Weekly Wrap 11/5/10 - Foursquare, Getting Sponsors, Visualizations

Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

OK, this one wasn't originally published this week, but Ari Herzog's recent thought-provoking piece on location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook places came across my radar again this week and so here it is. I've personally always thought that out-of-office autoresponders and these new social media services as electronic "Please Rob Me" signs, but Ari's post shows how this gets to be really creepy and real. Should you delete your Foursquare account too? Your kid's? You might after reading this.

2010 Mid-Term Elections Twitter Visualization

The New York Times' innovative and yet functional visualization of twitter activity in this week's US elections. Simply brilliant.

Turning One Sponsor Into Many

Getting sponsors is core to many bloggers' monetization strategies once they step beyond AdSense. Great story and compelling insight from David Siteman Garland on a strategy that takes your first sponsor to add many more. If you sell your own ads or sponsorships on your site, this is a must-read.

Summarizing the State of the Blogosphere

LeeOdden summmarizes what Jason Falls just described as "the only relevant thing Technorati still does." Indeed. But some interesting data nonetheless, nicely presented in bite-sized formats by Lee. If you're a stats geek, check it out here.

List Building for Bloggers, Episode 1 - Email marketing in the age social media #LBB

Praise from the Twitterverse about the first article in our new weekly series:

"This was a phenomenal kick-off to #LBB. I read it this morning! Great tips--looking forward to the others." - @BrotherJesse

"Kudos to @phollows this is one amazing in-depth dive into why email marketing dominates all other forms to this day" - @autoburst

"Do you have an email subscribe option on your business blog? No? Read this article" - @DeniseWakeman