Lecture Post 1: Social Media & Privacy

Pace Mate is a program that uses motion-sense technology to gauge a runner's stride and pace. The program then selects songs of a matching tempo and generates a playlist. Pace Mate ensures the songs listened too actually match the tempo of the run, creating a more effective, enjoyable workout.

Social media represents a huge business opportunity, especially for new ventures. I think Pace Mate would greatly benefit from its own social media campaign. A Pace Mate Twitter account and Facebook page would help give the product exposure to its target market: young individuals that utilize readily-available technology. The Twitter account could also promote the brand while being a source of feedback from product users. The feedback could then be used to gauge customer satisfaction and make necessary product improvements and adjustments. Similarly, comments on Facebook would help provide a sort of analysis of the product. In addition to this, both avenues (but especially Twitter) could allow Pace Mate employees to monitor and respond to customers as a sort of customer service avenue.

Beyond these popular forms of social media, other sources could benefit Pace Mate. There are many running blogs that would be an excellent way to market and advertise Pace Mate. Introducing the product to various online “running communities” could result in exponential sales growth. It would also be beneficial for Pace Mate employees to read through these blogs to discover common problems encountered by runners and determine any opportunities there may be to improve Pace Mate to address these problems.

 

Many products that utilize technology have a certain risk for privacy issues. Assuming that Pace Mate will be an account-based program, some customer information will need to be collected. While it is not desirable to a customer for a company to collect information or desirable for a company to be responsible for protecting that information, storing certain facts will allow for a better product for the consumer. For example, storing the customer’s music preferences, previous run paces, and recently played songs (perhaps in the cloud) will allow for faster and easier use of Pace Mate and an experience that evolves and adapts with the runner. The user will be able to track their previous runs/paces and listen to new songs on each run.