Can I trade badges for girl scout cookies?

During the course of the month, my Four Square profile has seen four new badges. The Super User badge, for 30 check ins in a month, the Local Badge for checking in to Online Guru 3x in the week, the Bender Badge for checking in 4+ Nights in a row, and the Explorer Badge for checking into 25 Venues.

I also established a few new majorships, which I guess shows my dedication to these businesses or perhaps how routine my life may be. So not a big surprise I’m the major of Oggi’s Pizza, Pure Salon & Spa, Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Luna Grill all withing 5-10 minutes from home, and several right across the street.

A buddy of mine also pointed out the dangers for location based social networking. Spreading your Four Square updates through Twitter can give any potential robber the knowledge that your not home. Please Rob Me takes results from the Twitter feed looking for Four Square’s tags. The website was designed to enlighten Four Square users to what they are sending out on the web. Over the course of a minute over 100 Four Square updates were sent out.

I guess the next valuable question is, where is the value in all of this Four Square madness. For me, there wasn’t much except for the tips I found based on your location. In-N-Out and Chipotle list secret menu items, while others offer parking advice. Once again, perhaps if more friends were on Four Square I might opt to use it more frequently.

That being said I’m going to pick Four Square as the current front runner for location based social networking. They are doing a better job then BrightKite, Loopt, Yelp, or Gowalla. With the rumor Facebook is going to join the club, this might be the catalyst that gets local social networking to the masses.

They'll let anyone Yelp these days!

But recently I’ve been noticing a lot of positive and negative reviews appearing on businesses from brand new Yelpers. These visitors appear to have signed up, just to leave a review and thats it. Normally single reviews or first time reviews are red flagged by Yelp, or seemed to have been flagged before in the past. Yelp algorithm was strong, but effective in detecting these types of reviews.

But perhaps the algorithm was too strong prompting a change. I’ve know legitimate reviews would get caught in Yelp’s algorithm. I know this because when I tried sending a friend what I found to be a humorous review for a business we went. My friend could not find my review in the few reviews the business had. But when I looked at the business page, I clearly saw it as the top review. I discovered this was because I was logged in. For that business, the review count and the overall review rating would change.

I would hope Yelp will perfect their review algorithm so that legitimate reviews are counted, and bogus reviews are discarded. Yelp has been in trouble with their review system before, and in one case offering to remove negative reviews if the business advertised with Yelp. This of course brings up the legitimacy of the quality score that Yelp assigns to businesses. Are they hiding negative reviews cause businesses advertise with Yelp, or are they hiding positive reviews because a business doesn’t advertise with Yelp. I think only Yelp employees know that one.

Can I trade badges for girl scout cookies?

To be fair I will say I was an active user of BrightKite until I got bored with that as well. I will say I like Bright Kite’s ability to upload images from your locations. But the applications are pretty close to the same for me. They update my twitter account and allows internet stalkers to keep tabs on me. I think the problem is none of my friends utilize these local social media services. Even the internet gurus out there haven’t really embraced local social media.

So I’m going to (or should say have been) trying to check in to every place I’ve visited during the month of February. This far I’ve received 1 new friend, a new mayorship and a badge. But I’m going to embrace the application. It will be checked more frequently then my facebook page. At the end of the month, I’ll take inventory of what I’ve accomplished and whether it was worth it or not.

My ‘A’ List:
I started off creating some general lists for everyone I’m following. Work, Web-Design, Graphic Design, San Diego Chargers, San Diego Breweries, etc. When I’m interested in one topic over another I can view tweets from those listed. An additional benefit is being able to add users that I normally wouldn’t follow. Example… I follow Shawne Merriman (@shawneMerriman) but I wouldn’t follow Chad Johnson (@OGOchoCinco). However, I can place them both in an NFL Players List, if I ever want to see them both.

Twitter lists expand your reach 10 fold, but your not looking at everything like Twitter Search. I think its a definite useful feature. Here are some of the lists I created, which you should follow if they interest you.

• @shanehale7/onlineguru
• @shanehale7/san-diego-social-media
• @shanehale7/san-diego-breweries
• @shanehale7/nfl-players
• @shanehale7/san-diego
• @shanehale7/ux

Am I Listed:
The second thing I checked was, where was I getting listed? And the honor was that I being added to follower lists. Most people would say, who cares if your listed? These are probably the same people that say ‘why do I care what your doing right now?’ and then update their Facebook status to bored.

Being listed gives you feedback regarding two things. The first is a reflection of your personal brand and if people give a shit what your saying on twitter. The second is if other user are following a list your in. This is less reflective on you, but more of the list you’ve been dropped in.

