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Aaron Strout

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

May 24, 2010 By Aaron Strout 2 Comments

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 Podcast Recap 24: @Skydiver Style

December 7, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

While episode 24 of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show ended up being a lot of fun, it definitely didn’t start off that way. Without going into too much detail, technical difficulties prevented my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, from dialing into the show until about 2 minutes int. Having done hundreds of podcasts and webcasts, I am pretty good at rolling with the punches but this definitely took me out of my “Zen” mode for the first five minutes of the show. To that end, I apologize to social network of the week, Sponty, because I was definitely a little distracted during this portion of the show.

To make up for my distracted state, I’m going to give Sponty a little more ink here than I usually do. I also want to note for Jennifer’s sake (listeners of the show know that she’s a Blackberry gal and any SocialNetwork that doesn’t provide a BB app gets a black mark in her book) that Android and Blackberry users CAN use Sponty via their mobile web interface (native apps coming sometime in the future).

In their own words…

Sponty is a mobile and web app that lets you create and discover social activity feeds around you. Many of our users create topical feeds that tell you about fun things happening around town, like indie music and hipster parties. Others use it to organize casual get togethers with friends. You can see the current activity here: http://www.thesponty.com/whatsup.


While location is important, Sponty’s premise is that the type of the activity, and which of your friends are going is a bigger determining factor for whether to go to something. I mean, if you’re already at the bar, it’s too late for me to join because I’d still need to jump and the shower and then the T (Boston’s public transportation). Sponty let’s people broadcast their social intentions so that their friends can join them.

So I can see why Sponty might be interesting to folks but my biggest concern — like any other geo-based social network — is that without critical mass, the tool becomes irrelevant. Can Sponty overcome this issue? Perhaps. But it might be a whole lot more useful if it could tap into Facebook and Twitter’s social graphs.

[postscript: I had forgotten that Sponty uses Google for it’s login. Not only is this smart (and a trend that will continue to grow IMHO), but counters one of my biggest critiques of Sponty and any other geo-based social network i.e. mass adoption/critical mass.]

Now onto our guest of the week who was none other than Peter Shankman, aka @Skydiver on the Twitter. You may have heard of him because I interviewed Peter during my Experts in the Industry series back in the spring. Peter has also built up quite a business for himself through is “Help a Reporter Out” (HARO) network of over 100,000 reporters, bloggers, PR folks and experts. In a nutshell, think of this as a matchmaking network where reporters can request information from experts via e-mail alerts that go out three times daily from Peter himself. Peter makes money off his service (while filling a huge need) by selling sponsorships of his daily e-mail alerts.

During our 25 minute conversation, we all got a good laugh (Peter is a funny dude) at some of Peter’s insights and remarks when it came to “social media gurus.” In fact, his quote of the show, “If you have the word guru or expert in your Twitter name or bio, you’re not” got retweeted over a dozen times. Personally, I loved Peter’s prediction for next year that social becomes ubiquitous vs. companies trying to “do social.” He’s also endeared himself to me because he is a fellow hater of voice mail (a future post from me on that topic is in the works).

Next up was our Twitterer of the week, Dave Fleet. Dave is the account director for social media at Thornley Fallis Communications and does a little blogging in his spare time. I let Jennifer take the lead on this one as Dave was her choice. Jennifer likes Dave because of his cynical yet smart writing style. Personally, I’ve followed Dave for a couple of years and enjoy him for exactly the same reasons. Maybe we’ll have Dave on the show live sometime in the not too distant future.

For the signature portion of our show, our point/counterpoint, Jennifer and I focused on the topic of religion and social and more specificially, whether the two should mix. Jennifer wrote an eloquent post on this just a few days before and truth be told, I tend to feel pretty similarly to Ms. Leggio on this one. While I did disagree with Jennifer’s assertion that including one’s religion in their Facebook or Twitter profile wasn’t inappropriate, I did concur with her distate for those that prostheletize via the social web. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as our personal and professional lives continue to become intertwined over the years.

If you missed last week’s show, you can find the wrap up here on Jennifer’s ZDNet blog. You can also find archives on iTunes as well as at our Quick-n-Dirty podcast site over on BlogTalkRadio. We hope you’ll join us next Thursdsay as we talk to Karen Auby of Plantronics.

Hootsuite: Morphing from Twitter Client to *Badass Social Media Dashboard*

November 24, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

While I don’t personally use social media dashboard/tool, HootSuite, I have a number of friends and colleagues who do. At some point, I plan to give it a try. To that end, I do take a personal and professional interest in knowing as much about the spectrum of social tools and networks as possible, particularly since I’m on the hook for staying on top of these things for work and for the weekly podcast I do with Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet (note: live interview on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show coming with Hootsuite founder, Ryan Holmes, on January 14).

When I found about some of the latest features that Hootsuite was announcing this morning (9 AM PT), I couldn’t resist at least spending a couple of minutes letting the folks that read this blog know about it. For a more thorough review, you can check out Hootsuite’s blog or Mashable, but for the “quick-n-dirty version, see below…

What’s new:

  • Integration with Facebook, LinkedIn & Ping.fm
    • Users may now update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles from one location
    • According to HootSuite they are the only Twitter client which allows you to schedule updates for these individual social networks
    • Users may manage social profiles for multiple accounts
    • Users can now read your friends’ Facebook and LinkedIn updates and view in-line Facebook comments within HootSuite
  • Direct integration with LinkedIn (this is a big one in my mind)
    • As a result of LinkedIn opening their developer API over the weekend (more on this from Jeremiah Owyang here), HootSuite jumped in (and to my knowledge) is the first to have integrated direct LinkedIn status updates
  • HootSuite is one of the first clients (I believe that Seesmic is the other) that allows users to manage lists. Users may now:
    • Create lists by dragging and dropping users into columns
    • Import lists you’ve already created & save them as a column in HootSuite

Clearly, Hootsuite is working hard to stay in front of the everchanging landscape of social tools and functionality. For that, they are to be applauded. How long can they keep up with this frantic pace? Who knows, but I like the way CEO, Ryan Holmes thinks. When asked for a quote on Hootsuite’s latest release, he replied…

This update sees HootSuite morphing from Twitter client to badass social media dashboard. We’re constantly listening to our users to hear what they want. Beyond that, we’re thinking about what they might want that they haven’t even imagined yet. We think about these things and then try to make them a reality.

Anyone that knows me at all will recognize that Ryan’s words are music to my ears. Congratulations to the folks at Hootsuite. I look forward to hearing more!

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

November 13, 2009 By Aaron Strout Leave a Comment

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!

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