While I did find some kinks in the system now that other people have begun to use the service, this week I mainly focused on just getting the word out & trying to get both ice cream lovers and ice cream truck owners alike aware of the website & Twitter account.
Promoting
- Flooding the System: As we discussed in class, I tried to get as many people just using #ictruck to raise awareness & interest. While the map looks a little more “full” now than it did last week, it still has a ways to go & could definitely use some tags above 20th Street, as well as in other boroughs.
Map as of 4/11/10
The tweets about @IceCreamSpy are helping to make the actual Twitter account look more robust, though. There have been a handful of people tweeting about @IceCreamSpy & its purpose (Elizabeth & Mushon being 2 of them- thank you!), helping me to gain attention & followers.
Most Recent Mentions of @IceCreamSpy as of 4/11/10
- Getting the Word Out:
- I’ve created an open event on Facebook, which I sent out to all people I’m “friends” with on the site (feel free to “invite” your friends!).
- I made a group on a new social networking site I found that is specifically made for New Yorkers, called “RadiusNYC Mingling and Marketing.”
- On Twitter, I am working towards searching and “following” users from the New York City area. I started out using services that find & follow users according to certain criteria, but am finding it easier to manually go through the followers of popular NYC Tweeters, such as Flavorpill, Thrillist, NY Mag, & Time Out New York.
- Gaining Attention from Ice Cream Truck Owners & Operators: I also put into action Honieh’s & Ryan’s ideas of making stickers to display on ice cream trucks & talking to owners. This past weekend, created a bumper sticker for the ice cream trucks & talked to owners/operators about displaying it on their trucks. I focused on the lower half of Manhattan this weekend (the current map is a pretty good indicator of my travels), & will need to branch out to other areas in the future. While some were very open to the idea, others took some convincing, and still others refused to display one. All in all, I currently have 7 trucks displaying the sticker!
Sticker for Ice Cream Trucks
Sticker displayed on truck
Sticker displayed on truck
Kinks to be Worked Out
- Mushon’s geotagged tweets using TweetDeck made me realize that Bing Maps is not compatible with all forms of geotagging. While Bing picks up embedded geotagged information, as displayed when using Twitter directly or when using Echofon, it doesn’t pick up links of geotagged information. I briefly tried to find a way to create a map in Yahoo Pipes that picks up both forms of geotagging, but have yet to find a solution. This will be something that I look into in the future.
TweetDeck displays geotags through a link, which you can click to bring you to a map
Vs.
Twitter & the mobile app Echofon display geotagging by embedding it directly into the tweet
- People seem excited about using the service & a couple have tweeted trucks they’ve found, but most aren’t tweeting this information with a geotag of the location. While right now I believe that it’s more important to just get people using #ictruck in general, for the website & idea to grow, I have to find a way to properly educate users on the importance of geotagging.
No geotag in tweet
No geotag in tweet
Overall Stats as of 4/12/10 @ 10:30pm
@IceCreamSpy's Stats as of 4/12
@IceCreamSpy – Following: 413 | Followers: 82 | Listed: 6
7 ice cream trucks displaying sticker
24 geotagged ice cream trucks on map
Find an Ice Cream Truck! 