Social Media and Me

I have been dabbling around for a few months in this social media world trying to figure out where things lay, and the best way a terrestrial radio station could utilize services like Twitter, Plurk, Brightkite, and Jaiku to just name a few. I must admit, I am finding it difficult to find useful information for the social media novice like myself. I do, in fact, see the potential for businesses to get involved in such media ventures. My issues arise when trying to decipher what the social media communities want and/or can handle.

I get confused when I see a post by a major Plurk advocate to all social media A-listers to stay away if they aren’t going to be social enough on Plurk. If you are going to use this network, you must get involved with the conversations, not simply provide information. I looked at this Plurk advocates profile, and they have 178 friends and 159 fans. For you non-plurkers, that means he sees the timelines or posts for his 178 friends, but the 159 fans only see what he posts, he doesn’t see what they post (I have been fanned by the way). That just doesn’t seem to be very social from someone with such precise Plurk rules for social activity. This is enough to scare the daylights out of newbies and/or businesses that are looking to jump into the Plurk waters. Why would I subject myself or my company to such a social scrutiny?

Twitter seems to be the most useable and the easiest to follow when it comes to sharing information. I believe this is due in part to the many apps available for desktops and mobile phones. New ones pop up almost daily and there are a few that look very promising for a company to follow it’s customers with minimal effort on the part of the companies customer service department. The folks using Twitter also seem to be more open to receiving information and not necessarily having deep, meaningful interactions. The biggest issue for Twitter at this time is keeping the site up. Constant outages, downtime and errors have some avid Twitter users at wits end. This is a tough problem to overcome if a person or business is relying on Twitter to brand their product.

Brightkite is a location based network that will actually map you based on the location that you provide. It will also map friends, and strangers, that have logged in around your location. This service somewhat intrigues me with what it has to offer radio. It could be used to help listeners find their favorite radio station’s on site remotes and broadcasts.

Many of the other sites are in beta right now and are only available by invitation. That limits the ability to truly gauge the performance and personality of the networks.

So this is what I have learned so far in this crazy on line social world. Please feel free to correct, lead, guide or follow me. Any and all opinions are honored and welcomed.

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