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1.6 Degrees of Separation

How Startups Can Connect with Brands

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1.6 Degrees of Separation
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

How is it that Israel, the land of milk and honey and engineers, is beating New York at marketing its startup scene?

Israel’s technology startup scene has a far catchier name than the one in New York, the global capital of advertising. Israel’s Silicon Boulevard – the nickname for the Rothschild Boulevard area in Tel Aviv that’s home to many of the country’s most exciting young companies – sounds far more inviting and expansive than the rough, claustrophobic Silicon Alley. After spending some time last week in Israel meeting startup founders, venture capitalists, and government liaisons, I’m all the more convinced that Americans will be learning plenty of marketing lessons from Israelis in the decade to come.

When you stay in Tel Aviv, Israel does feel like a small country. My first night there, I was strolling back from dinner at the Marina when I heard someone call my name. Riding by on his bike was Dan Peguine, a friend I met at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in 2008 who is now based at Tel Aviv’s startup hub TechLoft launching social startup Everyword. Another night, at my hotel, I met a guest from New Jersey visiting his younger daughter who lives in Israel and works at Soluto, one of the most admired tech companies in Tel Aviv. I pulled up LinkedIn on my iPhone to show the father how I was connected to her, as well as my connections with his older daughter who works at a digital media company in New York.

There may be six degrees of separation globally, but in Israel it’s more like 1.6. I’d tell those I saw who else I was meeting with, and sure enough almost everyone had some degree of familiarity with everyone else. While Israelis are known locally as “sabras” -- cacti that are prickly on the outside but sweet deep inside -- the ones I met on Silicon Boulevard were effusively gracious. I’m especially grateful to the team at Carmel Ventures, who invited me to speak to their partners and portfolio companies on How Startups Can Connect with Brands (view the full presentation via the link).

Here’s just a brief snapshot of some of the interesting social-centric businesses I encountered at various stages of development:

Face.com: It’s easy to see why Facebook, Google, Apple, and others would all covet this facial detection and recognition technology platform, rumored to be acquired by Facebook for $100 million. Its latest release is Klik, an iPhone application that recognizes faces of Facebook friends and tags them in photos.

Fangager: With retention marketing offerings centered on Facebook, it also offers a brand scorecard to show active fans and other social data.

Friendize.me: This social commerce startup uses intelligence about people to connect people seeking product advice with the right experts among their peers.

The Gifts Project: Acquired by eBay, it enables e-commerce sites to have buyers chip in for gifts with their friends. As giddy as I was over the roadmap preview and the discussion with co-founder Matan Bar, I also loved how the company still feels like a true startup, with a handful of folks and a dog holed up in what feels like a trendy Park Slope apartment.

Top7: This new consumer-facing app for ranking up to seven favorites for any topic could appeal to marketers that want to encourage consumers to share what they love within some brand-friendly theme.

That’s just a small taste, and there are plenty more to learn from.

With these 1.6 degrees of separation, I need to thank those who connected me to others whom I met during the trip: Shira Abel of Hunter & Bard; Uriah Av-Ron of Oasis Public Relations; Debbie Levi of Carmel Ventures; Dave Rogers of Top7; and Alan Weinkrantz of Alan Weinkrantz and Company. Lastly, a couple of great meetings came through my favorite connection and connector: my wife, Cara, who met some of Israel’s innovators while traveling there earlier this year with a delegation from the New York City Council.

A hearty “todah rabah” (thank you very much) to all those who were so generous in sharing their time before and during the trip. To all of them, “l’hitraot” -- “see you soon.”

As for you, have fun exploring your own 1.6 degrees of separation with Silicon Boulevard. To keep on top of emerging digital trends, you’ll want to keep those sabras that close, if not closer.

