The Preston Social is an event based around social media organised in part by Blog Preston. Co-founder John Walker here gives a run down of the latest event which happened earlier this week.
It’s been two months since the last Preston Social, but on 26th April it returned to the New Continental to bring Prestonians together to discuss social media. On the cards this time was a discussion on geo-location, mobile applications like Facebook Places, FourSquare, Gowalla and more, lead by Josh R who organises Social Media Cafe Manchester, and Information Designer Robert Hempsall.
Josh is an avid fan of FourSquare and other geo-location services, leading the discussion in a positive light and pointing out the benefits to both companies and consumers in using these services.
Robert on the other hand was aware of the benefits but finds a mixture of worry from privacy issues and the annoyance of some geo-location users that over share on other social networks, and shared these concerns with the crowd.
Backed by myself and Tom Stables the two led a conversation with the audience, answering their questions and giving them food for thought and various topics for discussion.
Points raised over the course of the night included recent information revealed about Apples iPhone and iPads and how they store your location history without your consent, as well as a site from the early days of geo-location – “Please Rob Me” and the dangers of telling everyone where you are.
The night ended with some informal networking and chatting along with a “win” for Josh, as Robert announced that he had been swayed a bit by his point of view.
You can check out all the tweets from the evening by taking a look at the #prestonsocial hashtag, and I’ve also included Josh’s presentation ‘How to Win Foursquare Friends and Influence People’ below.