Since I have been having a lot of discussions about my enjoyment of food in Foodspotting.com lately and lining out how I felt that it helps a larger demographic find meals that they are looking around for, I decided to share with my readers the knowledge that I am also one of those “Yelpers” that you hear about every now and again. There is a chance that you already knew this from reading my series of Social Networking narratives that I keep over on PiercingMetal Musings, but if you don’t I promise not to hold it against you. One of these topics was about Yelp!
To recap what Yelp! is all about, its a website and a kind of Social Networking area that lets you as a consumer line out the benefits or detriments about a restaurant, bar, or shop. Yes thanks to Yelp! you as the common man or woman have the larger voice and can share it with the world. Be aware that there are a ton of people listening but this does come with some rules. For instance, just being able to do this does not mean you should be super critical about every little detail. I recommend that the new user to Yelp! focus on the winning points of establishments that they like to help send their friends and fans of that kind of spot to it. Bring the positives out and reward the great places. If they rule, then shout it out on the rooftops. I’ve seen people try to destroy places for the slightest infraction and that is just stupid. If a clerk made you wait for five minutes don’t crap on a place. If you were sitting at a bar for thirty minutes without receiving a drink inquiry, then I might say you have a reason to complain. Much like I try to do with my music review reporting, I stress the positive and relate any negativity about something I have with a balanced reason on why this is an issue. You will see that a couple of my Yelp! reviews have updates to them and these were done to raise a brow of concern about something that I no longer felt was right about the experience and that more people needed to know about. Continue reading Piercing Ken Is “Yelping” In The Crowd!!!→
I’m taking a page out of my PiercingMetal Musings Blog once again to share with my readers the news about my noodling around on a particular social network. I did this with Instagram a couple of months ago because not only was the ID the same as this here website, but the overall use of something like Instagram would be more for the kinds of things that you read about here on PiercingKen.com anyway. The same applies to this one which is the dining-centric network known as “Foodspotting”. You might be thinking that it relates to food and you would be correct in that assumption. Foodspotting is cited as being a “visual food guide” and as I had mentioned in my Musings site posting about this, seems to be something that works well with those folks who are using Foursquare and Yelp! a lot in their adventuring.
I met some of the people involved in this service when I was at the Comic Con back in 2011 and it sounded kind of cool and was surely a little more interesting than some of the stuff that we find ourselves telling friends on Facebook and Twitter at every given second. With Foodspotting you can not only recommend places to eat to your friends and the network at large, but you can also take a photograph of your order and post it while at the same time offering up some information about it. For instance, I recently visited a bar/restaurant called Interstate Food & Liquor and I LOVED it. I was there with Skeleton Pete on the night we were hitting the Lez Zeppelin show and their menu was outstanding. With that being the case, I took a snap of my burger and our appetizer and loaded it up onto the Foodspotting site with a couple of words about it. My hope was to spin up extra interest in the offerings because it was so damned good. I plan to be doing this a lot more often as I find an interesting place worth speaking about. I can be found on the site via my real name of Ken Pierce or via the PiercingKen Twitter as I didn’t use the pen name of PiercingKen for this one as my actual ID. Closer friends can just add me via my Facebook Page which the service lets you check to see who you might know.
After losing two places that I really liked to stop into for a bite to eat, I hope that my using this kind of social network will help keep business coming in to the new haunts that I find and like. I am getting really tired of losing places like Acme Restaurant and Nice Guy Eddies that is for sure.
Should you wish to delve into the whole gamut of the Social Networking overviews and how I apply their use as a music journalist in today’s ever changing realm, just click HERE to bring up the list over on the PiercingMetal Musings Blog. Topical comments are always welcome from people who have some awesome thoughts to bring to the table, especially if they are doing similar adventures and can compare notes.
UPDATE: May 2, 2018 – I’m updating this post to share the news about the ending of Foodspotting. Back in 2013, the company was acquired in full by OpenTable and at the time of this sale, company founder Alexa Andrzejewski maintained that the purchase would not find the resource going away but here we are some years later and that has indeed happened. My post about Foodspottings end can be reader HERE if you’d like to check it out. I am going to miss this one because it was fun to load up the images into and it drove my non-Foodie friends bonkers.
Hey there. I just wanted to take a quick commercial break from the regularly scheduled blogging to let you all know that the PiercingKen Blog has successfully hit the beginning of our second year. It’s exciting for me to say the least because I was still enjoying the feeling of accomplishment after recently celebrating seven years of PiercingMetal.com as a website and having its own blog hit five years shortly after that. When one considers how rapidly blogs and websites come and go nowadays thanks to things like Facebook Pages it’s always nice to have clocked in with another year of creative output.
I’ll admit to the readers that I really love having the PiercingKen Blog because it lets me do absolutely anything that I feel like tossing into the mix. Sometimes I will talk about music or past experiences in the field and sometimes I will do something with a more culinary flair and show you how to properly assemble a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. PiercingKen is my catch all, but at the same time is a real day to day life observance through my eyes and will bring to your attention anything that I see that I feel like writing about or sharing with you. Some readers love it and there are others who, well, I really don’t care if they like it or not. Those folks can spend their time surfing around for other stuff that suits their fancy.
I’ve been going through so many photo folders to see what we have for upcoming posts and believe me there is a healthy amount of “travelog” kind of stuff to share with you along with whatever else happens to amuse me at the time. I might even scan some older photographs of places that I shot years ago and would like to explore as a creative today. Who knows. Just stay tuned by subscribing to our RSS Feed or adding our Official Facebook Page or Twitter. Thanks for making the past two years a lot of fun, I love keeping you entertained.
I’m sure that you’ve all heard about this network by now and if you were following my Social Media posts over on PiercingMetal you might recall that I discussed Instagram even before having an account of my own. That was posted about HERE if you didn’t see it. The app was ONLY available to the iPhone users and as a longtime Android mobile user, I thought that sucked since there was a whole missing out vibe going on. With that being said I am here to not only tell you that our time has come but that I have also created our Official Profile on the Instagram social media network. My first post to this photo-sharing applications world is embedded below. It’s a couple of vintage Batman toys.
Yep. Toy Fair 2012 begins today my friends and I cannot tell you how excited I am to be attending Toy Fair 2012 as a member of the accredited press once again. Oh alright, I can tell you “I am VERY excited”. This is my second go at this massive industry only event and its a great chance for me to observe and share the findings about the newest and hottest developments in the toy industry with you all. While the narratives for last year’s event reside on the Official Blog for PiercingMetal as opposed to this blog site, I wanted to make this post to let you all know to check over there for the upcoming coolness that I shall be bringing to the table. As expected this humongous trade show will be taking over the Jacob Javits Center for the next four days and I will have my good buddy Skeleton Pete Parrella along for the journey. He’ll be taking photos and notes for his own Skeleton Pete site as well.
Clicking the logo above will bring you to all of our posts about the event and depending on when you follow its lead, there might be more than the first time since the coverage will span numerous days and postings. I’ve disabled the means to comment on this post as its not much more than an introduction piece but do please let your topical thoughts be known on the posts that you will find on PiercingMetal.com; Thanks for listening my friends and please keep your day a positive one.
