Author Archive

Just about two years ago, I wrote about Cambridge’s Cronin Park, a triangle of green near Central Square. These days, location-based stuff is all the rage, and I was pleased to note that Cronin Park is a place on Foursquare.  I quickly became the mayor.

But when I was taking screenshots for this post, I noticed that something was off. Foursquare’s Cronin Park pin, if you zoom in on it, turns out to be across the street from the actual place – in an adjacent green patch that is authoritatively labeled by Google Maps as… James Cronin Park.  Didn’t I add James Cronin Park to Google Maps two years ago?  What gives?

A search for “Cronin Park” shows two places: map point A is next to Google’s mislabeled Cronin Park; map point B is the center of the actual Cronin Park as added to the map by yours truly in 2008.  Indeed, you can see my car parked across from the park on Franklin street.

Just to make sure, I visited the site today, and “my” Cronin Park – the triangular one – is indeed, still James P. Cronin Park, still marked by a big rock with a plaque on it.  The park across Franklin Street has no name that I could find on site, but it seems to have been anointed by Google Maps.  Neither place is mentioned at the City of Cambridge’s DPW page of parks or shown on the Park Maintenance district 2 map.

What does this all mean?  Probably not much you didn’t already know.  Google Maps isn’t perfect, crowdsourcing with curation cuts both ways, the City of Cambridge website isn’t encyclopedic.  We’ll see if this post or my efforts with Google and Foursquare make any progress in getting Cronin Park properly located and noted.  In the mean time, be sure to check in if you’re passing by.

Everybody loves advertising, so I figured I’d share some tips about advertising on Facebook that have accumulated on my plate after a few different jobs and consulting projects using them.

o. You can get started with Facebook ads on the cheap. Anybody can run ads on Facebook on a CPC or CPM basis (and I’ll wager that they’ll roll out CPA after a while) with a few dollars and half a clue.  Results improve with additional dollars and clue.

1. Facebook ads are not behavioral, and they’re not search ads either. In the main, you can target Facebook ads at facebookers based on what’s in their profiles – location, age, relationship status, gender, employment, stuff they like, etc. This info is self-reported and subject to the categories that Facebook has created. This is not the same as search ads that target people based on what they just an instant ago typed into a search engine.  Adjust your expectations accordingly.

2. There’s some serious freshness bias. I’m willing to bet that the first (full) day you run an ad, you’ll get more impressions and more clicks than any other day after that.   I don’t know for sure why that is (or even if it’s universally so) but I suspect that the ad serving system is biased towards newer ads.  It’s also possible that the Facebook community gets immune to your ad very quickly.  In any case, I find that making small modifications to you ads on a weekly or even daily basis can help mitigate this effect.

3. It’s got nothing to do with advertising, but you can use the Facebook ads interface – for free – to do some quick and dirty market sizing. Just go in as if you were creating an ad, and play with the targeting options to get exciting factoids like the number of people on Facebook who are single, in your geographic area, and like dogs.  You can get all that info without even writing any creative or paying for any ads.  But be careful about generalizing this info as Facebook adoption isn’t uniform around the world or across demographics.

4. Help is available – for a price. Facebook has some ad service people who will talk to you if you’re buying at least $15k/month in ads. Furthermore, they will under some circumstances provide you with a “business account” – a separate login to the ad system that’s not linked to anybody’s individual profile, a definite plus for businesses.  On top of that, sometimes they can be convinced to provide a bulk ad upload capability.  This would seem to be in their interest as it lets customers run lots and lots of ads.  Note that in order to run ads promoting your fan page, you’ll have to make the business account a page admin, which you can do only by email address, since the business account doesn’t really have a profile.

So do I recommend Facebook ads? I’m not going near that question, I’m just sharing some things I’ve discovered.  Do your homework, test a little, double down if it’s working for you.  Advertising is key to Facebook’s world-domination revenue goals, and in the short time that I’ve been working with Facebook ads, I’ve seen them invest a lot in the capability.  While they still have some distance to go, they provide some opportunities that you can’t get with seemingly similar search ads on the more mature Google and Yahoo ad networks.  And, I might add, Facebook’s ad system is parsecs ahead of LinkedIn’s.

Your mileage will vary, but I hope you’ll share what you find too.

Well, here’s one thing that doesn’t seem to be in evidence in Sicily: a burbling startup scene.  I dropped in at Web Innovators 26 (it seems only yesterday I was at Webinno18) at the Royal Sonesta to check out the demos and pitches.  As usual, there were some “main dishes” that got longer demo spots and some “sides” that got 15 seconds.  All had tables and the big ballroom was packed.

Maybe it’s the recessionary times, but I noted that the companies on offer seemed to cluster around the more basic of human needs.  Not to say they weren’t smart and sophisticated ideas.  Here’s a rundown, and then I’ll get to the strange underwear theme that ran through the evening like an elastic waistband.

Birchbox, a “new concept in beauty retail” that sounds just a little bit like a fancy coffin.

Chargify, a recurring billing service for serial entrepreneurs who have better things to do than worry about dunning and fraud.

DoInk, a community of “artists, animators and doodlers” reusing one another’s artwork to create animations and drawings.  they ran away with the audience choice award by a wide margin, and many tweets reminded people to “show this to the kids.”

