Joe Manna

It’s not often you ask for help when you need it. I am not sympathizing at all with Jared Loughner, of whom is the suspect in the tragic shooting in Tucson, Ariz where he shot 18 innocent people including state representative, Gabriel Giffords. However, he has demonstrated many key signs that one of his friend’s could have intervened and prevented the events that took place.

Ironically and sadly, her last status update reads:

Shortly thereafter the violent incident occurred.

For a moment, many people thought she passed away. Later, it was confirmed she was alive and went under emergency surgery for a bullet that went through her head. Last I heard, she was okay and functioning.

I expect further investigation and ‘backtracing’ to take place in order to properly map out what led up the shooting at the Safeway at Ina & Oracle in Tucson. It’s important to maintain an open mind and look objectively at the events and not to assume any one generalization that the media likes to package these things as. No, social media didn’t cause this incident, but it can give us some clues as to what may have led up to it.

His videos published on YouTube (compiled together by Tyler Hurst) show one thing: this kid needed help. From flag burning to talking about the need for a whole new currency. Combine that with some of his final updates to his MySpace account and you have someone who should talk with a counselor or at the very least, police the morning of.

Pay attention to your friend’s updates across social media. Not everything is bright and happy and that’s okay. It’s a communications medium and if you have a sense that someone will do some stupid shit, step in and help.

Even if you’re not sure – police are becoming slightly more conscious to the fact social media is a window into people’s lives. Inform them of everything you know and they can make a visit for a ‘welfare check’ ensuring the person is mentally sound. You can do it and not have to worry about any retribution, anonymously. Police are okay with that. If you don’t know where they live, at least get their help and attention.

The only public photo that we suspect is the same Loughner in today’s tragedy was hosted on Arizona Daily Star’s website

One thing we need to be careful of when looking at the shooter. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t make generalizations and don’t connect one person’s actions to a group of people. This person did what they did on their own accord and is incomprehensible.

From what we know, it’s not that anarchism, lucid dreaming or anti-government ideologies are to blame. Those are fine, but whenever someone escalates their thoughts and ideas to the point of killing people, that’s when the line is drawn and must require intervention.

Please be there for your friends when they post cryptic updates so this doesn’t happen again.

The post Help Those Who Need It appeared first on Joe Manna.

Damnit, I hate being so picky. For anyone who knows me, they know I am okay with just about anything. Clothes, shoes, food, TV, movies, friends, relationships, etc. I’m pretty easy-going, but there is one thing that I am notoriously picky about – where I live.

tl;dr – I am moving and on the hunt for the best apartment. I also share what features I am looking for.

Perhaps I can just say “fuck it” and live anywhere based on cost. But, for my life right now, it’s not about the lowest price. It’s about finding a place that I want to live and be social around.

First, I want to talk about why I want to move. Here goes; Gilbert blows.

I was initially hooked into my current apartments due to the favorable views of the lake outside my windows and the proximity to my work. After a few months, it became tertiary just like the trees, color of the paint and the toothpaste stains on my bathroom mirror. Initially, it was in my budget, but the strategy of the management company (Equity Apartments) is to raise the monthly rent even after consecutive lease renewals.

A final appealing perk when I signed my lease – now moot – is the fact that 20% of my monthly rent would accrue as credits if and when I become a homeowner. Well, they just pulled out of their contact with my current apartments and these credits become null and void following January. Bummer. I was counting that one day I could apply these 4000+ credits for something. Well, anything times zero is well, zero.

I also have a strong interest in going out, discovering the true Phoenix and meeting new people. I don’t want to insinuate that I am a product of my environment, but I do want to explore it. I feel ashamed I don’t even know my own city and getting around is always done via Google Maps. I want to expand my amateur photography skills with urban life. I want to go out, walk around and see culture. I want to be close to the light-rail Metro since that is a forward-thinking way of getting around.

