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Posts filed under 'Net Generation'
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October 9th, 2008, 01:17am
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So I’m on my way to Biltmore in Arizona explaining to my driver what I do for a living. I’m trying to describe Wikinomics in the simplest of terms when he interrupts me, pausing briefly to flash a wry smile. “Say no more,” he says, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” He explains that his daughter is on the Internet all day long answering questions on ChaCha and making about $100 a day. I admit I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I’m highly intrigued. It certainly sounds like something I ought to know about, so when I get to my hotel room I look it up.
So it turns out that ChaCha is a mobile answer service for people who need information quickly on the go. Let’s say, for some reason, you want to know how many seconds there are in a decade but your math skills aren’t up to scratch (apparently there are either 315,532,800 or 315,619,200 depending on whether the decade contains two leap years, or three). Or maybe you want to know who scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup clash between England and West Germany (it was Geoff Hurst, the only player ever to have scored three times in a World Cup final).
You text your question in conversational English to the ChaCha system (you can also leave a voice mail). Your question is routed to a specialist in the ChaCha network (mostly Internet savvy teenagers) who provides an answer within minutes. If you want to impress your friends and associates with your wit and sense of humor, ChaCha will also send you jokes!
On average, ChaCha specialists make between $3 and $9 an hour, but the most proficient Internet researchers can make a lot more (compensation is determined by one’s speed and accuracy in answering questions). My driver’s daughter is apparently one of them. He says all of her friends collaborate with one another to find answers fast, coordinating their searches using IM. Sounds like a decent day job for a high school student, at least until artificial intelligence makes all of this redundant.
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October 7th, 2008, 11:01am
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What’s stopping you from using a mobile device, like your phone, to access your email?
Cost? Indifference? Technical Inability?
If you’re still one of the great majority not using your phone to access email (I was surprised to find that very few of us do +/- 10% according to estimates), there are any number of reasons that could be the root cause, but a new market entrant, Peek has placed a heavy bet that cost is what’s been stopping many and they have introduced a sleek new offering to do something about it.
Peek’s first device is a slim handheld that shares similar look and functionality to early Blackberry devices, which much like Peek were designed to do one thing only, and to do it well - access your email. Unlike earlier RIM offerings, though, the Peek is available without any contract at a price of $100, with a monthly access fee of $19.95.
I just recently started accessing my email from my mobile phone, when I succombed to my tech geek side and purchased the iPhone, but prior to that, I was no less attached to my work email, I just carried my laptop with me nearly everywhere. For me, the move to on-the-go email access was one of convenience - and I don’t mind blurring the lines between work and home too much - a noted characteristic of just over 40% Net Geners according to our latest research.
Our latest research also shows that cross generationally, email is considered integral to successful work completition, with 73.6% of Net Geners, 73.0% of Gen Xers and 65.4% of Boomers agreeding with the statement that “Email is a necessicity for doing your job as well as you can.” Now, we’ve all got the friend/family member who is addicted to their Blackberry/Smartphone as well as the friend/family member who swears they will never subscribe to the always-on work life enabled (read: encouraged) by ubiquitous email connectivity.
What side of the coin do you fall on? Is Peek really on to something here, or have they totally missed the boat by assuming cost, not lack of interest, is the real barrier to mass mobile email adoption?
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October 2nd, 2008, 09:24am
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I’m back studying at Queen’s University, and last weekend was Homecoming. In recent years, Queen’s Homecoming has become an annual pilgrimage for Southern Ontario’s Net Gen. Thousands of them, from Ottawa to Windsor, descend on Kingston for a 24-hour party that begins with 9 AM pancake keggers and culminates with a booze-fuelled riot that sees hundreds arrested, dozens injured, and three years ago, a car flipped over and lit on fire.
A group of Kingston residents, fed up with students’ intolerable behavior and the inability of police and university administrators to stop it, have turned to transparency as a weapon. On Homecoming, and for the past month, members of SaveOurNeighborhood.ca have been patrolling Kingston’s student neighborhood to take pictures of young people committing debauchery and posting them online for the world to see.
Read More »
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September 30th, 2008, 08:43am
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Carleton University has been in the news lately for being the victim of a hacking attack. Erm, more accurately, Carleton has been in the news for having a student, Mansour Moufid, identify a serious security flaw in the Carleton Campus Card, which enabled him access to the email passwords of 32 of his fellow students. Moufid then wrote a report on how he was able to breach the school’s security, and snail mailed it to the school’s security department, who ignored him (says Moufid).
Ten days after mailing the physical copy of the report to Carleton, Moufid emailed the 32 students whose accounts had been completely compromised, and informed them that the school had been made aware of the attack on security, and had decided to ignore it. One of the students happened to be an intern at a CBC newsroom, and her supervisor found the story to be interesting — it grew from there. Carleton said that they only received the package the same day that Moufid emailed the 32 students, leaving them with no time to do anything at all. Read More »
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September 30th, 2008, 07:13am
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I know that in the past I sure have, and it appears that a number of employees at enterprise software company Citrix are now also doing the same.