JitterJam, some “web-based social marketing software”

manpacks, just what it sounds like, automated underwear delivery for “busy men”

Milabra, a “Visual Intelligence Platform” that serves up ads based on the color and content of a website’s imagery. Smart MIT guys, cool technology, kinda sluggish demo.

RelayRides, like Zipcar but with your car. Or maybe like Circle Lending but with your car. I like the idea that they allow more driving with the existing fleet of cars.

Trustmarker, a provider of “digital trustmark networks” which are, um, those things, you know, like verisign, but your own. I think.

Marketeers have heard endless variants on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the philosophy of selling “medicine, not vitamins”  but I thought this was largely (not entirely!) a refreshingly down to earth bunch of startup ideas.  What’s more basic than entertaining kids, feeling good about how you look, building trust, and getting around town cost-effectively?

But those concepts are as often as not boring or undifferentiated.  And that’s probably why what’s arguably the most absurd of the ideas – manpacks – was the one that everyone, even the other presenters, was taking about.  As the Lorax pointed out, you do not need a thneed, and as I am pointing out, if you’re too busy to pull together some underwear, you need to re-think your business.  But the image of busy (or more likely, lazy) men ordering a tailored internet subscription to their, um, unmentionables, has a strange appeal.

Manpacks is the youngest of the webinno companies – the only one founded in 2010 – and it’s already got a bunch of press.  I have no idea if it has or deserves any customers.  Maybe it’s just a brilliant publicity stunt for some other business, but it helps us ask two good questions…

1. does your business actually solve a real problem?

2. have you built a story around it that would make anybody care?

Almost exactly two years ago, I lamented the closing of Magnolias Southern Cuisine, and about a year after that, another southern joint, Tupelo, opened on the very spot, apparently barely even bothering to redecorate.  It’s rather shameful that I didn’t visit for another year, but it seems that the location has retained a certain Southernness.  As Shakespeare doesn’t actually say in The Tempest, a location with a Southern complexion will not go under.

I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he
hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is
perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his
hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable,
for our own doth little advantage. If he be not
born to be hanged, our case is miserable.

- Gonzalo, The Tempest, act I sc i

But anyway, I come to review Tupelo, not to mangle Shakespeare. OK, I’ll stop this time.  Really.

Tupelo looks and smells a lot like Magnolias,and I’m not sure they’ll ever get entirely out from under that shadow, but they do their legacy proud in my view.  Professora M had the Pan Fried Catfish With Cheddar Grits, Collard Greens & Spiced Pecan Compound Butter and I took on the special seafood gumbo with crawfish and prawns, coming late to the realization that gulf coast seafood may never be the same again.  For openers, we shortened our life expectancies with beer and cider, and a dish of crispy deep-fried cheese grits.  Let me type that again while you defibrillate.  Crispy.  Deep-Fried.  Cheese. Grits.  Oh yes and oh no all at once. Piping hot and salty, too.

The seafood entrees were filling to the point of a bit much, which is a terrible shame since the desserts were from Petsi’s Pies, including a brown sugar pecan pie that days later still haunts my dreams.  Other notables on the menu that I’ll have to return for include a brisket, gumbo, spinach ricotta crepes and a raft of tasty sides including the dreamy creamy cheesy grits and collard greens.  No sign unfortunately of Hoppin John or Shavonne for that matter, but I suppose some secrets had to die with Magnolias.

Tupelo occupies an important spot in Camberville gastronomy, the pivot point between the established Cambridge Street Inman Square corridor and the edgier things happening in the Someville side of Cambridge street Eastbound towards the Galleria.  It also holds down a solid middle ground in Northern Southern cooking between the upscale Hungry Mother and various homier options such as the Plough and Stars’ southern fried chicken and that at Coast Cafe, both previously noted here.

I know I’m leaving out a world on the other side of the Charles, but I can only eat so much of this sort of food.  Comment away, and I’ll add it to the list.

I’ve spent some time analyzing the comparison of the Mass Bay area with the SF Bay Area, and occasionally even commented on the Red Sox – Yankees rivalry, but a recent trip to Europe has brought to the fore another instructive comparison.

You may not realize it, but it turns out that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is almost exactly the same size as the autonomous Italian region of Sicily – 10,555 and 9,926 square miles respectively.  Mass has the edge in population – 6.5 million vs 5 million – but that won’t stop me from pointing out…. five reasons why Sicily is better than Massachusetts:

Sicily has the largest active volcano in Europe. (That’s Mt. Etna, which is 10,890 feet high) Massachusetts has the largest Federal highway project in the USA.  (That’s the Big Dig, which is about $22 Billion deep)

In Sicily, shops close in the afternoon for a long lunch. In Massachusetts, banks and bars close early.

Sicily was colonized by the ancient Greeks over 2,000 years ago and later became an important part of the Roman empire. Many of the events in the Iliad and the Odyssey take place in Sicily.  Massachusetts was colonized by uptight English religious fanatics 400 years ago.  Many of the events in Ally McBeal take place in Massachusetts.

In Sicily, you can get a good espresso almost anywhere for about a Euro. In Massachusetts, you can get Dunkin Donuts coffee almost anywhere.

Sicily gave the world the Cannoli. Massachusetts contributed, um, well, there’s no cuisine section in the wikipedia entry on Massachusetts, so I’ll just stop here.