TripIt's Questionable Billing Practices Tarnish Travel App

I've been a big fan of TripIt for years, logging more than 292,000 miles of trips through the travel service that organizes travel plans into useful itineraries easily accessible via mobile devices. My enthusiasm for them was greatly diminished though recently due to their billing practices and clear lack of understanding why what they're doing is wrong.

Some time ago, I received a free trial of TripIt Pro which activates many of TripIt's bonus features like real-time flight status alerts (which often proved to be inaccurate, and less reliable than far cheaper programs like FlightTrack Pro) and updates on when flight fares drop and you can receive refunds (the one time TripIt kept alerting me to refunds was for the wrong flight, so it didn't apply to me).

A friend and colleague received the free trial at the same time, and alerted me several weeks ago that he was billed for the service once the trial ran out. He received no notice from TripIt, and only discovered it through Mint, which was tracking his finances. I find it problematic when Mint brings up fees like this. Mint had alerted me to some suspect fees from Citibank, and I was able to call the bank and get the fees waived given that the bank never alerted me to them. Citibank's customer service was far better than TripIt's, which I contacted once I discovered TripIt had charged me $49 in February 2011. Note that TripIt never sent me an alert that I would be billed or that I was billed. It was there for me to check on my own when going through my account on TripIt.

For those who use TripIt, you know you get A LOT of alerts from them. They're always telling you about upcoming trips, who's in your area, and why you should upgrade. They have no problem sending lots of messages to users. The only reason that I can fathom that they wouldn't alert people that they have been billed is dishonesty. They have yet to offer any other plausible reason for this.

I tweeted them on January 6 about the error and got no response.

I also posted on Facebook on January 9:

Warning to Tripit Pro users: Tripit will not inform you when your account is up for renewal and thus when you will be charged. When you discover you've been charged and ask for a refund, they will not give it to you. These are completely dishonest billing practices, and I highly advise against signing up for TripIt until things change.

Another user commented that I should contact the credit card company for a refund. I responded:

This is a bigger deal than asking for refunds. My problem is that TripIt does not notify users when you'll be charged or when you were charged. Either TripIt wasn't aware of this and should change it, or it's doing this intentionally. With all the notifications TRipIt sends users, this would be a logical one for them to include.

TripIt responded with a generic message:

We’re always willing to review a policy or procedure based on user feedback and this post has been passed on to management. Please note that billing information, including next billing date and amount, are available to all users at anytime in the Billing Information area of their profile...

I responded in turn:

I'm glad it's been passed on to management. I've received a lot of communication from TripIt but none even suggesting that it would be in customers' best interests to notify them when they will be charged. This is tone deaf customer service, and it's why I canceled my premium account and am exploring alternatives to TripIt's free services.

TripIt still never addressed the issue beyond 'passing the post on to management.'

TripIt clearly doesn't get the benefit of alerting users to charges, nor do they bother explaning why they don't alert people. Further proof comes from TripIt's Catina, who responded to a separate email I sent through their site:

Thanks for contacting us. Reviewing your TripIt Pro account based on your email address XXX, we see that you were billed on 2/11/11 for $49 transaction id is XXX . Your next scheduled renewal is 2/12/12. If you feel you were billed after that date, it could be that you have another account with a different email address that's not associated to XXX. We can only pull account information by an email address. At the time of sign up you entered your credit card information and agreed to the terms of service (which stated that if you did not cancel prior to the conclusion of the trail period that your membership would continue and your card would be charged).

You can view your transaction history and print receipts for each transaction, on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

To avoid the auto renewal, you can cancel your TripIt Pro subscription and keep your Pro benefits for the full term paid please see the instructions in our help page on this topic: http://help.tripit.com/entries/89464. If you wish to close your account, sign in to TripIt and click on your user name and then Settings > Close Account (http://www.tripit.com/account/delete). Be sure to select the 'do not contact' option if you don't want to receive any TripIt initiated emails in the future. Please note, if you are a paid TripIt Pro member and cancel your TripIt account no refunds will be provided.

