coffee, fruit, and a phone company

OK, so really this should be: Starbucks, Apple, and AT&T. Starbucks announced earlier this week that it will start offering wireless through AT&T – a major departure from their partnership with T Mobile (which has been in place since 2002 – pretty much an eternity in internet-years). This new venture has all kinds of interesting possibilities attached – and here’s a great article that does just that. Glenn Fleishmann does a much better job outlining the different issues than I could, so I will leave that to him, but here are a few interesting quotes:

“Starbucks has always cultivated an artificial living room: a place probably more comfortable and convivial than most of our actual living rooms (if we had them); it’s also an extension for Gen-X of the ranch house they might have grown up in that they couldn’t afford to rent.”
“It’s not a leap at all that Starbucks….. would embrace the idea of being the place people who don’t even like their coffee come to fill up on media, use the network, and hang out.”

twittering

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that does one thing, and does it well: asks you to answer the question “What are you doing right now” in less than 140 characters. People who subscribe to your “tweets” then get those updates delivered to their computer, their IM, or their phone. It’s very addictive once you get into it, and it has several great uses: it lets you keep in touch with friends – especially those you don’t see daily – and be a part of their daily lives and it can help you discover great new links and sites. Just the other day I got a notification that a music marketing author and speaker from London, Kavit Haria, had found my twitter-profile and signed up to follow me. I, in turn, decided to check out his profile, signed up for his RSS feed, and downloaded a helpful report from his website. All because of these little, less-than-140-character messages. 

start

I sing. I play guitar. I write music. I perform – a lot – with my own band, Offering. I also handle all the marketing, booking, production, and day-to-day business for the band. That got me started on web 2.0 and social networking. I first thought – don’t laugh too hard – that the world began and ended with MySpace and Facebook.It did not take me long to realize there are lots of sites and services out there. I am no expert, but I am trying to make a way through this maze of continually developing mix of community and technology. Hence the title of this blog, and the purpose: to learn and explore. Have fun in the process.