Instead of the typical “here’s your company laptop - enjoy!“, Citrix is one of the few companies to have gone public with a Bring Your Own Computer policy and they are experimenting with giving employees a stipend with which to purchase their own machine. With a $2,100 allowance, employees can purchase a PC or Mac of their choice, so long as it comes with a three-year service plan and carries guaranteed next day on-site service.
There are obviously a number of challenges posed by the infinite number of options that come as a result of a customized computer program, but the program brings with it at least one important reward - and one that our research has shown to be particularly attractive to the tech-savvy Net Generation - Customization.
Much more than just a machine on which to complete work (and sometimes play), laptops, like many other tech devices have become an important means of self-expression (enter the Mac marketing strategy). The option to customize also goes far beyond the Mac vs. PC debate by allowing employees to purchase a machine that best suits their desired specs i.e. screen size and port availability vs. weight, speed vs. storage capacity etc. Read More »
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September 29th, 2008, 09:45am
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Eric Picard, the director of advertising strategy and emerging media planning at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, authors one of the most interesting blogs in relation to the future of advertising. Unfortunately a lot of people miss it because he posts basically once a month, which isn’t exactly conducive to getting found on the search engines or staying top-of-mind. When he does post, however, it’s almost always worth the read.
His most recent post is titled Appearing Soon in an ad near you. The core argument is that people haven’t considered the ramifications of Moore’s Law on real-time image processing. While a lot of people have (or are) focusing on the impact it might have on things like targeting and analytics, the intersection with computer graphics is quite interesting - a future where ads directed at you could easily feature you and prominent members of your social network, both past and current.
A hypothetical example he gives about an ad featuring a man’s wife and three kids is interesting - but the example featuring a person that is the composite of the three people you dated in college really gets to how powerful (and scary) it could be. The question in the long-term may not be so much the ability to make these ads, but whether people will accept them - but history indicates the Net Generation in particular will likely glance over the privacy concerns.
Other recent, interesting posts: Why search doesn’t really matter, Counting the streams in the new media age, & Is an Impression an Commodity?. On a side note, they might make you think that a few more people in the new/social media space should consider getting away from the “post whatever I’m thinking every few hours” mindset…
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September 15th, 2008, 04:58pm
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I was surfing the web trying to figure out the best way to connect my laptop to my TV (in my defence - I had an idea of how to do it in theory… but wanted to find out in practical terms) when I came across an interesting YouTube video.
It was created by a young, talented kid who lives in Japan called Adrian, aka kidguru. With a straightforward, easy to understand video, kidguru very articulately explained how someone looking to connect their laptop to a tv would go about doing it. Going to his YouTube channel I discovered that he’s been doing this for almost a year now and has turned his site Tech-World into a blogging, vlogging, podcasting, twitter site/community. He’s managed to turn a hobby into a paying job, with sponsors and understands the value of creating community around his videos. He does product and app reviews, and tutorials among other educational things.
KidGuru’s YouTube channel now has over 1,500 subscribers and over 47,000 channel views, and he is now an official YouTube partner. The YouTube partner program is an ad revenue sharing program to reward users that frequently post original content and who have a steady following of thousands of viewers.
If you have any tech related questions I suggest checking out Kidguru’s channel or sending him an e-mail!
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September 3rd, 2008, 09:12am
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This guest blog is by Steve Ressler, founder of GovLoop.com, a social network connecting the government community. Mr. Ressler is also a contributor to the nGenera Gov 2.0: Wikinomics, Government, and Democracy project and the co-founder of Young Government Leaders, a professional organization of more than 2,000 government employees. Ressler has published articles on generational issues and Web 2.0 in various publications including The Public Manager and presented on these topics at a range of venues including Harvard’s Kennedy School and Brookings Institute.
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It’s official - Gov 2.0 is here to stay. From nGenera’s Gov 2.0: Wikinomics, Government, and Democracy project, NAPA’s Collaboration Project, and Mashable’s recent Gov 2.0 column, a lot has been written on the potential power of web 2.0 technologies in government. Government agencies across numerous jurisdictions have begun focusing on how Web 2.0 technologies can help foster workplace collaboration and innovation. Organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Transportation Security Agency, and National Resources Canada have implemented organizational wikis to provide a central point for ideas and discussion.
But while government organizations have begun to focus on fostering workplace collaboration from the inside, a new type of collaboration is developing outside the formal reach of government agencies. As part of the Gov 2.0: Wikinomics, Government, and Democracy research series, I recently completed a paper entitled “Net-Gen Networks: How Agencies Can Leverage Outside Innovation Internally.” In this analysis, I document the rise of informal networks in the government sector built around Web 2.0 applications as a means of facilitating collaboration, idea sharing and innovation both within and across agency lines. Whether via social networks like Facebook, wikis, or blogs, these networks have created new authoritative resources for employees without the input or control of their superiors.