So in other words, it's the "terms of service defense." But that still doesn't answer why they were charging users without alerting them. I explained this to them, and Catina said, "You stated, 'I was billed twice.'" I never said that, so the next exchange was all about clarifying something that Catina invented.

It was then that I posted on Facebook and got another form response from TripIt:

We saw your Facebook posting and wanted to inform you, your transaction history can be viewed on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

I responded to Catina:

That still doesn't help as you never notified me a payment was due or then
processed. I will continue to post this on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere
until you change your policy. A refund is still requested as well. If you
were being charged for a service, wouldn't you want to know about it? I'd
actually be fine forgoing my refund if you change your policy.

Catina never responded, nor did anyone else from TripIt through this line.

I did take one more measure. I know someone who works with TripIt, so I reached out to her partially to let her know that I was going to raise the issue further, and partially to see if I'd get any better a response. She responded:

I checked with our team, and the intention behind auto-renewal is to prevent travelers from having a service lapse in the middle of traveling. The last thing we'd want to happen is for a traveler not be alerted that their plane is early/late (for example), when they're expecting to hear from us. However, we do provide a 2-week grace period following the charge, so cancellations can be made during that time.

Please know that your voice has been heard, and we're taking into consideration the suggestions you've made.

Again, my voice has been heard. Management received my request. Great. I responded to her:

My problem isn’t the auto-renewal at all. I understand that makes sense for some services.

Can you explain why they wouldn’t notify users that their auto-renewal is coming up, and that their auto-renewal was just processed? How does one even know when the grace period is if they’re never notified?

I heard nothing more from her or anyone at TripIt.

For a service built on notifications, and one that I thought was designed with the consumer in mind, I have been seeking alternatives. FlightTrack Pro, as mentioned, works well for notifications with a one-time $10 charge. Kayak's My Trips further organizes trips in a similar way that TripIt does and is proving to work well.

I'd like to keep using TripIt but can't if this is how they treat their users. Fortunately the alternatives keep getting better.

A Mzungu's Guide to Social Africa

"Mzungu" means white person, such as the one pictured here at Zanzibar Serena Inn. "Mshamba" refers to a country hick, and it's so insulting that the shopkeeper made me insist I wasn't buying the shirt for a friend.

A Mzungu's Guide to Social Africa
orignially published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

Jambo! Karibu! All around Tanzania, people would greet us mzungus (white people) shouting, "Hello!" and, "Welcome!" and it felt like the most social and hospitable place on earth. I was convinced, midway through my February travels through Africa, that I'd come home and start waving to young children on the subway after getting into that habit while abroad. So far, I've held back.

Unlike my December trip to South America, I was fine staying somewhat connected digitally while in South Africa, Tanzania's mainland, Zanzibar, and Amsterdam during 17 days away. While visiting places that felt so foreign (I'll take getting woken up by monkeys instead of garbage trucks any day), it was fun to have a few comforts of home with me. That included dabbling in social media, often with unexpected results.

Facebook kept me the most connected with my friends and family. A series of 11 photos in my Mobile Uploads album charts the progress of the trip: souvenirs in Amsterdam's airport, cheetahs and schoolchildren near South Africa's Kruger game reserve, penguins in Cape Town (including a Cat Paint version), a Serengeti hot air balloon ride, the beaches of Zanzibar, and finally a strange reaction to oversized teacups back in the Netherlands. Since I've returned, I've been in the process of sharing hundreds of others, but the first batch does provide an apt summary, and it tells a natural story precisely because it wasn't clear day to day what would unfold.

A major part of the value of using Facebook while in transit came from friends' recommendations. When I mentioned I was in South Africa, my friend Tom Lynch offered winery recommendations for Cape Town. I hadn't realized that he started a South African wine importing business Worthwhile Wine, and his recommendations proved fruitful (pardon the pun). Later, as I sought to make the most of my stopover in Amsterdam, more than a dozen people chimed in with great ideas.

