Quick'n'Dirty Episode 45: Talkin' BSides

Hmmm... seems like it's been several weeks since I've had to do a recap of the Quick'n'Dirty podcast show. That's both a good thing (one more hour back in my busy schedule) and a bad thing (it's nice having ready made content to serve up to the 2-3 people that read this blog). At the very least, it's good to have a little distraction from the exciting/amazing/all consuming conversation that's been going on in my last post about location-based services. But I digress...

This week my co-host, Jennifer Leggio, and I had every intention of sticking to our regular Q'n'D format of social application of the week, featured guest, Twitter-o-the-week and then our trademark point/counterpoint. A compelling guest and a little technology glitch conspired against us so we had to punt on our P/CP. Don't worry though, it will be back next week -- we promise.

Jennifer got things kicked off with our social app of the week which was none other than Hot Potato [h/t to Damien Basile for the suggestion]. While Jennifer was skeptical at first about the need for yet another location-based service, we both agreed that Hot Potato's functionality might actually meet a need in the marketplace. Mainly geared toward physical events (hello conferences), Hot Potato allows attendees to overlay a virtual conversation -- which unlike Twitter, can be confined to a small group of friends or anyone at the conference. That's not a knock on Twitter but I've been told more than once that some of my conference tweets aren't always appreciated by those that aren't in attendance.

Next up was our guest of the week, Michael "BSides" Dahn. Inconveniently, our switchboard dropped Michael midway through our interview so we didn't get to dig in too much in part one of our interview. Fortunately, Michael was able to come back in after our "Twitter-o-the-week" and due to the richness of the conversation, Jennifer and I made the back channel decision to skip our point/counterpoint. Anyway, here's the scoop on Security BSides:

"Each BSides is a community-driven event built for and by information security community members.  The goal is to expand the spectrum of conversation beyond the traditional confines of space and time.  It creates opportunities for individuals to both present and participate in an intimate atmosphere that encourages collaboration. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. It is where conversations for the next-big-thing are happening.  We've loosely based the concept on the BarCamp format... because it works."

So what impressed me most about Michael/BSides were these three things:

1. Jennifer is a huge fan. Because I trust Jennifer's instincts implicitly, I am a huge fan (through transitive property of course).
2. Michael and his team have created their BSides event quite organically. Given the fact that word on the street is that BSides "outshined" RSA at the recent RSA Conference, this speaks volumes about their level of commitment and creativity.
3. Michael's "tweetable" thought was hands down our most pithy. He kept his words of wisdom to one word, "participate." Nice!

At the risk of tooting our own horn, Jennifer also announced that we were making a $500 donation to support the Security BSides Las Vegas event (you can do so too if you like on BSides sponsorship page).

Last but not least was our "Twitter-o-the-week." Our choix de la semaine was the lovely, smart and elegant Yuli Ziv . According to her bio, Yuli is an entrepreneur, futurist, blogger, founder of Style Coalition and My It Things, organizer of Fashion 2.0 meetups. I've had the pleasure of meeting Juli in person and listening to her speak at the 140 Conference in NYC last year. What I can tell you is that she is as good via Twitter as she is in person. If you don't follow her yet, you absolutely should. And to that end (Jennifer, this will make you happy), "Yuli, we love your tweets."

So that's a wrap for this week's show. Be sure to tune in next week to listen to next week's guest, Winnie Hsia (the social lead at WholeFoods). And as always, you can always listen to archives of our show over on BlogTalkRadio. You can also read show recaps on Jennifer's ZDNet blog or over here on the Stroutmeister blog.

As a reminder, we welcome your feedback. If you have suggestions for guests, social apps/networks or Twitterers that should get some love, please let us know in the comments.

Quick'n'Dirty Episode 45: Facebook Privacy Anyone?

As we close in on putting a year of Quick'n'dirty podcasts under our belts, my co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I are always looking for ways to bring added value to our listeners/readers' lives. We'd like to think that we continued that streak this week with social app, Mobile Roadie, Twitterer of the week, Greg Narain aka @Gregarious and special guest, Alex Plant, of NetApp. Oh yeah, we also managed to squeeze in a few minutes at the end to talk about Facebook privacy. Maybe you've heard that there is a little brewhaha about their latest moves?

First up was our social app of the week. I first discovered Mobile Roadie at a recent SMASH Summit in San Francisco during the social media lightning demos. You know when someone can convince you in five minutes that there is some "there" there, that the company is on the right path. In this case, the "there" was a DIY platform for the iPhone and and Android apps (iPad and more coming this summer). While I haven't had a chance to play with the app-builder yet, they have already helped create mobile presences for several Fortune500 Companies and entertainment moguls like Taylor Swift and Ashton Kutcher. While I'm sure the resulting apps aren't necessarily going to win any awards for innovation and style, they are a great for speed to market.

Next, we talked about our featured Twitterer of the week, Greg Narain. While I've known Greg for a while, I've only recently learned more about his social media product expertise (he's the VP of product for Klout and co-founder at LilGrams.com). Greg is of course funny in addition to being smart but he's also well connected and in constant search of "what's next." If you don't follow him already, I'd strongly recommend that you do.

Out of order and all (Alex had a little telephony trouble), our featured guest was Alex Plant, head of social media for B2B tech giant, NetApp. During the show, Jennifer and I dug down on how social media was different in a B2B2B environment. We also peppered him a little bit on using social for customer service and even had a little fun with him asking him why (at the time) he had the Twitter n00b badge up for his avatar picture (for those that don't know what this is, it's when someone leaves the default image of the Twitter bird up for their Twitter profile pic). Fortunately, Alex was a good sport and fielded our questions fearlessly and elegantly.

Last but not least, Jennifer and I spent a few minutes on the latest hot topic du jour namely, Facebook and privacy. While we didn't have as much time as we would have liked to do this topic justice, we did cover off on some of the overarching points of what we think Facebook is trying to do and what it really means for businesses and consumers alike.