Here are the current lists I’m in, and I would suggest you follow em for the obvious reason. You made it this far in the post so you probably like what I’m throwing down.

• @OnlineGuruInc/onlineguru-team
• @gabadilla/san-diego-interactive
• @tigerfork/user-experience
• @SearchBuzz/san-diego-social

Speaking of Twitter, if your not already following me or if you are, here are some of the Twitter users to follow:

• Twitter.com/ShaneHale7
• Twitter.com/brdaga7
• Twitter.com/CooperCapone
• Twitter.com/OnlineGuruInc
• Twitter.com/DMVORG
• Twitter.com/PureSalonSpa
• Twitter.com/EntertainMac
• Twitter.com/onebeeraday

• 50 Skills Geek Check List

  I’m considered a geek by most of my friends and family that aren’t geeks themselves. I’m the one that fixes their computer or tells them how to use email, and most recently Facebook. When lists like this come out, I alway want to see how I stack up. 50 thinks geeks should have in their repertoire of skills. From the list… I’m a 35. Which is 70% and still passing. Some of my favorites:

  • Enter the Konami code
  • Fix your parents’ computer over the phone without looking at a computer
  • Hide porn from your significant other
  • Avoid DRM on everything
  • Talk about things that aren’t tech related

  I’m glad I somewhat rank up there with the Ubergeeks.

  - Gizmodo: 50 Skills Every Geek Should Have

• T-Shirt as Media?!?

  What if I told you that you could make over $60,000 a year, and all you have to do is post to a blog, flickr, YouTube, and some other social media sites, while wearing sponsored t-shirt. Well thats what Jason is doing with iwearyourshirt.com. This is social marketing genius. Days are sold at face value… $1 for January 1st, $365 for Dec 31st. The $60k is based on all the days being sold out, but with over 104 days currently sold, thats not a bad start. If I were a large corporation, say Target, I’d purchase a few days after Thanksgiving. Whats $1200 or so from their budget for the buzz Jason could create?

  Janae at girlinyourshirt.com, is doing the same thing. She’s charging $75 for any day, $100 for a specific day, with the exception of Sundays…. girl needs a day off right? She definitely has the cuteness factor working for her. But the question is… does it work? After watching her first episode I went to the site she was sponsoring. Check out Pipl below.

  Depending on the day you’ll get more value out of one service or the other. As an example purchasing my birthday would be $188 on iwearyourshirt and $100 on girlinyourshirt.

  - I Wear Your Shirt
  - Girl In Your Shirt

• 1 Billion Tweets Later…

  … and still no monetization model. This last week Twitter has passed the 1 billion tweet mark. That is a crazy amount of data. The billionth tweet was from Annchan2 from Osaka, Japan, and was in Japanese. I’m hoping to be the 2 Billionth tweet… but until then follow me.

  - GigaTweet
  - Twitter
  - Twitter.com/ShaneHale7

• Pipl – People Search

  Ok… I found this through Girl In Your Shirt. One of my favorite things to do on the web is to Google myself. But I was always disappointed with the results, and thus I launched my personal social marketing campaign to hope boost my ranks. Enter Pipl. Pipl is a people search engine. They dig deeper into the web, into the ‘deep web’ where web crawlers don’t dare to go. When I ran my search, I thought the results would of been better. only six of the 46 non-sponsored results were me, but it did hit my Amazon profileBy comparison, 5 of the 10 results from Google were me.

  - Pipl – People Search
  - Pipl – Shane Hale, San Diego, CA

- Google – Shane Hale, San Diego, CA

• Fav Social Network of the Moment: Glued

  Glue is taking steps to become what web 3.0 is suppose to accomplish. Take all of this user submitted media and make it reavant. Glue is a Firefox plug-in, from Adaptive Blue, that adds a bar across the top of releant pages. Check out Amazon, IMDB, Last.FM, and others and check out other glue memebers that also visited that page. Leave your $0.02 or Favorite it for later. Another thing i love is you can find friends via Facebook, FriendFeed, and Twitter My only negative is it was difficult to find my profile… but I managed.

  - Get Glue

  - Glued Profile: ShaneHale

• Shiba Inu Puppies

  What kind of sick reality show is this… Shiba Inu puppies in a box! This actually one of the most sickeningly cute things ever. Sadly I’ve checked in on them once a week for the last 4 weeks or so. But a better questions is… what happened to all the cam sites there popped up in Web 1.0?

  - PuppyCAM!

• Napping; The Science!

