Mediaphyter – A Communications Cocktail

I might be slightly biased but I think that the first episode of Quick’n'Dirty Social Media (#qnd) podcast went very well. Me and my co-host, Aaron Strout, gave it a good test run. While we determined some kinks we need to work out, I’m also pretty pleased that we had so many listeners for our first show and we really had fun doing it. A quick recap:

1. Social Network: We talked about Foursquare, of which Aaron has been a fan for a while, and I signed up for only a few weeks ago. It’s a cool geolocational social network (developed by Dodgeball creator Dennis Crowley) in which you can track your friends’ adventures in a protected environment, but also create to do lists of exciting stuff, and even earn points for the adventures you rack up. I suggested that Crowley try to monetize by creating authenticated sections for conferences that would pay a premium rate for their users to track each other on site (a great alternative to cluttered Twitter feeds and it almost creates an on-site social network).
2. Point / Counterpoint: Spymaster, the interactive social network game that is all the rage on Twitter. Aaron believes that to some degree Spymaster helps bring new users into Twitter and helps people better engage and better understand the service. I compared it to Mafia Wars and other ridiculous time wasters on Facebook and explained my “unfollow policy” when it comes to people DMing me and trying to recruit me to the game.
3. Executive on Twitter: Aaron told the story of Padmsree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, and how she’s grown her Twitter network to nearly half a million followers. However, he also noted that she’s only following back 66 people out of that nearly half a million. That’s a pretty poor ratio, and while it’s true that you don’t need to follow everyone in order to engage, following 66 people is pretty minimal. I also asked the question, would she have so many followers if she was not Cisco’s CTO since she may not fully engage?
4. Case Study: Monsanto and social media. Aaron shared his experience hearing Glynn Young from the agri-business goliath present about how the company has used social media to turn some of its negative perceptions into opportunity. Aaron has a full recap of the case study here.

In the future we will have a special guest (we didn’t want to make a poor soul suffer from our trial run) and we will also issue some sort of challenge to our listeners. We haven’t figured out how that is going to work yet, so ideas are welcome. Also, if you listened in today, feel free to ping either one of us with feedback. We want this to be quick, snappy, fun and not long and drawn out. This podcast isn’t about us — it’s about you guys.

Finally, huge thanks again to Intel, Seagate, ScateIgnite and EuSecWest for sponsoring our logo design contest!