break news about what may be happening to page content (with the implicit point that most of thye a brand's fans will engage via tyhe newsfeed rather than coming to the page).

Solid analytcis, have been published on this topic, such as Facebook Engagement analysis from Visibli or L2's Facebook IQ.  A new study by EdgeRank Checker -suggests that using Third-party applicationsto post to facebook results in the creation of content that gets lowerr engangent than native Facebooks posts.

There are a variety of reasons for pages to want a managed publishing solution, including regulatory, workflow, manpower, and moderation, in additon to those you'll also hear in the sales pitches from Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver, and the others named below.  

So what is the enterprise digital social strategist to do?   Never, ever, take the top line conclusion from the vendor and appluy it to your bsuiness.  Ask for data about your client specifically.  Dig into which pages were used.  

For example, there are so many tiny fan pages doing a terrible job with mediocre nontent, I bet the amouint of objects created by those pages dwarfs the major brand pages.  We've all seen those pages.  I'll be digging in, let's see what else EdgeRank can tell us.