Everything in Gilbert closes by 10 unless it’s Jack in the Box or the bar. Even Filiberto’s closes at 10 – that’s unheard of for Mexican restaurants. This city is meant for parents to raise their kids; not for people like me. Gilbert has a very high police presence, which results in excessive traffic enforcement, biased judges and overall a very “family-friendly” atmosphere which negates the life of a single bachelor who loves adventure. I’ve lost over $1,310 in fines and legal fees due to the fact the cops here have no actual crimes to crack down on.

Will there be police everywhere? Sure. Will there be traffic enforcement? Yes. It’s just the level of it in Gilbert is too excessive for me. I’ve yet to be pulled over and harassed in Tempe, Phoenix, or Scottsdale simply for obeying the law. I want cops that actually protect and serve their community, not exploit it for revenue generation.

Choosing the perfect apartment is like choosing the perfect woman. They all have their issues and use advertising to get you in and then once you want out, you can’t. Likewise, once you warm up to it, you begin to feel secure with who they are / where you live. (Too many metaphors and generalizations? I know.)

That said, I am looking for these features and assets in my next apartments.

• Budget: Under $725 monthly. Looking to get a great deal and take advantage of the ‘recession’.
• 2 Bedrooms, 1 Bath. Looking to make a home-office and area for friends to crash on.
• Low crime – burglary/theft/larceny/GTA. Call me cold-hearted, but property crimes are the ones I fear most. DV, rape, murder and noise complaints aren’t a bother to me, but generally those tend to happen asynchronously with theft.
• Modern features. I would kill to find an apartment with built-in Ethernet in the walls. I’m doubtful. I desire one with a semi-modern kitchen – a decent sink or oven. Also would be great to have a digital thermostat.
• Decent reviews through social media. Scours of residents don’t lie. When you see on Foursquare a tip that says how bad the service is, there’s a reason for it. Perhaps reviews on Yelp or ApartmentRatings.com lets you know how the property and the staff treat their residents. I juxtapose this with the quality of the review itself. Good reviews = win. Bad reviews = questions for apartment staff.
• Washer/Dryer in Unit. No coin-op for me or community laundry centers. Had one too many thefts take place.
• Ability to take automated payments. I don’t write checks. It’s 2011. They better offer an easy means to pay. None of this ‘drop the rent check at the office’ games.
• Access to Highways. I like the ability to quickly access a highway. Lengthy commutes to work and stuff isn’t my thing, so the simpler and easier way I can get around, that’s a big win.

So far, there are a handful of apartments on my radar that I will be reviewing and doing my due diligence in researching. The fruits of my labor will be when I live in a bad-ass place and can enjoy going out without driving far.

My primary target is Tempe with my secondary target in Scottsdale. Either metro area offers attractive benefits, but so far Tempe just seems a little more for what I’m looking for.

Over the next week or so, I’ll share what I learn and end up choosing for apartments.

The post My Next Apartment appeared first on Joe Manna.

When I think about explaining why a business should use social media, I think about this example. Not every business needs to use social media, but if your customers and prospects are there – why would you not be there?

Not too long ago, I went to my local QuickTrip. They are more than a gas station – they are an experience. They are the Target of convenience stores. But this isn’t about QuickTrip, it’s about Chevrolet.

In the photo above, they used a promotional tent to launch their new Chevy Cruze, one of the top hybrid cars Chevrolet launched. Now, think about – they don’t use gas. Why in the world are they at a gas station? (In the photo, they were wrapping up, but you get the idea.)

Because everyone who uses gasoline is a prospect to them. It’s genius and definitely a way to get noticed. They know that showing off the MPG specs is relevant to the people filling up. Under the tent was a new Chevy Cruze and a trio of salesmen and women to talk it up with QuickTrip’s customers about the Hybrid car.

Now, putting a car in a mall? Not so much. No one goes to the mall to buy or learn about cars. They go there for shoes, clothes or generally to increase the balances on their credit cards.

Next time you do a promotion or if you’re thinking of a promotion, consider this:

• Does my product apply to nearly everyone? Why?
• Am I doing something unique?
• How will I collect and follow-up with leads?

As a loyal customer of QuickTrip, I love it when they have good sponsors and surprises at the stations. This is a good example of it. Also, this is the closest I’ve been to a “dealer” since my mistake in ’06.