As always, you can find archives of our show here. You can also read re-caps of the podcasts on Jennifer's ZDNet blog or my Stroutmeister blog.

Quick'n'Dirty Episode 37: Plancast Anyone?

A pattern is starting to emerge with my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and me... With some of stronger featured a social networks and/or Twitterers of the week, we like them so much that we end up inviting them onto the show as our guest. This week was no different when we showcased the CEO of Plancast, Mark Hendrickson.

We kicked things off by reviewing Entrustnet -- a new breed of social/digital sites that take into consideration the fact that we are not immortal and that eventually, we have to consider what happens to our social and digital assets once we die. While I haven't had a chance to try Entrustnet yet (I don't believe Jennifer has either), we liked the concept of what these guys bring to the table (interesting back story on how they got started can be found on their site). Jennifer's one caveat which is worth considering and that is the potential security risk of putting one's user names and passwords online.

Next up was our aforementioned guest, Mark Hendrickson, CEO of Plancast. You can see our earlier recap of Plancast here or see what Mark's former boss, Michael Arrington, had to say about this social network that many dub "FourSquare for future events." Two things I will say about Mark:

1. He is smart and a true gentlemen. Jennifer and I peppered him with questions and he answered all of them directly and graciously.
2. I love his transparency regarding Plancast's product roadmap, something we discussed at length during the show. If you want real proof of what I'm talking about, see Mark's comment on our friend (and next week's guest show host), Kyle Flaherty's, post regarding Plancast.

We followed our segment with Mark Hendrickson with a very quick recap of our featured Twitterer of the week, Stephen L. Rose. Stephen is the worldwide community manager for Windows 7. He's also a big Chicago Blackhawks fan which may have had a little something to do with his being selected. Stephen was kind enough to join us in the chat room which always makes the show a little more exciting -- thanks for doing that Stephen!

Last up was our point / counterpoint of whether or not "first to market" (something that tech blogger, Robert Scoble has said is one of the keys to winning) was in fact important. Jennifer used the example of  location-based services, FourSquare and Gowalla. In this particular case, FourSquare was first by a longshot coming out in 2007 -- originally launching as "Dodgeball," purchased by Google and then spun off as FourSquare. Gowalla, a relative newcomer, has caught up to FourSquare in terms of number of users and seems to be geting an equal amount of press these days. This point / counterpoint ended up being more of a discussion than a debate but hopefully we brought some interesting points to the table.

As a reminder, you can find past Quick'n'Dirty recaps on Jennifer ZDNet blog or here on blog.stroutmeister.com. You can also listen to past episodes on iTunes or over on the show site here.

Finally, remember that starting on April 29, our show is moving to it's new time (noon PT / 2 PM CT) and new format (30 minutes vs. 45 minutes).  Please also note that we are looking for an intern/producer to help with the show 1 hour or so a week. This role will help with show scheduling, site updates, guest coordination and occasional appearances on the show. If interested, e-mail or DM Jennifer or me.

Quick'n'dirty Podcast 35: Wine + Techmology = Cool

Yes, I know I misspelled the word "technology." That wasn't by mistake. If you don't get the joke, maybe you should be spending more time watching Ali G. reruns...

In all seriousness, yesterday was a really fun show. It started with me raving about newly discovered podcast platform/technology iPadio (H/T to friend Bryan Person). My co-host, Jennifer, hadn't had a chance to spend much time with with the service yet but agreed with my assessment that they showed promise. Here are the four things I really like about their service:

1. The sound quality -- at least on the iPhone -- is crystal clear. I assume the recording on other devices is equally good (you listen for yourself with my test podcasts).
2. You can record offline (assuming you have an app) and upload when you have connectivity. This is good for planes or car rides where cell coverage can vary.
3. When I decided to give iPadio a test and mentioned so on Twitter, James O'Malley (he mans their Twitter presence) immediately chimed in and offered up his help if I needed it.
4. Their CEO, Mark Smith, followed up with me after my first test and let me know about a cool project they participated in recently.

Next up, we had one of our most interesting guests to date in Paul Mabray, chief strategy officer of Vintank. Not only is he funny (his Twitter picture says it all) but his company is bringing technology and innovation to one of the oldest industries in the world, namely, wine.

During our 25 minute conversation, Paul covered some of the reasons why it's tricky to innovate in the wine industry including state regulations, dirth of eCommerce know-how and a general lack of knowledge of the end customer on the part of most of the vineyards/wineries -- an issue caused by selling almost exclusively through intermediaries. As if humor and smarts weren't enough, one of the other things that Jennifer and I really appreciated about Paul/Vintank is that he brings 16 years of wine industry experience to the table. Yup, this guy knows the space inside and out.

Speaking of smart, our featured, "Twitterer of the week" was Lon Cohen aka @Obilon. While I wasn't as familiar with Lon as Jennifer was, he has an impressive background. His LinkedIn profile points to his background in strategic online marketing, communications, social media, SEO and content management. He also demonstrates a healthy dose of snark in his tweet stream which as anyone that follows our show knows is a huge plus in our book.

Last but not least was our point / counterpoint. This week, we talked about "what comes first, philanthropy or fans." Jennifer talked about an example of a company that offered to send a pump to Haiti if they reached a certain number followers. Her gripe was, why not just buy the pump and send it and then encourage follower-ship based on the good deed. I argued that while it would be a noble for company X to send the pump up front, the reason they can afford to buy the pump in the first place is that they've made a strategic bet that the social buzz they create through this PR stunt can drive meaningful marketing results. Where Jennifer and I both agreed was that being singularly focused on quantity vs. quality of followers.

On the housekeeping front, here are three things Jennifer and I would like to to put on your radar:

• As of April 29, Jennifer and I are going to move our "live broadcast" time from 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT to 3 PM ET / 12 PM PT. We are also trimming our show from 45 to 30 minutes (same format, just crisper).
• We are officially looking for an unpaid intern / producer (we will pay in love, kindness and recognition). Time commitment is likely 1-2 hours / week. Ideally person has some podcast editing skills, knowledge of social networks and highly organized. If interested, DM Jennifer or me for details.
• You can listen to past shows here, or read recaps on Jennifer's ZDNet blog or my Stroutmeister blog.

