Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for June, 2009

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is the group aged 35-49. People are reconnecting with high school and college friends that they have lost touch with. Just type a name into Facebook, and you have a reasonably good chance of finding an old friend. You can see their updates and interactions between people you know – that can be cool. But you also see interactions between people you don’t know. This has zero interest to me. Also there are people reaching out to me who I have not been in touch with for more than 30 years. If we have not been in touch for 30 years it’s probably not because I could not find you. Nothing personal of course.

When it starts to become a responsibility to update your status or respond to a question somebody posed I predict the backlash effect will present FB with a big challenge. Oddly enough on Facebook if somebody asks you a question and you try to respond when they are not on line the question does not go through – this is apparently a design flaw that is being addressed. Right now it’s just aggravating. And aggravation is not a model for a good user experience.

We are still in the nascent stages of the social networking ‘revolution’. Right now it is cool to share photos and keep in touch with family and friends that live far away. I am enjoying staying in contact with my nieces and nephews as well as friends around the country and around the world for that matter. But I think I am beginning to get tired of all this connecting particularly when I am asked a direct question on FB. Maybe I am not on-line or maybe I don’t feel like typing a response on my Blackberry. And if I don’t feel like it I realize I just should not do it. Yet the person on the other side of the equation might perceive that as my ignoring them. Sure I could say I don’t care but that’s not really the case. Just like with the telephone – sometimes it rings and I don’t want to answer it even before I know who it might be. It does not mean I don’t care – just not then.

Being connected 24/7 has its advantages. But I believe that people (particularly this fast growing 35-49 segment are going to tire of the constant communication). For me the cool factor is wearing off. I don’t need 52 FB applications all seemingly about my top five of whatever. Who cares?

I think the pendulum has swung too far. How about you?

When I was in Tokyo earlier this year in March my friend and I went over to Akihabara which is the area in Tokyo that has all the newest gadgets and technology. I was interested in this since innovative technology often comes out of Japan. The most prevalent thing I saw there were cute little ‘computers’ called Netbooks which now have become the rage here in the United States.

Much less expensive than a traditional laptop (they start as low as $ 400 maybe even under that), Netbooks are much smaller and lighter than a laptop, have full internet capability and just a few applications like Word/Excel etc. They are more user friendly than a smart phone since you can actually type on them without having to correct spelling errors (or intuitive word spelling that comes with many smart phones) to anywhere near the degree that occur when typing on a hand held smart phone.

Since I have been doing so much traveling the idea seems intriguing to me. Until I realized that I have been using my laptop as a Netbook all along. It’s just heavier and has more features that for the most part I never use. I log into our company server and work remotely as do so many people. All the applications I need are contained on the server and I really don’t have much use for the ones contained in the hard drive of my laptop. Sure I have the option of using the apps on my laptop hard drive and I occasionally use them (when I am working on the plane without internet access) but as we head to the ‘cloud computing’ world the need for applications on a hard drive is lessening every day.

So while I can think of myself as an early adopter I am not ready to toss my laptop in the junk pile just yet but that day is coming. Of course once I have a projectable keyboard off my smart phone (that will host the same apps that I have on my Netbook) the need for a Netbook will also go by the wayside. Maybe that day will come before I make the switch to a Netbook. I hope so.