I basically avoided Twitter. It's more for work than for personal use for me, and I didn't want to work while away. I ran a few cross-posts from other social services, one job-related retweet plugging a client's campaign, and a couple "twout of twoffice" updates that I pre-scheduled via HootSuite to warn about my slow response times.

On Foursquare, thanks to the reliable Internet access at Djuma Vuyatela Lodge in South Africa and then the Zanzibar Serena Inn, I was able to become mayor of each property. Travel mayorships are fun but ephemeral, as there will inevitably be a tech savvy visitor staying for longer who will swoop in and steal it. My own contributions of tips may be more lasting.

I used Gowalla initially to get some country pins, and the South African flag is so stylish that I'm proud to sport it on my profile. It's also one app of too few today that seamlessly shares with Tumblr, so you'll see a bunch of check-ins on my makeshift Tumblr feed.

The biggest surprises during the trip came from FoodSpotting. When I was at the South African lodge Djuma Vuyatela, the food was among the best I've had anywhere. I had to share a couple selections on FoodSpotting. When you use the app in New York or San Francisco, you'll often find dozens of dishes within a couple tenths of a mile. Where I was, the closest dish spotted was 35 miles away, and the next closest was 63 miles away. That's why I was floored when, a day after posting a photo of crepes with strawberries and mascarpone cheese at Djuma, I received a comment on the photo from lodge owner Jurie Moolman thanking me for the compliment. My photos of the crepes and lamb chops are currently the only ones appearing for that property, so perhaps you'll see more there soon.

At Dornier Wines' Bodega restaurant in Cape Town's wine region, I had an extraordinary meal of flammkuchen, which is essentially a German twist on pizza also known as tarte flambée. After sharing a photo of that dish and the kudu steak entrée on FoodSpotting, the winery's owner friended me on Facebook.

One other app isn't necessarily social, but it was the best conversation-starter. I have the Star Walk app on my iPhone, but I had never used it, as you don't see too many stars in New York unless you've got front row seats during Fashion Week. When I checked out the app at Djuma, where WiFi worked even in outdoor common areas, everyone became a stargazer.

As for social media, the most use I'll get out of it is now, as I bombard Facebook, Flickr, and TripAdvisor with updates so that other mzungus (and anyone else) can see Africa for themselves, and learn where to get the best flammkuchen. 

 

South America: The Travel Journals - Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile

One more personal post to close out the year - following up on my book recommendations for South America, I've also publicly shared my travel journal, embedded below and freely downloadable if you're at all interested in more than just the photo or book highlights.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think.

The Other Americas Journal: Travels through South America

View more documents from David Berkowitz.

A Quick Tale of Laptop-Free Vacationing in South America

 

A few weeks ago, I wrapped up my trip to South America, a trip that spanned Lima, Quito, the Galapagos Islands, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu. I won't dwell on the vacation itself; you can see some highlights (and everything else) on Flickr.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on mobile technology though, something a little more fitting for this.

Normally when I go on shorter vacations, I can get offline entirely, but for bigger trips I'll need my laptop to check in. This year though was the first time I could go on a real vacation with the iPad. It didn't occur to me until I was talking to Jeff Sass at TWTRCON that I could really use it as a laptop replacement.

I left my laptop at home. I also left my Droid, which I use as my phone. I did bring my iPhone, which served multiple purposes: game device, backup camera, occasional check-in device when places had wifi. I didn't become mayor of the hotel shown above, but I did take hold of Hotel Quito and then Casa Cartagena in Cusco.

Along with the iPhone, I had two cameras (a Canon SX20IS with an awesome 20x optical zoom, and then the pocket-sized Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH20, a new pocket-sized model I picked up thanks in part to a recommendation from Retrevo; the latter served me well when I didn't want to lug around the bulkier Canon).