Until next week, booyakasha.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 33: Reunited Edition!

It's been a few weeks since my podcast partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been able to do a Quick-n-Dirty podcast together. For two weeks in a row, travel prevented me from joining her on our weekly show. Fortunately, we had a couple of more than capable substitutes in Brian Solis (author and principal of FutureWorks) and Greg Matthews, director of innovation at Humana. Write ups from the shows with Brian and Greg can be found here and here on Jennifer's ZDNet blog.

This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to "Foursquare for product discovery" (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr's off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.

Next up was our featured guest (and former "Twitterer of the week,") Simon Mainwaring. If you don't know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week's show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don't share the same space. I won't pretend to do Simon's interview justice so just this one time, I'm MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon's portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).

Speaking of "Twitterers of the week," this week's choice was principal of The Community Roundtable (and close friend), Jim Storer. As I mentioned during the show, nobody has done a better job at taking community management skills to Twitter than Jim. Regularly mixing helpful tips, humor, love of bacon and Red Sox commentary into his stream, Jim is a "must add" to anyone's Twitter follow list irrespective of what industry they are in.

Last but not least, our point/counterpoint focused on one of Jennifer's recent blog posts, Twitter: Becoming Nothing Special. Jennifer's post theorizes that the recent announcement of Yahoo's partnership with Twitter pushes them from "new shiny object" into the merely "ordinary" category. While Jennifer didn't see this as all bad, she wondered aloud if this might hurt Twitter's future potential. Taking the opposing side of this issue, I argued that this is exactly what Twitter (and social media) need. Making Twitter and other social networks like "electricity" -- something we don't ever even think about in spite of the critical role it plays in our daily lives -- is a good thing. To me, this means that it's so ingrained in our daily lives, personal and professional, that we can't live without it.

Looking forward to next week's show, Jennifer and I will switch places and I will be working with friend and founder of Oneforty, Laura Fitton, as my guest host. Jennifer will be attending the RSA Conference and thus will be out of pocket for this week's Quick-n-Dirty. I'm sure she'll want to listen to the show (as will you). Fortunately for her, our shows are archived here and on iTunes (search on "quickndirty").

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 26: Let's Get it Started

Not surprisingly, my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and I were a little punchy as we geared up for our two week hiatus during the holidays. This was a good thing and the momentum -- along with some silly behavior -- carried over into the chat room (I think we had a record number of participants). It didn't hurt that was had a true social mediast on as our guest in Jess Berlin.

Jess is the social media manager of Cirque du Soleil and not only does she kill it on Twitter and Facebook but she brings her social nature (and awareness) into the offline world. I witnessed this at BlogWorld Expo '09 as did Chris Brogan at BWE '08. During our call, Jess talked about engaging Cirque's customers via social media, their fan run group on MySpace that is 40,000 strong and the importance that bloggers play in helping share the good word about Cirque.

Prior to bringing Jess on the line, Jennifer and I talked about social platform, Squidoo. In a nutshell, it's parts Wikipedia and Mahalo or in other words, human currated pages or "lenses" for a variety of popular topics. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch did not flatter Squidoo or Seth Godin (one of it's backers) in the background post I read. And to pile it on, Jennifer had read a lot about people getting spammed with malware links on Squidoo pages. However, our friend and occasional guest host, Kyle Flaherty, demonstrated how good a Squidoo page could be with his company, Breaking Point's, presence.

Next up, we showered Boston PR man and Twitterer extraordinaire, Doug Haslam, with all sorts of praise. In summary, Doug has pioneered on Twitter using it for Red Sox tweets, raising money for charity and of course, providing "love" for his company, clients (I'm one) and occasionally his podcasts/blogs.

Finally, we came to our signature part of the show: the point / counterpoint. Unfortunately for Jennifer, I took the wind out of her sails a little bit by agreeing with her recent post about branded online communities failing to evolve. While I am still VERY bullish on the future of branded communities, I know that many companies have not done them well, failing to focus on the crucial elements like strategy, content, ongoing management and measurment. Jennifer and I did have a productive conversation about some of the successful communities out there like Nike+, Sears and Powered's very own, Sony community.

So as I mentioned up front, we are off the next two weeks although look for wrap up posts listing out all of the social networks, guests, featured Twitters and point/counterpoints over the last 26 shows. Speaking, if you missed our last show, you can read the recap here or you can listen to archived shows here (also available for download on iTunes). Happy holidays!

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 22: It's Been a While

It's only been four weeks but it seemed like forever since my co-host, Jennifer Leggio, and I teamed up for our weekly Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. After two guest hosts (Cathy Brooks and Greg Matthews) and a week off, Jennifer and I were ready to get back into the saddle and I think for the most part, we succeeded.

Having guest, Jeremy Pepper, on the show didn't hurt. Jeremy is not only smart and insightful (sometimes inciteful) but not afraid to "call 'em like he sees 'em." Both Jennifer and I appreciate this in a person, especially when they came from a background of "Big PR." During the show, we had a chance to ask Jeremy what the "new" PR looks like which lead us down a path of the "do's" and "don't's" of relationship building. We also did a lot of laughing (apologies to the audience for that).

Beyond that, we covered off on social video hosting site, blip.tv (no relation to blip.fm). Jennifer hadn't used it before so she didn't have much to say (even if she did - her verbose co-host probably woulnd't have let her) but I liked it. Bottom line, when you have a video that's over 10 minutes long, this is a great alternative to Youtube.

We gave props to writer, podcaster and entrepreneur, Jeff Cutler. If you don't know him, check out some of his work here, here and here. I have to say, many of our "featured Twitterers of the week" are usually happy to be featured but Jeff's Twitter response once he found out he was the guy was hilarious...