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August 26th, 2008, 10:23am
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Building on Will’s posts about Obama using text messaging to announce his running mate (which I thought was brilliant), there is a great video on the BBC web site documenting how democracy has become digitized. It’s 10 minutes, but I highly recommend you take a peek.
Web 2.0 and the tools made available have changed the face of American politics. Not only are campaigns finding new ways to reach out to citizens, they’re also finding ways to engage them to become active participants and volunteers. Some people may argue that the ‘old people’ (so to speak), are the ones that vote; but for this election, Obama has mobilized the largest demographic – the children of the baby boom. And coincidentally, many of them are now coming of age and have the power to make a difference. The numbers speak for themselves. As Don Tapscott wrote in a previous post – During the Iowa preliminary, Obama had won by a landslide in millennial votes. His 28,000 vs. Clinton’s 5,400 and Edwards’ 6,900.
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August 19th, 2008, 01:12am
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Last week I directed a leadership retreat for the student leaders at the Center for the Advancement of Leadership. The past couple of years I have helped develop and train students involved in the program. As I presented the different workshops, I was reminded of the blog post that Mike Dover wrote a few months back about movies that represent a generation.
Leaders have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what the Net Gen want. Many of the answers may lie in what they pay to watch.
From movies like Xmen, The Hulk, Ironman, and Fantastic Four, to TV shows like Heroes and Smallville, superheroes seem to be on the mind of the Net Generation. So then what do they see in them and why?
Read More »
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August 15th, 2008, 10:14am
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Rasmussen Reports just released some interesting results from a recent telephone survey in the United States. Nearly half of Americans “believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary, but they draw the line at imposing that same requirement on the Internet.” By “drawing the line”, they mean that 57% do not believe the government should force balance of commentary on individual Internet sites - but 31% still do. That’s still uncomfortably high for me.
You need to be a premium member to get access to the demographic cross-tabs, but I would assume that age is the primary dividing line here: I can’t imagine too many Net Geners who grew up “bathed in bits” would support the balance initiative, but I could just as easily understand how people who don’t use the Internet (or don’t use it too often), which is a much older demographic, could be drawn into supporting it.
Such people would come from a broadcast media mindset, where certain individuals could consolidate control of dominant media assets, and thus control the political messaging that the vast majority of people are exposed to (think: the one newspaper town). Read More »
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August 13th, 2008, 12:03pm
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For those who have not yet heard, Don and I are working on a sequel to Wikinomics that will lift the lid on a wide range of topics that we did not really get to in wikinomics 1.0. So, for example, we’ll be examining how mass collaboration is changing education, health care, science, government, democracy, international advocacy and national security.
Based on our early conversations, I’m already convinced that we’ll surface a whole new set of meaty themes that shed new light on the emerging wiki world. But If the experience is anything like writing the last book, those themes will probably not be apparent until we’re more than 50% through the writing process! So that’s where you, and the broader the wikinomics community, come in. Read More »
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August 11th, 2008, 02:41pm
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Nicholas Carr is a well-respected thought leader who we have agreed and disagreed with in the past (see here and here). A few weeks ago, he posted The Cloud’s Not So Silver Lining as a response to Sarah Lacy’s article in BusinessWeek. Once again, Mr. Carr, we respectfully disagree, and hope to have a spirited debate on the topic and we would appreciate the comments and insights from both our readers and yours.
He describes how the software as a service (SaaS) model and on-demand computing is not a gold mine for software vendors.
Anyone who thinks the software-as-a-service business is a gold mine for vendors is wrong. The economics are fundamentally different from those of the traditional software business - and not in a good way. As Lacy writes, the Web is “just as good at displacing revenue as it is in generating sources of it. Just ask the music industry or, ahem, print media. Think Robin Hood, taking riches from the elite and distributing them to everyone else, including the customers who get to keep more of their money and the upstarts that can more easily build competing alternatives.” Web apps remain a hard sell when it comes to big, conservative enterprises, and the capital and marketing costs are daunting, particularly if you’re running your own data centers. This revolution in business software will play out slowly and, for most suppliers, painfully.
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August 8th, 2008, 04:32pm
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So of course there is now the interesting phenomenon of online dating sites. These communities, like lavalife, have become commonplace and are a great way to connect people looking for love. I have some friends who have used these sites before and have gone out on dates or even found love - but, initial interactions are still online. What if you saw someone on the street, in the mall or on a subway and felt a feeling akin to ‘love at first sight’. What would you do?