I also had my Kindle. For reading at length, I still prefer the e-ink to the iPad glare, as much as I like flipping pages on the iPad with the touchscreen. I took all of one physical book (Deep Rivers by Jose Maria Arguedas) that I was midway through.

With no laptop and one book, my load was much lighter than I carried on any comparable trip. The funny thing is it could have been lighter still. I actually didn't need the iPad. Just about any time I wanted to use the internet at hotels, I went online from the iPhone. It was convenient here and there, but when trying to get away, the hybrid device was more of another tether.

It clearly has its place, but there's something especially refreshing about being mobile.

  

Why WOM Trumps Q&A Ahora

 
Guinea pigs (cuy): as cute as they are delicious, especially when friends tell you where to find the tastiest ones

The post below was originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Why WOM Trumps Q&A Ahora

It was a strange experience working as a social marketing strategist while planning my July vacation to South America. I had especially high hopes for question and answer sites, given how much they've evolved since the days when it was just Yahoo Answers competing with the now-defunct Google Answers. I thought I'd write a column about the recommendations the sites provided, but then I started asking questions and the answers underwhelmed.

I first tried Aardvark before Google bought it, back when I thought I was just going to Peru. A decent enough response came back when I asked for restaurant recommendations, but it ultimately wasn't helpful, and the respondent admitted he defaulted to the Lonely Planet guides. Before I left, I then asked Aardvark members for packing recommendations for Peru, as well as for my Ecuador leg to Quito and the Galapagos Islands, and the responses were mildly helpful but similar to any packing list I found through search engines.

As my trip date neared I also tried Quora and Yahoo Answers. I got one response to a question asked on Quora, which I now would disagree with. I got three responses on Yahoo Answers, with little information I hadn't seen before.

The one site I didn't use was Facebook Questions, which only opened up after I departed. It's not very useful right now, and the Facebook staff answering questions there admit it's a very early trial. It has the potential to be better than the others for several reasons. First, Facebook knows all my explicit interests, which other sites like Quora could tap into using Facebook's API. Yet Facebook also knows whom I interact with the most, what kinds of links I click, which ads resonate with me, and many types of information I never realize I'm sharing. Facebook could in theory scan the text around my photos and the locations where I've updated my status to determine I've been to Lima and Quito, and then it could suggest relevant questions for me to answer.

All of that's speculation. There are ways that social media proved to be helpful for my trip. The trick? I had to stop trying so hard to use it.

On July 14, I posted this status update to Facebook: "Atlanta: T-10 minutes. Lima: T-48 hours. Yes, hard to say which I'm looking forward to more." It was a casual note about some business and personal travel, ambiguous enough that two people thought I was going to Lima, Ohio (historic site: the Neal Clothing Building built during the Civil War), not Lima, Peru (historic site: the cathedral where Francisco Pizarro rests right by the lead box that used to hold his severed head). That update led to several emails from friends with great ideas for what to do in Peru.

One former coworker had spent some time in that part of South America. A former coworker from a different company told me his daughter stayed in Lima with a friend, and the friend sent me recommendations in Spanish. The Lima resident noted I should try the restaurant Astrid y Gaston, which also appeared in The New York Times' story "36 Hours in Lima." That restaurant wound up being the best meal of the trip, and one of the best I've had anywhere. I'll also warn you: once you've eaten guinea pig as part of its 12-course tasting menu, it's hard to really enjoy "cuy" anywhere else.

Traditional sources also proved helpful. Along with The New York Times, Lonely Planet guides were useful in Peru, and Frommer's repeatedly turned up when I was searching for ideas such as where to eat in Quito (best bet: Zazu, with seafood coronets so perfectly prepared, you'd think you were at Per Se). The one site that was indispensible was TripAdvisor. Checking out its mobile site from our hotel in Quito led us to TeleferiQo's cable cars that go 4,000 feet up the mountainous city for breathtaking vistas. I realized after the fact that TripAdvisor's regular website uses Facebook Connect to show friends who visited various cities, and this feature will be even more helpful if it migrates to its mobile site.