@AaronStrout: How? Why? #notworthy #blushing #thanktheacademy #ifnotforthehardworkofothersIwouldn'tbehere

Jeff, we're glad to have made your day!

We wrapped up with our signature point / counterpoint focusing on the increasingly important topic of "is everyone on your social network a friend?" In this case, Jennifer summed it up by saying, "you're just nicer than I am Aaron." Her point was, I am friendly with (and follow back) a lot more people than she does. This was true but I also pointed out that at least the people that she did "connect" with knew that they were really in Jennifer's "friend" bucket. Bottom line for me, I've seen that the serendipity of connecting with tons of people has outweighed the cost of managing those same relationships. But of course I totally respect Jennifer's position. See, we just agreed again. Damnit!

If you missed the show, you can check it out here. You can also read re-caps of the show on Jennifer's blog and here on Stroutmeister.com. Be sure to tune in next week!

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 20: With Guest Host, Cathy Brooks

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to try out a guest host on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. My usual partner-in-crime, Jennifer Leggio, was originally supposed to be on a plane during our normal Thursday time slot although her plans changed and she ultimately ended up sticking around. This led to some funny podcast-a-trois when we invited Jen to call into the show during the last 10 minutes.

In Jen's place, Iwas lucky to have the talented and socially adept, Cathy Brooks, as my guest host and fortunately, she did not disappoint. Cathy and I had met a few times before in real life (SXSW and Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference in NYC) so I had a pretty good sense of her style. To that end, Cathy's wit and charm helped as we stuck to the shows regular format -- and in this case, brought on TWO guests versus our normal one.

We kicked off the show with our usual "featured social network." In this case, it was social travel site, Tripit, a site that I am a big fan of. As a side note, the folks from Tripit were doing a good job "listening" and reached out to me after the fact to ask if I might be interested in interviewing their co-founders. Suffice to say, you'll be hearing more from the folks at Tripit in the not-to-distant-future.

Our special guestS (yes, two of them) were none other than Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler, founders of Social Media for Social Change, a great organization that applies the best of the world of social to the non-profit world. Gradon and Meg not only talked about how their organization had raised a decent amount of cash for good causes but how they were also helping other non-profit organizations harness the power of social. If you haven't checked out one of their events, keep an eye out for their next event in Miami Florida called @sm4scmiami.

The featured "Twitterer" of the week was Allstate's Ben Foster. As I was talking about the reasons I liked Ben's Twitter style -- great mix of human and business -- he chimed in on Twitter with this hilarious quote:

@aaronstrout Sweet! But now I feel pressure to have smart tweets and not things like Wolf Blitzer T-Shirts and Zombie Wedding Cakes :-)

And finally, we wrapped up with our traditional point / counterpoint... this time with a focus on social advertising. Of course Cathy and I couldn't resist bringing Jennifer in for this portion of the show so we had a fast and furious three way dialogue about whether companies should or shouldn't be advertising on places like Facebook. If you want to find out who chose which side, I guess you'll just have to listen into the last 10 minutes of the show.

Check out other recaps of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show either here on Stroutmeister.com or on Jen's ZDNet blog. We hope you'll listen in live next week!

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 19: Live from BlogWorld Expo

Wow! What an amazing last few days it's been at Blog World Expo. It was tough to have to leave before the festivities were over but I enjoyed a whirlwind of great panels, content and podcasts while I was here in Vegas at one of the top 2-3 most important social conferences in the country.

As you can guess, one of the podcasts I got to do was with my pal and co-host of the Quick-n-Dirty show, Jennifer Leggio. The beauty of this episode was that Jennifer and I got to do the show live from the expo floor of Blog World. Even better, we were able to grab PR/social studs, Doug Haslam* of SHIFT and Steve Rubel, of Edelman and Micropersuasion blog fame.

*note: do I need to disclose that Doug works for my company, Powered Inc. in a PR capacity -- after all, we're paying him vs. the other way around? No? Good, I didn't think so. Just checkin'.

Rather than doing our regular format of:

1. Social network
2. Guest/case study
3. Featured twitterer of the week
4. Point/counterpoint

we went freestyle and discussed Jen's and my panels at the show. Highlights included:

• A recap of the fact that we both agreed that her "sponsored content" panel could have been a seminal discussion but instead just ended up being really good (not a bad thing). Part of the problem was that Jeremiah Owyang, formerly of Forrester and now at Altimeter Group worked hard to *protect* the panelists. While this was likely the right thing to do, it did prevent some of the sparks from flying that the crowd really wanted to see. For what it's worth, Jeremiah and I discussed this over drinks the night before so don't think I'm talkin' behind his back. ;)
• Jen's review of her featured morning session about not letting the bad guys "Jack your brand." This connected more with Jen's security roots (day job) vs. her ZDNet blog (spare time) focused on social business. I suspect that Jen will do a recap on her blog but what I really liked was that she allowed audience members to come up and co-present with her reinforcing her "social" side.
• We also did a quick review of my morning panel on "Gaming Twitter" and why it's not a good idea. To get details, head over to hashtag #twitgame as several of us in the room (myself included) live tweeted this event and caught a majority of the salient points on Twitter. For what it's worth, I was blown away but the smarts of fellow co-panelists Reem Abeidoh, Lucretia Pruitt, Micah Baldwin and Jesse Stay.

As I mentioned earlier, we did stray from our normal show format. However, we were able to bring some fresh insight to the podcast via our special guests. The fun part was that due to our limit of two headsets, Jen interviewed Doug Haslam and I interviewed Steve Rubel. I strongly encourage you to listen to this part of the show [about 20-25 minutes in] but here is the gist of what we discussed:

• Jennifer and Doug talked about the fact that PR wasn't dead but *evolved*. PR firms that weren't doing it right risked becoming irrelevant. As a client of SHIFT's (there goes that disclosure again), I can tell you that he and his team definitely get it. There was one other topic that they covered but because I couldn't hear them real-time, I'll need to go back and listen to [FILL IN THE BLANK].
• Steve and I rehashed his panel yesterday on life streaming [recap on my blog here]. In particular, I asked Steve how easy it was (knowing the answer was, "not very) to take clients form "you should be doing social" to focusing on his three pillars of "create spoke and hub content/destinations, become ubiquitous/ searchable and be sure to diversify." We also touched on whether or not it was a good idea to turn off comments on Youtube.

