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As if there wasn’t enough to see as it was, Coachella went and added another tent this year. Unfortunately it’s yet more electronic acts – the one thing Coachella needs less of, not more. You’ll see that frustration show up in the heaping pile of DJs that reside at the bottom of my ratings. Other than that, I couldn’t be more excited for another year in the desert! Here first, a ratings key:

****  Do not miss this show

***    I really want to see this and will do everything I can

**      Would love to see but may get sidetracked by a churro

*        Let’s pretend these never happened

Dear Foursquare,

It is today, your  two year anniversary since becoming the belle of the ball at SXSW, that I write you this letter as someone who cares. I used to pull out my phone to check in and it was fun- beating others to it, trying to become mayor, showing off badges, explaining animatedly what you are. Now I’m a bit, well, embarrassed. I find myself checking in surreptitiously for fear of being judged. Just the other night I was at dinner with four other guys who at one time used your service. You should have seen the heaps of scorn thrown my way. “Really? You’re still using Foursqaure?” You would have thought I had pulled out a map and a few quarters for the pay phone the way they mocked. After the teasing and incredulous looks, the next question is always the same:

Why do you still even use it? What’s the point?

It’s a fair question.

Social media matters. Despite all the hype, I think we can agree there is tremendous potential in using it as a platform for building deeper relationships with your customer, allowing you to talk to them consistently over a longer period of time. That’s why most companies collect the likes, the follows, and the subscriptions (how many do you still know that don’t?). Some take it further – monitoring online conversations, setting up more robust communities or Facebook platforms, using a service to identify “influencers”.

But one area of social (and I’m lumping relationship marketing in here because they are so closely linked or at least should be) is still criminally overlooked in all but a few cases: the content. In other words, you have the attention of your faithful and the signal they want to hear from you. But what are you actually saying?

In many ways it’s a trickier problem than communicating via paid advertising a few times a year or whenever the campaign needs a refresh.  This is an ongoing stream of content meant to not only engage an audience but also respond and adapt to their feedback. It’s content as conversation. In essence, it is content that lives and breathes and behaves like a person. We call it continuous content at Denuo and believe it represents the next great creative frontier.

Over the course of this week, a few Denuologists will be posting their impressions from CES. Here is the first with more to follow:

Last week was my first time at CES and now I understand why Apple doesn’t show up here. Don’t get me wrong: the inexorable onward march of technology is impressive. Incremental gains are being made every year in processing power, graphic quality, and size. But put it all together under a single convention center roof and much of it just feels desperate; companies urgently trying to get your attention to tout the fact that the 2 inch paper-thin display from last year is now down to 1.2 inches. The 3DTV displays go on for miles, showing you what every form of content looks like in 3D (Documentaries! Cooking shows!). Most of the booths seemed to have an implicit sign hanging over them reading “WE NEED YOUR MONEY”. It reminded me that for every breakthrough we embrace, whether it be CDs, HDTV, or MP3 players, there is a pile of innovations where the public collectively shrugged its shoulders (Laserdisc anyone?).

Snow on the ground, a new year around the corner, must be time for the Top 100. As always, this is not an exact science but that never stops me from painstakingly ranking each one. The list follows but first the same ol’ rules and caveats:

+ They are listed in reverse order because that is the only real way to do a list. Any of you with any sense of drama will listen to the whole thing from 100 slowly building up to number 1, at which point you will practically be bursting with excitement.

+ These are tracks, not necessarily singles. Covers qualify as well though I usually only include ones that are markedly different than the originals.

+ I only have one song per artist because the list is way cooler that way. Having 12 Arcade Fire tracks in the Top 100 feels pretty anticlimactic. Everybody gets a shot this way.

+ They were all released in 2010 on either an album or as a single. Sometimes the album came out last year but it was released as a single this year (or vice versa). That is a loophole I happily exploit.

+ If I’m wrong about the release date of something, blame Wikipedia and Rhapsody.

The list is below and every song title features a link to that song. It got much harder this year thanks to MySpace destroying iMeem and Apple ruining LaLa. Thank you corporate overlords. If you have Rhapsody, you can find 88 of the songs assembled as a playlist here. Know that the Rhapsody list is missing songs # 100, 91, 81, 73, 69, 65, 64, 48, 45, 42, 39, and 30 so you’ll have to revert to this post if you’re a completist (and bravo if you are). Either way, set aside just over six hours to make it through the list. And enjoy.