Once I was away, I appreciated the belated effects of word-of-mouth recommendations. A Twitter friend saw my status update and told me she used to live in Quito. Others made similar comments as I'd check in sporadically from Facebook or Foursquare. When I returned and started uploading photos, several friends assumed I was still away and offered to make relevant introductions.

When I brought souvenirs back to my office, such as a ceramic bull akin to those spotted on rooftops across Cusco and the Sacred Valley, a colleague walking by rushed in and said, "You were in my home country!" While I have benefited from her bagel recommendations, she's hardly someone I work closely with, and there was no reason for me to suspect she was brought up in Peru. It made me realize how close I was to such great insight, and how far out of reach it was before.

What I'm waiting for is word-of-mouth technologies to get so good that they'll know when there is someone sitting a hundred feet away from me who grew up within a hundred miles of places I'm visiting. They're getting closer, with TripAdvisor pulling the right pieces together and Facebook starting to mine its potential. No matter how smart these networks become, there will always be that serendipity that comes from connecting with unexpected people over shared experiences, which is almost as fun as the traveling itself.

Your Egypt Reading List

Recently, I went on vacation throughout the Middle East, first in Egypt, then a quick stop in Jordan to see Petra, and ultimately spending the most time in Egypt. Gearing up for the trip, I read quite a bit to give me a taste of the history, culture, and people, and it was great exposure to some non-fiction and literature I may not have read otherwise.

If the subject interests you now or later, or you know someone going there, here are some recommendations from among my favorites that I read. I found them from a range of sources - Lonely Planet, friends, browsing bookstores, online recommendations. An authoritative list would include other works, like the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, but I tried reading the first (Palace Walk) and couldn't get into it. I also found modern fictional work Zaat's mixture of headlines and storyline creative but laborious, and Fight Club-esque Being Abbas El Abd way too weird while mercifully short.

Here are my favorite books that I read relating to Egypt and its environs. After adding so many - more than I anticipated - I broke them up into time periods.

Ancient Egypt

There are two great ancient history books by Barbara Mertz, a novelist and Egyptologist who has a knack for bringing mummies back to life (I'd have read more if only she had written others):

• Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

• Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

It's hard to find a more fun read about Egypt than Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It is absolutely dated, but immensely entertaining, and it captures a lot of the beauty of the country. (Amazon, Borders)

Folklore

I have two recommendations for folklore, both of which written relatively recently but chronicling a history much older with stories that evolved over time, so they don't fit in neatly to one time period:

• A new translation and compilation of the tales of Kalila and Dimna by Ramsay Wood (introduced by Doris Lessing) is purely brilliant storytelling, as fables unfold within fables. I can't wait to read this one again. As Lessing introduces it, it's one of the great world classics that the Western world largely forgot about; you'll want to thank Wood for bringing it back. (Amazon, Borders)
• A more academic approach on the history of Arabian folklore comes from Hasan M. El-Shamy's Folktalkes of Egypt. He traveled the country recording a wide range of storytellers and captured some of the land's oral history, as well as its humor. (Amazon, BN.com)

Modern Egyptology and Anthropology (1800s-1950)

I read two books that focused on Howard Carter, the brash Egyptologist who discovered King Tut's tomb, but never could enjoy the glory he spent his life hoping to achieve:

• Daniel Meyerson's In the Valley of the Kings is a page-turning biography of Carter that also spends ample time bringing to life the partners and rivals he faced. For straight history, read this one.  (Amazon, Borders)
• The Murder of King Tut is a new work by novelist James Patterson, written with Martin Dugard. Patterson can't resist making himself a main character of the story, which is one weakness. The other is that he spends much of the book in a flashback to Tut's life with little material to go on, so much of it seems like fiction. My final gripe is that his conclusion on why Tut was murdered, which is why he said he wrote the book, unravels with no particular support, and no attempt to see how that theory compares with other possibilities, even if it is plausible. Despite all of that, if you can suspend disbelief, it's a good deal of fun, and it does paint a picture of both ancient Egypt and the time of Howard Carter. (Amazon, Borders)