All in all, Jen and I were probably a little less scripted and buttoned up than usual but it was a hell of a lot of fun. To that end, a great big hat tip to Deb Robison for being the sole active chat room attendee. She rocks!

For past recaps of the show, you can always bounce back and forth between Jen's and my blogs. And of course, you can always catch an archived version of the show here or over on iTunes.

Sponsored Content: Right or Wrong

Great panel at BlogWorld Expo focused on the controversial topic of sponsored content. Jim Turner, Jason Falls and Rick Calvert nailed the participants for this one (although it would have been nice to have either Chris Brogan or one of Wal-mart's Eleven Mom's on the panel). Either way, here they are:

• Moderator: Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter)
• Ted Murphy (Izea)
• Jennifer Leggio (ZD Net)
• Lisa Borodkin (Callahan & Blaine)
• Wendy Piersall (eMom)

Jeremiah frames the conversation by asking the audience who was pro and con sponsored content. The audience asked for clarification and following that, Jeremiah gave eight examples of sponsored content. After he read these, he re-asked the question and a lot more people were in favor of sponsored content than first go around.

[breaking news via Howard Greenstein: IAB has asked FTC to rescind their ruling due to unfair treatment of online and offline. Here is AdWeek's take.]

Effective as of 12/1/09, here is the high-level overview of the FTC's ruling:

• the new FTC's recent ruling is actually a clarification of a law that has been on the books since 1980 but have recently been reinterpreted by the FTC to cover bloggers. Some of the clarifications included in the recent ruling touch on:
• According to the FTC, an endorsement is defined as "any advertising message that consumers are likely to believe reflect the experiences other than the sponsor."
• Whether the speaker was compensated (including goods)
• Was it given to you for free
• Terms of any agreement
• Length of relationship
• Value
• FTC is holding equally liable the sponsor and the endorser if it is believed that false advertising/influence is applicable
• The FTC is comfortable with sponsored content if proper disclosures are put in place.

Jennifer Leggio:

• Wants to clarify that her stance is that she doesn't believe that while she's against sponsored content, she does see some opportunities where it might be tasteful/appropriate. It can run the risk of damaging a blogger or brands reputation.

Wendy Piersall:

• She agrees with Jennifer but thinks that there are a lot of opportunities where sponsored conversations are appropriate. However, she agrees that it once one "plays the game," one has to be careful about how future non-sponsored messages are interpreted.

Ted Murphy:

• Given the fact that his company, Izea, focuses their business model on sponsored content, it's not hard to guess where his alliances lie. However, Ted did add that he believes that all bloggers should add disclosure to their blogs in a clear, concise fashion.

There was way more to this than what I've covered here but this should give you a flavor of the conversation. For more details, there was actually a separate hashtag -- #sponblog -- that Jeremiah ran for this session. All in all, a very interesting topic.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 17: Yelp-ing it Up

I have a rule with e-mail. It's called the 2 minute/2 week rule. You can probably guess what the rule is but if not, it means that I try and respond to most e-mails within 2 minutes. The reason being, if I don't get to it in 2 minutes, it usually sits in my inbox until I'm on a plane so you get a response 2 weeks later.

The reason I bring my "rule" up is that I'm taking that approach with today's Quick-n-Dirty podcast wrap up. I'm hustling a little bit because I have to leave in 45 minutes to pick friends up at the airport. We're going to the Austin City Limits music festival this weekend so if I don't do this now, you won't get the recap until Monday or Tuesday of next week.

With that as a caveat [ahem, excuse] for my pithiness, onto to the deets. Oh, remember that you can always download these podcasts on iTunes, listen to show archives here or find recaps of past episodes on this blog and co-host, Jennifer Leggio's Feeds blog on ZDNet focused on social business.

Highlights from this week's show:

• Featured Social Network: Gowalla. The easy way to describe it is that it's a FourSquare knock off but don't just take my word for it. TechCrunch did a good comparison of Gowalla and FourSquare if you're looking for a more detailed description of each. To that end, Gowalla does have some cool additional features like recommended user generated walking tours. Jennifer isn't a fan, especially because of it's wonky GPS capabilities. The jury is still out with me.
• Special Guest: Vince Solitto, VP of Communications, Yelp. Okay, I feel a little bit bad because Jennifer and I definitely put Vince on the "Budweister hot seat" with some of our questions. Given Vince's background in politics, he seemed to handle the pressure without any problem. The one big takeaway that I didn't realize about Yelp is that only a third of their reviews/ratings are for restaurants. The rest are for services -- similar to Angie's List -- think dentists, doctors and daycare. Who knew?

• Featured Tweeter: Simon Mainwaring. I've recently put Simon in my "Trust Tree" list on Tweetdeck -- that's the 100 or so people that I follow closely for one reason or another. The main reason Jennifer and I liked Simon as a choice is that 1 out of every 3 tweets is a link to some great report or statistic on social media, marketing or Web 2.0. Given his background (big brand/big agency), methinks he knows about that which he speaks.
• Point / Counterpoint: This week's discussion was short and sweet. We focused on third part social networks' "ownership" of content. Jennifer said that she didn't like places like Facebook, Twitter and Ning owning some rights to her content but she went into the deal "in the know" (she reads ever word of ever terms of service). My contention is that as an individual, I don't care much that the socnets own my stuff but when it comes to business, companies should be careful. One MAJOR argument for considering a branded only community in addition to joining these places (and yes, I admitted on the show that this is a little self-serving given the fact that I work at a company that builds branded online communities). Whatever! ;)
• Give away: we also gave away another pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit. The lucky winner was none other than Mr. Michael J. Russel for his very clever Q-n-D Haiku. Hope he can make it!

