The idea behind Gotelo is that it can be difficult for people to keep up with your Twitter ID, your Facebook page, LinkedIn account, blog and so on so anyone can go to Gotelo, enter in your phone number and get links to all your social media accounts and whatever websites you choose. Here’s a video that provides a bit more detail:
How useful this service becomes is dependent on how widely it’s adopted. It’s difficult to fit all your social media accounts on your business card and if you work for someone else, you may not be allowed to. So the idea of giving people the ability to find all this with just your phone number could be useful, especially if the service is free. If this was a feature of Google, it would probably work well. You could just tell someone to Google your phone number and they can find all your links. But Google is a household name, Gotelo isn’t. So the jury is still out on this one but since it’s free, why not give it a shot? You can sign up here: http://gotelo.com/ (Note: I have no affiliation with Gotelo)
What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.
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Hi Bill,
It’s an interesting idea. Pros and cons: Might be very handy to find friends and to completely stalk a person :-). On the other hand, if I wanted people to follow me over multiple platforms, I’d post all those links to one page on my website. Unless I didn’t have a website, so there’s another item in the plus column.
Have you tried it?
Beth
Hi Beth,
I’m thinking it’s more useful to people that don’t have a website or for those wanting to share their personal social media links rather than their business accounts. Of course, a lot of people, myself included, don’t really separate the two. As for privacy, they only include people that have signed up and entered their info. You could link it to your cell which wouldn’t be public info. I signed up yesterday prior to writing the post to see how the service works but that’s about it. To me, this would be a service that would work if Google acquired them. If I could quickly tell someone to Google my phone number, that’s something they’d remember. Gotelo? Maybe not.
Social CRM has got to be a big thing coming. I’m trying everything I can find to find sort connections.
But why base it on a phone number? Won’t be long and we won’t be using them.
“Death of the Phone Number Predicted in 5 Years” http://warrenwhitlock.amplify.com/2010/08/29/death-of-phone-number-predicted-in-5-years/
I look forward to seeing these rolled up to where we essentially have a wiki of public facing information so those who want to be found can be found.
Warren,
Thanks for your comment. Would you believe Akismet had the nerve to put your comment in the spam folder? Outrageous! 🙂
Seriously, you make a great point. There needs to be a better solution. I’ve got a client that is about to offer a solution that might work well for speakers like us as well as other businesses. I’ll share more soon. In the meantime, let’s keep our eyes and ears open.