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Guest Post! Lists versus Circles

by Jay on August 4, 2011

Today post comes from Kane Murphy.

So everyone’s raving about Google+ Circles of late. But being the social media junkies that we are, haven’t we all ordered our facebook friends and the people we follow on twitter in to a dozen lists, giving us the exact same solution to our first world problems?

I know people associate circles with simplicity and usability; but I most certainly don’t. Venn diagrams, the Olympic rings, light discs, Captain Planet’s Planeteer rings, crop circles and all those metal rings that link and unlink through magical prowess… Circles kind of scare me, they’re never ending, literally. With Google+ I feel like I’m dragging my friends into a bull rink against their will to faceoff with likeminded individuals. Facebook and Twitter lists work pretty damn well if you ask me, I don’t need an bordered enclosure for my friends, surely I’m charming enough that they won’t run away.

As our Circles begin to feed and grow and contain more and more friends we have never actually (and never will have) met (but who we’d start an all out cyber war at the drop of a disrespectful tweet for **respect**), users will be looking for order, and what has more order than a list (apart from the Order of the Phoenix of course)? If we introduce Parent-Circles and Sub-Circles as Google+ users are already calling for, you’ll end up having to play a game of Connect 4 just to share a montage of your latest killcams with your Call of Duty circle.

Whoever said change was a good thing obviously wasn’t a compulsive social media friend sorter.

Kane Murphy hails from Melbourne Australia, mashing up social media, marketing, web and shoe polish in to a big ball of mush your dog wouldn’t eat… and selling it by the pound for outrageous prices. @kanemurphy

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Guest Post! Do I Still Care About Foursquare?

by Jay on August 3, 2011

I was totally addicted to Foursquare. I can’t even explain why except that maybe it made me feel as if I occasionally left the house. I only followed about 5 people, and those same followed me, but gosh darn it, it was important to me that I was at the top of that leaderboard.

My obsession started while on a retreat with my colleagues. Every time we arrived somewhere, we whipped out our phones and checked in. Rather pathetic, but oh so satisfying. Until I discovered that my colleague was essentially cheating. She wouldn’t actually go to some of these places, she’d check in if she was near them. We called foul. Even the app cried foul, awarding her a badge that was the equivalent of a “Get a Life” badge. “That is digital douchebaggery,” I said. “Completely cheating.” And we all promptly started doing it ourselves.

But then I came back home and suddenly I don’t care. I rarely go anywhere particularly interesting, and I never bother to check to see where my friends are. I’m the mayor of my apartment (I better be!) and have a constant battle for the mayorship of Corner Bakery, which I find somewhat entertaining. But usually I forget to check in places. I’ve only received a Foursquare deal once, and it wasn’t enough to keep me coming back. I’m on a BlackBerry, so most of the time the app doesn’t even work.

So now that the shine is off the shiny new object, what am I supposed to do with this thing?

Karen Woodward is a freelance social media manager and writer. That means she posts for clients’ social media channels, runs social ad campaigns, writes marketing plans and functions as a Social Media Jill-of-all-Trades.

She comes to social media by way of the entertainment industry, where she worked for over ten years in development, production, and marketing. On a break from the entertainment world, Karen received a master’s degree in Media Studies from Syracuse University where she wrote her thesis on the popularity of Gwen Stefani. While in school, she began writing professionally about television and new media, and managed a website geared to young Hollywood. After returning to Los Angeles she managed the official websites for a number of celebrities before changing her focus to social media. YOu can find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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