Well, when New York web designer Patrick Moberg saw HIS ‘girl of his dreams’ on the 5 train (and let her slip away) he didn’t let that stop him. He turned to his 8 million fellow New Yorkers (not to mention the rest of the world) to help him find this mystery girl.
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July 28th, 2008, 09:50am
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There is a great debate raging all over the blogosphere, and more traditional media for that matter, in regards to the effect the Internet is having on the “wiring” of our brains, and more specifically our collective reading skills. We’ve recently written about it here, here, here, and here, Nicholas Carr had a great piece published in the Atlantic Monthly called “Is Google Making us Stupid“, Clay Shirky has an excellent response on the Britannica Blog entitled “Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr“, and a variety of other well thought out replies to Carr’s article can be found here.
Personally, I find that the quality of the debate itself runs somewhat counter to the thesis that Google, Digg, blogs, and other social media tools are making us stupider (or stoopider, if you prefer) - it’s pretty hard to read everything that I’ve linked to above and not come out feeling a little smarter for the time invested. However, such articles are by no means representative of what most people typically spend time reading online, so I certainly see value in the debate continuing to evolve - which is where this recent NY TImes piece comes in.
Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes (and I really like the first couple as thought starters in terms of how brains are being wired differently, in a way that could be construed as both good and bad): Read More »
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July 21st, 2008, 02:32pm
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As we look back over the past couple of years there is no doubt about the entrepreneurial spirit that is catching among tech savvy Net Geners entering the workforce. Young people like Mark Zuckerberg, Dalton Caldwell 27, Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath both 26, Andrew Frame 27, are creating and utilizing social networks, and word of mouth to successfully develop businesses.
The University of Waterloo has taken notice and is currently building a “Dormcubator” to link 70 of their best and brightest tech students together. According to an article in PC World the University of Waterloo is revamping one its dorms to make room for these students. The $400,000 project is designed to give them a place to live and interact with other like minded individuals.
Read More »
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July 17th, 2008, 10:37am
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In the last 20 some odd years corporate security has made some headway. Companies are now at the point where they are reasonably efficient at keeping ‘hackers’ out and letting employees in. The problem is that to get to this point the enterprise has had to put up walls in the name of safety and security, but at the cost of functionality and logic.
The current Jericho model of security (fitting name) is great a putting up impermeable walls to keep to dangers outside at bay, but not so at quickly adapting and reconfiguring them. Even inside the walls of the enterprise security has largely been based on group permission. Which is just a step up from the one size fits all XXXL t-shirts that get blasted out of an air gun at sporting events.
The problem is that organizations today need to be agile, reconfigurable, be able to leverage partners and third party expertise. Unfortunately to operate in this new environment security and permissions need to be dynamic and flexible both internally and externally. To become a next generation enterprise it will be increasingly important to both empower and trust employees when it comes to information and security decisions. Read More »
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July 8th, 2008, 09:37am
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I kept thinking there was a twitter joke in here, but I couldn’t come up with it… can you? As always, you can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
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July 4th, 2008, 04:54pm
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Apparently Facebook and Myspace are ruining my generation’s ability to form relationships. That’s a relief, I always figured I was just really selfish. Apparently not:
Dr Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, said social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have fostered the idea that relationships and friendships can be formed and destroyed quickly and easily.
His argument is that the young whipper-snappers of today put so much value on their digital personas, which inhabit these social networks, that their IRL (in real life) lives are taking the back seat in terms of importance. Since on social networking sites, it’s very easy to forge — and, more importantly for his reasoning, end — relationships, kids today are beginning to believe that relationships are things to be easily disposed of.
At first, this struck me as absurd, but I’ve heard stories of people discovering that they’re no longer in a relationship upon logging into Facebook and seeing the little broken heart icon, (or worse yet: the sms breakup) so maybe there is some weight to it.
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June 22nd, 2008, 10:07pm
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I just finished reading Dan Gordinier’s book “X Saves the World.” We’ve mentioned it a couple of times on the blog (here and here), so as I set it down I thought, ‘well this was a pretty darn good book; maybe I should fashion a little review of sorts for our readers.’ But, as I set myself up for this task, I realize that I haven’t written a book review since Grade 8. In the world of Amazon rating systems and sites like Rotten Tomatoes, does anyone even read individual reviews anymore? Moreover, why would I bore myself with the seriousness of writing a review?
So, let me take a slightly different approach. As I read non-fiction books such as this one, I have a habit of folding the corners of pages where I feel the author has touched on something interesting or struck me with a particularly masterful piece of literary prose. The end result is that if I ever want to flip through the book again, I already know where the “best of” sections are. My copy of X Saves the World has a fair number of folder corners, so instead of a full-blown review, I present you with a very limited teaser of “best of” X Saves the World quotes, as selected by me. Think of it as a book/blog version of a user-generated movie trailer on You Tube (unsanctioned by Gordinier, so hopefully he doesn’t mind).
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