  One of my favorite past times has finally been defined as a science. Napping is simply amazing. I used to try and get a 20 minutes nap in during lunch and of course during the weekends and it always pepped me up. This great graphic details the stages of sleep as well as how to optimize it effectiveness. I personally like the have some caffeine just before a power nap as it takes 30 minutes for the caffeine to kick in!

  - Boston’s Napping Graphic

• Craigslist is now Pimping
  Your ‘Casual Encounters’ from Craigslist just got more expensive. Assisting states crack down on internet prostitution and child trafficking, the list is going to charge anyone posting ‘Erotic Services’ and require a legitimate phone number. So charging prostitutes to post ads for their services; doesn’t this just mean Craig’s become a digital pimp?

  CrunchGear: Craigslist Erotic Crackdown

• Craigslist is now Pimping

  Paul Newman was the man, and a lot of CEO’s can learn from his philanthropic endeavors. The former PhiTau was one of the few celebrities out there that took his fame and make charitable side his legacy. Starting Newman’s Own brand which give all proceeds after taxes to charity (Over $250m to-date). Not to mention his commitment to the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang which is Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity‘s Charity as well. Sadly he passed away last month, and he will be missed.

  Save Trestles: What CEOs Can Learn From Paul Newman

  WallStreetJournal: What CEOs Can Learn From Paul Newman

• Twitter Grade of 52

  According to Twitter.Grader, my relative power as a Twitter User is 52. Somehow this is derived from my update frequency, my profile, my followers, and if they have any super-human abilities. Apparently if I reach a grade of 60, I get the ability to take and understand animals. Oh and here’s my ‘badge’ of honor.
  

  http://twitter.grader.com/

• Spokeo/HR Scares Me:

  Don’t think you need to mange your identity on the web? Spokeo claims 23% of recruiters already check up on their candidates MySpace and Linked in profiles. They will just help them along, checking over 40 social networks base on your email address.

  http://www.spokeo.com/hr

• Britney Got Twitter:

  I can’t believe she already has over 6,400 followers and is following 1,500 twitters. Personally, I’m chalking this up to pure marketing.

  http://twitter.com/therealbritney

• 37 tips in under 140 characters

  Pure and simple marketing tip… my favorite: “Be honest. Under promise and over deliver.” Always a good one.

  http://jimsmarketingblog.com/

• You got 5 Seconds, make it count!

  Quick and simple user testing from Jared Spool. User gets a 5 second preview and are asked what they remembered. Great for tuning call to actions and scan ability.

  http://fivesecondtest.com/

• Fav Social Network of the Moment: BriteKite

  BriteKite is basically location based twitter. I’ve been using the iPhone App to check into whenever I’m at a new restaurant or location. Gimmicky right now but could be interesting in the future. Oh yeah… and it posts to my twitter with a tinyurl.

  http://brightkite.com/people/ShaneHale

The Project Charter:
Your name is becoming a valuable commodity on the internet these days. I’m still discontent about not registering shanehale.com when I could. But I digress…. developing my personal brand across these sites will build a positive and hopefully memorable image, allowing my friends, family, and society easy to find me and know it’s me and not Shane Hale, a realtor in Alabama.

The Check List:
I started with a long list of to-do’s from updating existing profiles to creating new ones. This often required me canceling semi-anonymous accounts to create new ones. Through the process I also decided to attempt to stick with a standard username convention with ShaneHale as my primary and ShaneHale7 as my back-up. After running through these I realize I’m on well over 25 social networks

For each network I would take advantage of address book searches and add all friends and that may already be on the network, but I wouldn’t invite them unless I thought they would utilize it. I would also cross link from network to network where available, and establish trusted connection, such as Twitter apps in MySpace & Facebook, making maintenance for each site easier.

Status:
Over the last few weeks I have been successful in accomplishing the goal I set out to achieve. But as I continue to discover more social networks I’m realizing their limitations and my own. You can spend a lot of time updating social networks that nobody will see. 75% of mine have no friend connections established.

As it stands I’m currently on 27 social networks, and I’m sure I’m missing others. Each has a completed profile, user image, bio, and networking options out there.

When is too much?
I’m not quite sure yet. But I definitely can see updating 25+ social networks on a weekly basis as tiresome. I have 7-8 that I already use and check into regularly, but continue to visit the other to take advantage of their featureset. I’m also trying to take advantage of cross-social networking web apps, such as FireEagle feeding BriteKite, which feeds Twitter, which Feeds FaceBook. Other apps such as Digsby is really helping me keep in touch with the social internet, while checking my email and IM accounts. I’m sure overtime, the good ones will rise to the surface while the others will join Friendster in oblivion.

So where do you live on the web?

Anyway lots of brain cell killing surfing can be found in the various links.

Top 10 Web fads – CNET.com