So that's it. That's the recap. Don't miss next week's show where we'll discuss the hashtag study that Jennifer conducted with our friend and fan, Deb Robison. If you haven't weighed in yet, be sure to do so. Also, we are broadcasting live from Blogworld Expo in two weeks. If you have suggestions on anyone that you think we should interview, tweet us or put your reco in the comments!

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap (Yup, I Drew the Short Straw Again)

Somehow I managed to draw the short straw again this week...  So it's my turn to do the recap of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show again this week. Fortunately, I think this was one of our best yet -- top three at least -- so I really don't mind taking the time to be the scribe for show number fifteen.

Before I dive in, I have two housekeeping items that I'd like to cover:

1. We are giving away another free pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit so be sure you call into this week's show. The number is (347) 308-8632.
2. There is a survey on the effectiveness of hashtags that my co-host, Jennifer Leggio, and friend, Deb Robison, have put into the field that needs more respondents. Please vote if you get a second.

With that said, onto the recap!

• Featured Social Network: Threadsy. Well, this one's still in private beta so unfortunately you won't be able to see much of Threadsy first hand. But you can read more about it over hear at TechCrunch. Jennifer saw their demo via streaming video from the recent TechCrunch50 event and was impressed enough to want to cover it. In a nutshell, they "take all of your online communication and shove them into a single service." Note that I have already requested an invite!
• Special Guest: Michael "Britopian" Brito. Yup, he's the guy that focuses on social over at this little chip manufacturing company in Silicon Valley called Intel. Oh wait, you've heard of it? Yeah, I thought you might have. Anyway, during the show Michael dropped some serious knowledge on how he/Intel look at engaging their customers through social. In fact, Michael was kind enough to share a pretty cool example of his efforts here.
• Featured Tweeter: Chris Penn. Just read his Twitter bio... Financial aid expert, Edvisors.com CMO, PodCamp co-founder, MarketingOverCoffee.com co-host, speaker, author, USF marketing professor, actual ninja, unholy DK." How can you not like this guy? Seriously though, he creates some serious value both in person, on his podcasts and in his Twitter stream. Follow him. NOW!
• Point / Counterpoint: I liked this one because Jennifer and I actually kind of disagreed on this one. She whined about argued the fact that with so much noise out their in the blogosphere, it was hard for new and/or quality voices to get a say. My counterpoint was that if content isn't good, people eventually vote with their feet (she used Mashable as an example of an organization that may have lost their way). I also chimed in that people who have good content need to be better advocates for themselves. If a tree falls in the woods, nobody hears it if nobody knows the tree existed.

Onto next week's show. Our featured guest will be the lovely, Laura Fitton. You know her as Pistachio. I know her as one of my teammates on Team Shuckri. You will soon know her as the CEO and co-founder of exciting new startup, oneforty. And as I mentioned before, we'll be giving away another free Inbound Marketing Summit pass so you can't afford to miss it! Just ask last week's winner, Bill Johnston (he's a good guy so Jennifer and I were both psyched that he won).

To listen to the show, you can either click play on the BlogTalkRadio icon on my blog or head on over to BlogTalkRadio (we're also on iTunes).

Q-n-D Recap: Kodak's Tom Hoehn and Why Plurk Sucks

14

That's right, this was the 14th Quick-n-Dirty podcast that Jennifer Leggio and I have co-hosted. I guess you could say that we've moved beyond our "pilot" phase and into the real world of podcasting. To that end, we have some exciting things to note:

1. Jennifer is now doing her recaps on her Feeds blog over at ZDNet. That's not to say that "Stroutmeister" or "Mediaphyter" aren't kick ass blogs... it just means that we don't have anywhere near the pull that ZDNet does. This is a good thing.
2. Our show has been selected as a "featured" podcast on BlogTalkRadio. I don't know how many shows BTR does this with but let's just assume it's a good thing.

So onto the recap from this week's show...

• Featured Social Network: Plurk - first up, we did some trash talking about this "Twitter wannabe." Jennifer and I both joined late in 2008 but found very little value, especially when you compare it to Twitter. Jennifer and I remembered that friend, Mack Collier, was a heavy user back in the day (we won't hold that against him). We also found out that regular listener, Deb Robison, still uses Plurk. She likes the threaded conversations. To that end, Deb and I have agreed to do a joint "point / counterpoint" post. Stay tuned for that one.
• Special Guest: Kodak's Director of Interactive and Convergence Media, Tom Hoehn, joined us for an extended session during the show. Our conversation focused on the way Kodak is tapping into the power of social to revolutionize one of the oldest public companies in the country. In particular, Tom talked about how Kodak CMO, Jeffrey Hayzlett and lead blogger/twitterer, Jenny Cisney, are helping him push forward with a social agenda, not just for the benefit of Kodak's customers but for their business partners as well. In fact, Tom was able to point us to their AWESOME new booklet of social media tips that Jeffrey, Tom and Jenny put together (definitely a MUST read). For additional background, see our aforementioned friend, Mack's, interview of Tom.
• Featured Tweeter: Adam Cohen. Partner at interactive agency, Rosetta, Adam was one of the first 25 people I followed on Twitter (as I close in on 9,000 people I follow, that should tell you something). The reason Jen and I chose him as our "feature" was his blend of being helpful, funny and continually able to deliver great content. Viva la Adam!
• Point / Counterpoint: To retweet or not retweet, that is the question... okay, so we didn't get all "Shakespeare" about this one but we did agree that some retweeting is okay, as long as you don't overdo it AND you add a little color commentary about why you are passing that info along. I personally like retweeting because I think if people are using me as a filter, they can see what types of blogs, videos, articles and podcasts I like. Jennifer was 1/2 sold on this.

