Posts Tagged ‘FourSquare’

Jen’s Big Race Weekend

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Jennifer Fidelman is leaving for a few days to run in The 5th Annual Nation’s Triathlon To Benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She’s been training for a while now, even denying herself some of the yummy treats we have during our office lunches for the past few months. I thought it would be nice tell her story before she leaves for Washington D.C. to join 6,000+ other athletes for the big race.

Jennifer has been training for The Nation’s Triathlon for about five months. Her workout schedule is intense: she’s training six days a week which includes a coached swim every Wednesday and an ocean swim every Saturday. Saturdays are also when she does her “brick” workouts where she trains for two disciplines back-to-back. She’s been training so hard that she’s the Mayor of her gym on Foursquare and she has the Swimmies badge!

Of course I had to know about her diet! She’s started hydrating for the race already to help prepare. Her food schedule for the next few days looks like this:

  • Day before: Lots of carbs, including the “Inspiration Dinner” with lots of pasta
  • Day of the race: Her coach’s mantra is “Nothing new on race day” so that isn’t going to be a day where she’s trying new food. She’s going to go with some peanut butter and bread and maybe a hard-boiled egg in the morning and then some energy bars for during the race. (She is the energy bar queen; she was rattling off names of bars I’ve never heard of!)
  • Post-race: Party time where she can celebrate with her team by pigging out and dancing!

Most importantly, using e-mails and Facebook (even Facebook ads!) to reach out to her network of friends, Jennifer successfully raised $3,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society; since she started training for races five years ago, she’s raised over $20,000 for the organization.

To read more about Jennifer’s motivation, or to continue donating to support her training and the cause, you can visit her fundraising page through Team in Training.

Join us in wishing Jennifer (and her entire team) luck with her race in D.C. this weekend!

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Posted in Around the Office, General Blogginess, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The Battle for Mayor is ON!

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I am a long-time Foursquare enthusiast. That may seem like the nerdiest thing to many of you, but to me it is a fun way to connect with new people, learn about new venues and get sweet deals at my favorite haunts.

WHAT’S FOURSQUARE?: Real quick – Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices, and also a game. Users “check in” at venues using the program. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.”

So, I have been checking in at our building and our office, and as I have the most check-ins at these locations, I have been elected the “Mayor.” Now, as soon as someone checks in one more time than me, they will oust me and become the new Mayor themselves. Well, I will tell you right now that I have campaigned too long and too hard for that title, and I refuse to just roll over and watch one of my co-workers nab it from me.

Currently, there are two other employees that hope to steal this great honor from me. I won’t divulge their names, but they know who they are. The battle is on, guys. Bring it!

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Posted in Around the Office, Social Media, Technology | 20 Comments »

Mobile & Social: Connecting the Dots

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

An interesting concept was just brought up during F8’s Breakout Session on Mobile + Social.

“ ‘Checking In’ can actually change your behavior.”

So when you check-in to a local business with your favorite mobile application (mine is FourSquare), does your behavior change? Do you make your purchases differently? Were you driven to the location by an incentive provided by the application? All of these things have a lot of powerful people talking about the potential of location-based mobile games and apps.

It sounds strange, but I can absolutely see this behavioral change happening. For developers, I think that the long-term goal is always the same despite the function of the application or game: influence consumer behavior and drive traffic. As many of the most quickly emerging mobile applications are utilizing geolocation, these developers see location as the biggest and most important piece of the puzzle in terms of attaining that influence.

How have you seen this in action?

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Posted in New Media, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »

Location, Location, Location

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

I am a huge fan and frequent user of FourSquare, so this infographic makes me smile. It shows you the evolution of location-based technology. Enjoy!

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Posted in New Media, Social Media, Technology | 2 Comments »

The Jane Austen Guide to Social Media

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The what? Yes, you read that correctly. Jane Austen was more than just a supremely divine author (I’m a diehard fan, can you tell?), she was also the source of some very accurate observations that can be applied to the new social media realm.The modern Austen? Photo by Theo Westenberg

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ~ Emma

Many people consider things like Twitter and Facebook to be “silly” wastes of time. However, put a knowledgeable person behind a keyboard on one of these forums and watch what happens. You’ll notice that a steady stream of comments about sandwiches and celebrities will quickly transform into an invaluable information feed.

Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion. ~ Mansfield Park

Check that out – the brilliant Austen, in all her glory, predicted the demise of “push marketing” before anyone else! No one wants to be told what to do and when to do it, and this is directly connected to our current obsession with social forums. People would much rather turn to review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor than take their cues from more traditional marketing efforts (i.e. print advertisements). That’s not to say that those aren’t important. It’s just that now most people want to hear from other folks about their real-life experiences, and then make decisions based on the candid opinions and feelings that they share. Jane was on to something big. (more…)

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Posted in Social Media | 7 Comments »