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If you are concerned about your privacy, you’ve got to read this. Spokeo is a free service that has boatloads of data on nearly everybody. It’s simple to use and you can see where someone lives, the front of their house, estimated income, date of birth, their family members and of course, their address and phone number. This is another tool that can be used very successfully by stalkers.

You probably don’t want to have all your information out there for people to effortlessly look up. Unlike CriminalSearches.com, you can opt-out and remove yourself from Spokeo.

How to remove your information from Spokeo:

1. Go to spokeo.com and search for your name.
2. Click on the listing that’s yours.
3. Copy the URL which contains your listing information.
   (It should look like this: http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=John%20Doe#0123456789/info)
4. Go to the Spokeo Privacy page and paste in the URL you copied.
5. Enter your email address and CAPTCHA and submit.
6. Confirm your removal by clicking the link in your email. Pay attention because their email is tricky.
   

I have a vice with companies that publish sensitive information about people without their permission. Spokeo should be ashamed for their irresponsible data retention and access practices. Protect your friends from stalkers and send them this post.

Arguably, this information is already available to the public, so it’s not like they hacked it from somewhere. However, their relatively simple access to it makes it dangerous because of the fact these are where people live. And the reality is there are a hundred services just like it – sharing your data without your permission.

My only advice to Spokeo is to acquire data from sources where the person gave permission to have their information available for everyone to see. Oh, and also grow a pair and implement an opt-in data collection and retention policy. From what I can tell, Spokeo’s site is being hammered with removal requests, which is why it’s very slow … for good reason.

The post Spokeo: Another Tool for Stalkers appeared first on Joe Manna.

This year, many great advancements in how we communicate and use services online occurred. Some could say it’s more of the same, others could say 2010 proved to be a great year for social media. Here is a recap of how social media fared in 2010.

Given how fast these events occur, it’s a good idea to acknowledge what took place this year in social media. In no particular order, here are my observations.