Onto next week's show. Our featured guest will be Intel's, Michael Brito. Be sure to tune in. We'll also be giving away a pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston. Oh, and be on the lookout for Jennifer's interview on Bub.bilicio.us -- it should be coming out next week!

To listen to the show, you can either click play on the BlogTalkRadio icon on my blog or head on over to BlogTalkRadio (we're also on iTunes).

The Best of Quick-n-Dirty

As you probably know by now, I do a weekly podcast with my friend and co-host, Jennifer Leggio called the Quick-n-Dirty show. If you don't know the genesis of this series, you can get the back story here.

We've been at it for eleven

weeks now and so far, I think we've done a good job evolving the show, creating chemistry and devloping a great group of followers like, ahem... Kyle Flaherty (who was kind enough to stand in as a guest host for us in week eight). We're always looking to improve though so if you have suggestions, please put them in the comments.

So what's with the "Best Of" focus after only eleven weeks on the job. Kind of like a

successful NBC pilot where you just get hooked and then all of a sudden, bam, they

revert to re-runs. Well, we're not quite that bad but Jen and I were both travelling this

week so we thought it might be helpful to take a week off, gather our thoughts and gear up for another eleven week run. To that end, why not do a quick recap of what we've covered and include a few "best of"moments. If you have a favorite moment, don't be shy.

By the way, If you want to read

recaps of all eleven, they are here... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ,10 11.

Now onto the highlights:

• On our eleven shows, we've covered ten social networks. We try and cover one every week but accidentally skipped Glue during week two so it got bumped to week three. Here are they are in order of appearance - FourSquare, Glue, Blip.fm, Daily Mile, Loopt, 12 Seconds, Shelfari, Friendfeed and Aardvark. A quick heads up on the fact that we will have have Friendfeed (now part of Facebook) co-founder, Paul Bucheit, on the show next Thursday. Scobleizer take note!
• One of the other regular parts of our shows is our featured "Tweet" or exec/person that we think is worth a follow. So far, we've covered CISCO CTO, Padmashree Warrior, Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Designs, Kodak CMO, Jeffrey Hayzlett, BIDH CIO, John Halamka, Technically Women (comprised of a group of very smart ladies), Cluetrain author, Doc Searls, Dr. Ogan Gurel, Red Sox tv color announcer, Jerry Remy, former Yahoo, Ryan Kuder, principal at The Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe and last but not least, tweeting couple Terre & John Pruitt.
• My favorite part of our show are our guests. So far, we've had a number of great ones including Michael Feferman of C3 and Rick Calvert of Blog World but in particular, Jen and I agreed that our two favorites have been Greg Matthews of Humana and Bert DuMars of Newell Rubbermaid. Not only did both impart some major pearls of wisdom about how their companies were tapping into the power of community and social media, but Greg and Bert also showed a great sense of humor. You can bet that they will both be asked back sometime in the near future. I guess I should mention Pandora CEO, Tim Westegren too 'cause he was pretty awesome.
• The reason we originally started our podcast show was as a result of a disagreement Jennifer and I had over the value of celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher joining Twitter. Since then, we've had eleven opportunities to "agree to disagree." To be honest, Jennifer and I actually agree quite a lot of the time so many times, we end up flipping a coin to see who is going to take the counterpoint of a particular topic. This is pretty fun -- kind of like debate club if you think about it. In our next batch of shows, I'm goign to have to work harder to find topics that push Jennifer's buttons. ;)

Am I missing your favorite moment? If so, be sure to either call into next week's show (we're now taking 1-2 live callers per show) or let us know in the comments below. In the meantime, keep it quick-n-dirty!

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 9 Recap

After a week off for a little family vacation, imagine how relieved I was to find out that I still had a job as a cohost of Quick-n-Dirty podcast. Apparently, Kyle Flaherty, did an admirable job filling in for me but my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, decided that he's more fun to make fun of than me so he was the odd man out (sorry Kyle).

For anyone new to the show, here are the recaps of episodes one, two, three, four, five. six, seven and eight. Not that the first couple of shows weren't good but we really started to hit our stride around show five and six so if you're digging back through the archives, you might want to start there.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode nine here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

1. Featured Social Network: Friendfeed. To be honest, we focused more on the contraversy surrounding Friendfeed that came up a couple weeks back when blogger/uber Tweeter, Aaron Brazell pulled the plug on his FF account. Friendfeed evangelist and big time tech blogger, Robert Scoble was less than pleased because when Aaron pulled the plug, it wiped out all of Scoble's comments. Rather than take my word for it, read Scoble's and Brazell's accounts of the story.
2. Special Guest: Michael Feferman, director of digital for C3. No, we didn't just have Michael on the show because his name is fun to say. But we did invite him on Q-n-D because he works in a job where music meets digital, and in particular, social media. What I liked most about our interview with Michael was his candor around the music industry's need to embrace some of these new ways of embracing their communities.
3. Case Study: EMC thanks to friend, Len Devanna. During the show, I shared the following bullets with the listeners:
   
   * About 18 months old now.
   * Greater than 50% adoption across a global workforce of about 38k.
   * It’s been instrumental in breaking down internal walls (geo, divisional, organizational, etc.)
   * Among initial intent was to drive proficiency with E2.0 across global workforce. I’d say we’ve done that in spades. Many of our current public bloggers honed their voice on EMC ONE pre going public.
   * We’re seeing more and more movement away from traditional processes and migration to online collab via wikis, etc.
   Len was also kind enough to pass along these two links that highlight the importance of EMC | ONE to the company.
4. Featured Twitterer: Ryan Kuder. What was cool about this is that both Jennifer and I know Ryan (her IRL and me via Twitter). I think Ryan was one of the first 250 people I followed on Twitter so he of course has a special place in my heart. What is particularly cool is the fact that Ryan was one of the first people to publicly tweet about his experience of getting laid off from a major company... in this case, Yahoo. If you don't follow him yet, make sure you do because he's smart, funny and always helpful.
5. Point / Counterpoint: Sponsored blogging. Yeah, don't get us started on this one. To be honest, neither Jennifer nor I am a huge fan of sponsored blogging. I am a little softer in my stance around sponsored Tweeting -- something Jennifer has very little tolerance for. One interesting point that Jennifer brought up that I liked a lot was that if companies want high profile folks to talk about their company/products, they'd be much better off hiring subject matter experts -- paid or unpaid -- to support their brand. We didn't mention this but certainly Wal-mart's Eleven Mom's program would fall into this category.

