Diane's observations of 'Teens in Tech' are smokin!

This week we have a post from Diane Zoi, our VP of Marketing here at Bluepulse...

Last week I went to the Teens in Tech Conference, held at the H-P headquarters in Palo Alto. Besides wondering how these kids got out of a day of school to attend a conference, there was a lot that caught my attention.

Here are a few highlights for me:

• You can’t get through your teenage years without developing an online persona. In the same way that I couldn’t get through that era without trying my first cigarette (I didn’t inhale), teens today have to create and present who they want to be online. This is the first generation to experience this rite of passage. And it seems that the grown-ups in the room – the marketers, the product developers, the VCs, the parents – don’t truly understand what an important stepping stone this is for teens today. Whether you are the techy-kind-of introverted kid who works on your open source project in your spare time, or the busy-as-a-bee head cheerleader, or the ambitious-beyond-your-years teen who just so happened to already start a non-profit with a mission to alleviate world hunger, you are IM-ing, MySpace-ing, or Facebook-ing, or in most cases, using all three.


• I believe that these sites and the fact that they facilitate communication enable this generation not only to keep in touch with more people on a regular basis now, they also make it much easier for high schoolers to stay in close touch with their BFFs once they leave home after high school. One panelist at the conference who is currently a college freshman says that she “definitely talks to her high school best friends online everyday”. If you compare this to 20 years ago - not that I know anybody who graduated from college in 1988 - when we would check in with our high school friends at Christmas break and over the summer, you can see a big shift in the social graph. Add in all of the moment to moment updating teens can effortlessly do on their mobiles, and it’s easy to see how all of these high school and college students may never lose touch with anybody.
  
  This does beg the question what all of this virtual keeping in touch does for social skills. After the peppy discussion on all of the ways these teens stay in touch with one another online, one of them commented on Gen Y, “Yeah, I guess we lack social skills.”


• These teenagers want it NOW. The California (PST) kids don’t want to wait to see the new episode of Gossip Girl when it’s just aired in New York (EST). They want to download it and watch it the second it’s available online so they can start IM’ing with their friends about it. Did someone say, “illegal”? They’d be more than happy to get their fix legally, and even cough up a few bucks for it (they really said so!) IF the content and speed could compete with the pirated content experience. But today there’s no comparison according to the crowd at the conference. When it comes to video and TV content, they laugh at what is available online via the above board sites. Not one of the college-age conference panelists owns a TV. I take that back – one Stanford student has an old TV from his parents house in his dorm room because “it’s kind of like having an antique.”

Definitely not like it was in 1988, when viewers couldn’t find out who shot J.R. until it aired on national television. At least that’s what I’ve heard it was like in 1988 ;)

Christopher on the FierceWireless Hot Seat

Christopher recently spent some time with Mike Dolan Sue Marek [Edit: Mike did the write-up] of Fierce Wireless discussing his move from a Director of Engineering at Google to CTO of Bluepulse, his past successes in building companies and the focus areas for Bluepulse going forward:

On the Hot Seat with Bluepulse's Christopher Nguyen

Job Openings At Bluepulse

We have a stack of openings for people to come and join the Bluepulse team. Right now we're looking for people in the following areas:

• Software Engineer, Mobile, Front-End User Experience & Development
• Software Engineer, Mobile, Back-End Architecture & Development
• Production Engineer, At-Scale, Software Engineering
• Production Engineer, At-Scale, System Administrator
• Product Manager, Mobile User Experience

You can always see the latest openings on the Jobs page (You'll find this page inside the 'About Us' section of the website). If you're interested, send your resume to iwanttowork@bluepulse.com.

How Much Is A Mobile User Worth?

Christopher has started Pentagoniac, a personal blog about his thoughts and experiences as CTO here at bluepulse. As with Ben's blog, I'll be grabbing the 'best of' and post them here on the bluepulse blog as well, starting with How Much Is A Mobile User Worth?

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Last week I tried taking the train to work for the third time or so, training myself on the new routine. I took the 8:27 from San Antonio station on this beautiful sunny California morning. It would be 30 minutes to the San Mateo station, and another 5-minute leisurely walk to the office on Third. Plenty of time for an important 9:30 meeting.

Or so I thought.

8:56 My train went right past San Mateo. Having experienced commute train service elsewhere, it took me 5 seconds to realize I was on an express train. It took considerably longer to decide what to do. That 9:30 meeting could not be missed! Could I get off at some appropriate station beyond and catch a southbound back to San Mateo? Would I still make my 9:30 meeting?

8:59 My train pulled into the Millbrae station. I could see a southbound pulling in from the other direction, perhaps just about 30 seconds ahead of ours. I rushed to the door, willing it to open. The southbound was still on the platform. Following signs, I ran up the stairs, through the overhead walkway, back down on the opposite platform, just in time to watch the southbound depart right on time, at 9:02. Missed it by a hair.

9:03 Do I call someone from the office to come out and pick me up? My sister, who lives nearby? Maybe I should just call a taxi. Just then I caught sight of a taxi line. "How long to reach San Mateo from here?" I asked. "Just 10 minutes," said the driver. "How much?" "About $20. We'll go by the meter."

Ouch.

9:15 About 10 minutes, 1 very enjoyable chat, and 2 handshakes with a self-described Persian-solar-engineer-on-a-temporary-cab-driving gig later, I was in front of our office building. I would make my 9:30 meeting.

This whole episode reminded me of something. Certainly the Googles and eBays and Alibabas of the world have made discovering and connecting supply to demand so much more efficient, and in the process have cut distributor margins to the bone. I would never pay $40+tax+travel for that Rustic Pewter Kwikset door handle that I can reliably get on eBay for $7 net, delivered. But the premium given to locality and immediacy have not diminished---not for a long time to those of us still living in space and time. We're still willing to pay $1 for a quarter to feed that parking meter at 3rd-and-B, a 100% premium for that last-minute ticket to see Hannah Montana Live at the HP Pavillion. If anything, the value ratio between the here-and-now over the there-and-later is probably expanding.

There are things for which we will still pay a significant premium, and we will pay because we need it here, and we need it now. This violates no efficient-market hypotheses. My train commute averages to about $2 per ride. And that urgent short hop from Millbrae to San Mateo cost a good $22.

So the next time someone asks you how much a mobile web user is worth compared to a desktop web user, you can tell them confidently, "Empirical evidence suggests that it's 11X."

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080424 Update: someone forwarded me a news clipping containing this timely article from Sid Yadav at rev2.org that I have to place in the this-guy-gets-it bin.