While really about Saudi Arabia and not Egypt, I checked out Wilfred Thesiger's classic Arabian Sands about the five years he spent largely living with the Bedu (or Bedouins) in the late 1940s, exploring parts of the desert no Westerner had seen and meeting them largely before Western society impacted their lives. It's one of those travelogues that makes you wish you could see it firsthand, and simultaneously make you thankful for your comforts of home. (Amazon, Borders)

Pre- and Post-Revolutionary (1940s-50s)

Not surprisingly, Col. Nasser's coup that overthrew King Farouk in 1952 was a focal point both for literature and memoirs.

Beer in the Snooker Club is a decent look at Egyptian high society in the 1950s - not an amazing read, but an Egyptian classic from what I found, and memorable. Very quick read, and it does capture the period, both as perceived in Egypt and in England. (Amazon, Borders)

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit is a wonderful, poignant memoir by Lucette Lagnado who grew up in Egypt in the mid 20th century. (Amazon, Borders)

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman is also about a family's departure from Egypt, especially sad at times but full of great characters - though some of his best appear too sparingly. If you read just one memoir about growing up in and departing 20th century Egypt, read Sharkskin. (Amazon, Borders)

1990s-Present

If you're into politics and current events, read Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright, covering Egypt and a number of other countries, reviewing how they fare with democratic institutions and a free press, and what obstacles are in their way. (Amazon, Borders)

The one must-read for modern fiction is The Yacoubian Building, a very progressive and risque look at a couple generations of Egyptians in a building in 1990s Cairo. It's just great storytelling. (Amazon, Borders)

To get a taste of modern Cairo, read Taxi by Khaled Al Khamissi. He interviewed dozens of cab drivers a few years ago, and it's great local color, covering everything from their personal lives to government gripes. (Amazon, Borders)

There you go. I welcome other suggestions in the comments and hope you'll come back to this list if the occasion strikes you.

Cover of Taxi

Social Brands In The City Of Angels

Originally published in MediaPost

A yummy Yucatanian spread at Chichen Itza in South LA, which we found in Zagat

Social Brands In The City Of Angels

I swore this would be a vacation. It was so weird taking a cab to JFK and not asking for a receipt, but I was ready to embrace it. Still, a long Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles for a friend's wedding wound up being shaped continually by social media experiences with brands big and small. Here are some standouts.

Virgin America: There are two reasons I flew Virgin for the first time to get to LA. One was that the groom noted there were good deals on flights from New York. Yet uncharacteristically of me, when I checked that the fare was reasonable, I didn't look elsewhere -- I booked it right away. The buzz surrounding the brand has been a big influence, especially with the countless exposures I've had through social media such as the repeated mentions on Rohit Bhargava's blog. I don't quite get all the hype, but I'd fly it again if the deal warrants it.

Kogi: We landed at LAX at 8 p.m., got our rental car at 8:30, and by 9 had arrived at where one of the Kogi trucks cooking fresh Korean barbecue was scheduled to arrive, according to their Twitter status update. We were among the first on line, and we still waited an hour and a quarter for the grub, even walking with the line around the block when the truck had to change parking spots. Its fans on Twitter, and it diehard fan base of California hipsters, know what they're talking about. We got far more food than we needed and devoured it all on the trunk of our rented Ford Mustang in a liquor store parking lot. It was the best meal of our trip.

Coolhaus: When arriving at the hotel, the groom heard our predilection for Twitter-promoted food and told us to check out Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches, which had some architectural inspiration. It turns out a furniture store was sponsoring free Coolhaus giveaways, again as per Twitter, and we managed to make it over.