Up next week, we'll be talking about social network, Aardvark and bringing on special guest, personal branding expert, Dan Schawbel. Of course we'll have a featured case study, tweeter and point/counterpoint as well. Be sure to join us!

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 6 Recap

Well, It's only taken six episodes but I think that Jennifer Leggio and I are starting to hit our stride on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast series. For one, we're starting to get used to each other's style (no easy task when you can't see one another). We've also figured out how to use Skype as a back channel for the show. A third thing that helps is that Jennifer and I do live feedback right after our broadcast which is a helpful way to look back at what's worked and what hasn't

For anyone new to the show, here are the recaps of episodes one, two, three, four and five. We'll also be posting the roster for next week's show on the Blog Talk Radio show site soon. The big news for next week's show is that we'll have CEO of music social networking site, Pandora. For no other reason, you'll want to tune in to hear what Tim Westergren has to say about the state of music, how Pandora has battled legal issues and of course, how you can fine tune your Pandora station to get the most out of it.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode six here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

1. Featured Social Network: Loopt. This geo-location based social network is helpful because it provides real time, GPS-informed data on members' whereabouts. It also allows for members to text, ping or call anyone within their network. Jennifer doesn't love the concept of geo-based networks that don't give you a full of control over who can see what (but she caveats that it's because she's a "'fraidy cat.") I like these types of geo-based services because they are a great way to connect with friends or acquaintances when at a conference or out on the town. For what it's worth, our special guest, Greg Matthews sided with me on this debate. Score one for the guys.
2. Special Guest/Case Study: As I mentioned, Greg Matthews, director of consumer innovation at Humana, was our special guest. He also doubled as our weekly "case study" as he talked about some of the best practices Humana is employing to change the way customers -- not just of Humana, but of the industry in general -- perceive health benefits providers. You can read more about what Greg and Humana are doing over on Amber Naslund's Altitude Branding blog. By the way, Greg's best quote of the podcast (as captured by my partner in crime) was easily, "The concepts of governance and social don't go well together." You can find Greg's blog here.
3. Featured Twitterer: For our first five episodes, we've focused on finding executives that Twitter and blog. As you can imagine, this is no easy task so we've decided to shift focus a little bit to a "featured twitterer." This is someone that "gets it" and that you may or may not know but should be paying attention to. This week, we highlighted none other than Mr. Clue Train himself, Doc Searls. In a nutshell, Doc is funny, human and helpful. He also follows back... okay, not everyone but enough people to avoid the criticism of being to clicquey.
4. Point / Counterpoint: Speaking of clicquey (our point/counterpoint two weeks ago), this time we went toe to toe on a topic Jennifer covered in her ZDNet blog, namely, Is Twitter Making Us All Self-Centered. Jen argues, "yes," because everyone is becoming too broadcast focused. I didn't disagree with her overarching point but stuck with my guns that at the end of the day, you control who you follow. If people are too broadcast focused, you vote with your feet and unfollow them.

Oh, the REALLY exciting news was that we gave away a free 2009 Blog World Expo pass. What was really exciting was that our friend, Jen Wojcik of Austin, TX won (I did the drawing randomly so no griping about the process being fixed). Congrats Jen. We look forward to seeing you at Blog World Expo this fall.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 4 Recap

For the most part,  co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I got our act together for episode four. The only wild card for this one -- and it was a big one -- was the news that pop icon, Michael Jackson, had died just before our show got started. And while neither Jennifer or I are huge MJ fans, it felt only fitting to take a moment of silence during the show for "Mr. Moonwalk."

For anyone new to the show, recaps of episodes one, two, and three can be found here. We'll also be posting the roster for next week's show on the Blog Talk Radio show site soon.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode four here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

1. Featured Social Network: Blip.fm. If you like music and you like Twitter, then Blip.fm is the place for you. You can DJ your own music, listen to others, give "props" to your friends or cross-post links to your favorite songs in other networks like Friendfeed, Facebook, etc. On the positive side, it looks like Blip has some element of a business model by allowing users to buy songs on iTunes and Amazon. They also have tons of live versions of songs. On the "room for improvement" side, not every artist has allowed their songs to be played leaving a bit of a gap.
2. Special Guest: Michelle Heath, CMO of ForEx startup, Currensee. During our 10 minutes with Michelle, she talks about how she and Currensee are tapping into the power of social to not only create but promote a community for foreign exchange traders. Good stuff.
   
3. Case Study: Pitney Bowes/Lithium. I could talk about this or I could send you over to Jen's much better write up on her ZDNet/Feeds blog.
4. Executive on Twitter: This week's exec is the CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School, John Halamka. During our conversation, Jen and I discussed the fact that John doesn't fit the normal "featured exec" mold because he doesn't follow many people back and he mostly uses Twitter for updates. However, given his field, I thought he was doing a good job at providing some transparency in a normally tight-lipped space.
5. Point / Counterpoint: Is social media too cliquey? Inspired by Jennifer and my mutual friend, Doug Haslam's post, we talked about whether folks in social media were shy as Mack Collier claimed or just arrogant. Find out who took whom's side by listening in.

For next week's show, we need your help. We're trying to decide whether or not to move our show up an hour to start at 5:00 PM ET / 2:00 PM PT. If you have thoughts on this front, either leave them in the comments below or tweet one of us... @aaronstrout / @mediaphyter.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.