1. Businesses more liberally adopted and explored social media.
   If 2009 was the year of the social media curmudgeons, then 2010 was the year the naysayers lost. Social media has become a standard order of business if they wish to grow their brand. In light of that, a lot of discovery took place this year – many (including myself) have experimented with different types of content across many different mediums. The good part about this was for those who experimented, they gained experience with sticky content and how to engage customers. Although, this also yielded an opportunity where the results haven’t been mind-blowing, yet it can prove itself through scalability and consistency during 2011.
2. Social media has proven itself to be high value to many businesses and entrepreneurs.
   There is case study after case study of businesses solving real-world problems through social media. Call it exploration, it still doesn’t negate the fact social media is a powerful medium for validation and keeping customers loyal and tuned-in to a brand’s message.
3. Twitter matured their service to accommodate more media and users.
   Just when Twitter was about to become merely a platform and not the application, they updated their interface to offer much more features for users. This is good as traffic from outside apps can’t be easily tracked, it can prove valuable for publishers when more people use the web interface of Twitter. At the same time, it’s good to note that Twitter has experienced far fewer fail-whales during 2010 than previous years – and this shows the company and the technology has matured.
4. Location Based Services continue to grow, but slowly.
   Foursquare reigns to be the dominant leader here for people to share what they’re doing with context to a specific location. However, limited engagement is a risk for the platform. This risk also translates to opportunity for new location based services to grow and deliver better ways for customers to interact with a business and vice-versa.
5. Facebook Pages has risen in awareness, use and interaction.
   During 2010, Facebook Pages have always been a gamble to a business. Just like me at the Craps table, some of them never know what their getting into. Through proper exploring, experimenting and promotion, their Facebook Pages have become a strong asset for business owners. Recently, Facebook updated their ‘Insights” (metrics), and thus a publisher can better learn from their audience what content their fans like and don’t like. Expect more growth here during 2011.
6. Online video has greatly improved and  more support for HD.
   Prior to YouTube, the only decently-affordable, quality video hosting service was Vimeo that would support HD. Not anymore. YouTube natively supports HD content and they transcode it much faster than they did earlier in the year. The result of this shows that video will mature and be a more pleasant, engaging and attractive medium for businesses to produce quality content for their audience.
7. WordPress continues to lead as the blog platform of choice.
   TypePad and Blogger platforms continue to decline as more users defect over to WordPress for their blogging platform. Plugins and theme frameworks make WordPress attractive to designers and easy to run for businesses who need to publish content to their website.
8. Apple’s iPad has given more legitimacy to tablets as a computing device.
   I admit that I initially scoffed at the idea of the iPad once it launched, but doesn’t mean it didn’t bring legitimacy to the desire for tablet computing devices. As smartphones mature, the iPad delivers just about everything from an iPod Touch to a larger screen with many more apps designed viewing on a tablet. Expect more magazine and more complex social apps to grow here during 2011.
9. Apple’s Ping social network is an abysmal failure.
   When Apple announced it would build a social network for music, the industry was curious what they had up their sleeves. What they delivered was sub-par of any social media app launch, ever. Virtually no one uses it and the artists (and their publicists) themselves seem to enjoy Twitter versus Ping. That should tell you sometimes.
10. Social commerce is about to explode.
    Despite Ping’s failure in their launch, it does have Twitter integration to let users share song purchases with their friends. Zappos and many other retails are making use of the social graph to measure and promote actions via Facebook. The market is ripe for opportunity to leverage people’s social networks to share deals and promotions for brands. No one has quite nailed this yet, but it’s ripe for 2011.
11. Community managers have to up their game.
    2010 proved to community managers – myself included – that far more strategy is necessary to be successful. No longer will just using a platform earn you street cred – driving results and solving problems does. In general, community managers have more or less proven themselves to act in a leadership role even if they don’t get the title for it. 2011 is the year to shine for community managers within their organizations when they bring home the bacon and take leadership of driving social initiatives in their companies.
12. Blogging activity decreases in light of Twitter’s growth.
    Sharing ideas is easier than ever. I can communicate a complete thought through just 140 characters. In light of this, I’ve noticed that fewer people choose to blog. This has resulted in two things – publishers are dominating by focusing on their blog and more people’s blogs are becoming stale. The opportunity for 2011 is to get more active and value blogging as a means to share stories, not just off-the-cuff thoughts.
13. Increased focus to measure social activity and actions.
    Again, there’s nothing wrong with exploring, but 2010 has proven to be the place to experiment with what social metrics matter for business. We’ve learned that more followers do not translate into more sales.  We’ve more or less fine-tuned the social metrics to align with business metrics and I expect this to continue to rise during 2011. (And again, it’s not that social media necessarily has top-line metrics, but it’s metrics will/has become much more meaningful to executives alike. )
14. Consumers are more empowered than ever.
    This continues to rise from 2008, but there are literally no barriers between a pissed off consumer and a bad business. Likewise businesses have adapted to leverage raving fan customers into their sales and marketing processes. More people have acknowledged that social media is the direct path to escalation with a company and similarly more business have staff and processes to accommodate this. Sadly, I expect this to become more of a commodity than genuinely handled by caring staff during 2011, but there’s even more opportunity to grow here.
15. Privacy woes haven’t been fully resolved; regulatory action mounts.
    While Facebook deployed a refined way to manage privacy, their recent interface layout makes the information people have in their profile much more prominent … and this irks some people out. Likewise, the behavioral targeting matter is only getting more complex as the FTC is about to step in and drop the banhammer on shady data collection and targeting practices. Expect more discussion and debate during 2011 on privacy as it becomes more fleeced away from innocent web users.
16. Powerful social media tools and apps are accessible to small businesses.
    Finally, 2010 delivered an array of tools and services to make managing social media easier and ExactTarget’s acquisition of CoTweet only validated social media management suites. Hootsuite monetized through a freemium model and it’s cheap for a one-man shop to leverage their app and yet affordable for smaller businesses. These apps and services make it easier to manage an array of social networks for small businesses.

That’s my recap of 2010. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.

[Image credit: ethanhein]

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