Sprinkles Cupcakes: There was little doubt that having frequented the Sprinkles in Dallas, I had to visit the birthplace of these baked goods in Beverly Hills. The original's just as good, with slight menu variations such as offering Coca-Cola with cane sugar, instead of Dr Pepper in Texas.

This West Coast visit came with a social twist though. Sprinkles routinely posts Facebook and Twitter status updates with secret passwords that a number of customers can whisper in the stores to get free treats. On Saturday, for instance, Sprinkles tweeted, "It's football season! The first 50 people to whisper 'touchdown' at each #Sprinkles today receive a free football vanilla #cupcake!" When we got to the front of the line, my wife couldn't keep herself to a whisper and shouted "Touchdown!" as if Tony Romo of her home-team Cowboys had just completed a pass that sent them to the Super Bowl.

Granted, we would have gone to Sprinkles anyway, so they didn't gain a new customer. That kind of math would be shortsighted, though. Sprinkles has turned me into such a fan that they trained me to check Twitter before going into a store, deepening their number of touch-points with me and strengthening the consumer-brand relationship. Furthermore, they created a much more buzzworthy experience -- instead of just saying I bought cupcakes, I can say my wife shouted for them, and they gave her one for free. Through social media, even more people get involved -- the "touchdown" comment has 170 comments and 70 "likes." The total cost of the promotion? $162.50 in free cupcakes that day at retail prices, minus their margins, plus a few minutes of someone's time, which may have just been shifted from doing something else -- like writing a press release.

Millennium Biltmore: This was the official hotel for wedding guests close to the event venue. But as a rule my wife won't stay somewhere unless it has at least a pretty good TripAdvisor rating, so that means I check TripAdvisor before we go anywhere. Other consumers' reviews, and the nature of them (do they write like seasoned travelers or first-timers?), will make or break our decision. To Millennium's credit, they regularly respond to any negative reviews.

Chichen Itza and Water Grill: Zagat reviews influenced my wife's interest in both of these restaurants, the former a Yucatanian quick-service restaurant in South LA and the latter an upscale seafood restaurant by our hotel in New Downtown. The heart of Zagat Survey's business is curating user-generated content; it had a business model around social media before the phrase "social media" was coined.

There were many other brands we engaged with on the trip that were not social media-related. The cult around In-N-Out Burger led to my wife's first and my second visit there. And speaking of religion, we had to check out the Church of Scientology when we drove by the headquarters; we only caught the first five minutes of their four-hour video in their screening room (catch it all on the DVD for $20). Then there's one of the world's largest unofficial religions, the worshippers at the Texas Longhorn altar, who without fail routinely comment on my beloved burnt orange University of Texas shirt that I wear wherever I go. All of these are social brands, even if I can't trace my connection with them to a Twitter update or blog post. Brands that understand the role they play in social contexts, though, can more effectively use social media to spread the word, amplify the buzz, and bring in more customers in the process.

Is It Safe to Post Travel Photos of Mexico?

The Wall Street Journal writes about how Mexican tourism is hurting because of all the drug-related violence there. Yeah, one can imagine how that doesn’t help your tourism board. Mexico’s stepping up its public relations.

The article indicates it’s generally safe to travel there if you get out of the way of the US-Mexico border towns. But check the caption in the image below – it seems like WSJ’s not even willing to get stock photos from the country. The gorgeous beach you see apparently is Mauritius, according to the photo credit, rather than Playa del Carmen, as WSJ would have you believe.

 

Below, I’ve dug up an exclusive image of what Mexico’s beaches really look like:

 

(Okay, it’s from the show Lost, via the Sacramento Bee, but close enough)

20 Reasons the Luxor Sucks

Instead of a lengthy introduction, scan the slides, which should speak for themselves. I'll share more in a postscript.

20 Reasons The Luxor Sucks

View more presentations from David Berkowitz. (tags: travel hotel)