Bath & Body Works is too 2003, Storify is too 2011.

Does the no-photography-in-malls thing make any sense in 2011?

InsightExpress reported in July 2010 (so, a long freakin’ time ago) that 82% of consumers use their phones while shopping. If citizen marketer-types want to spread your brand, for goodness’ sake, let—if not facilitate, if not encourage—them.

Ian makes a pretty solid point. Beyond the marketing value of social brand promotion, new technologies like barcode reading are going to have trouble gaining traction if the staff rush you out the door whenever you whip out your phone.

B&BW has over 1.5 million Facebook fans, so they’re doing just fine in social media (though fan photos skew towards shots of girl’s bathrooms, ew.) The mall security mentality is just a legacy thing that should be rethought and a more sociable photography policy communicated to retail staff.

Storify scared me

I put the above together with Storify, which is a snappy way to assemble a Twitter conversation. Speed ultimately depends on the verbosity of your acquaintances; thank god for dated tweets.

You’ll note it’s not a published story, just an image. I got too scared to pull the pin and “publish” once my tale was ready to roll.

What does “publish” mean? Where is it going to go? (On Storify? Automatically tweeted? On my permanent record?) Will it phone Neil & Ian and tell them what I’ve done (I think so)?

I love the—I’m not going to say curatorial, but you know what I mean—functionality of Storify, but I’m pulling back from charging everything on the privacy concerns credit card these days.

Even the FAQ sounded a shade ominous. Storify’s product wouldn’t work very well if tweets disappear, so I get why they need to do this, but today at least I felt like the whole thing was getting too serious.

I’m a tweet deleter, but that may no longer be a valid butt-covering strategy. Take note.