March 17, 2007

  • Entry: 129 L(in)ked (in)

    I joined a new online social network today. This one looks pretty interesting because its more prefessional and career oriented. I recall Clef mentioning that there needs to be better way to go about career connections, and I think linkedin is a pretty good prototype.

    Had one of the most wonderful conversations with Yukino last night. It was one of those reminscent of my college days. Not the "studying for exam" talk but the intellictually wholesome types of talks. The kind were you take a topic of interest, talk through ideas and opinions, and have dialogue that makes you really think about the world. I miss those.

    The discussion began with mergers and acquisitions. A friend of ours works at Tellme which was recently acquired by Microsoft. We both agreed that was a smart decision. A news clip a while back showed that they could benefit from that knowledge, and Tellme has already established itself with products for companies such as Verizon. It is both important for Miscrosoft to expand it's reach to have Window's Mobile as the OS for most mobile phones, as well as introducint new OS and application functionalities.

    We also noticed that Google bought Gapminder, a very nice information visualization (infovis) and business intelligence (BI) tool. Although pretty flashy, Yukino thought that it was an inferior copy to Spotfire. She has some basis to make that statement, since she's taking a class from one of the founders of human computer interaction (HCI) research. Her concern was that releasing software products to be distributed freely can be very damaging to people who make their livelihood as engineers, designers, and IT reserchers. I didn't quite feel that it was harming society to do so, as I felt it was pushing both innovation and a more free market. I tended to have the economic philosophy that in the end it will reach an equilibrium. The producer has a range, they buyer has a range. And trade happens when they overlap. Althogh I did agreed in one aspect with her which in many cases these non-tangible things, like software should be valued more than tangible items, like rubber bands and staples. If you spend $1000 on office cabinets versus $1000 on a computer with software... It's just no comparison.

    My orginal perception was Microsoft is firmly establishing itself a software company of the corporate world, while Google seems to be establishing a foothold as software for the masses. Look to it's simplified and free version of so many products. But what I never had a good understanding of Google's business model. How can it continue to buy up companies for huge amounts of money and distribute items for free, expecially since not all of those items have ad revenue. A light bulb finally came to my head when Yukino explained that some aspects of Google's model is not all that different from Yahoo. If you position yourself as the main portal to the internet, they you build loyalty with the consumer and they are more inclined to spend time there longer.

    Then our chat continued into effects on human anthropology. The effects of the physical industrial city landscape of the future. How we will be living our lives It was almost a breath of fresh air to be able to have open and profound conversations that way. It reminds me why I like the folks of my alma mater so much. They talk like that. They are interested and open minded. They care. They have an opinion. That's what I missed from my academic time, and that's where much of my strongest experiences at that stage of my life were.

    So back to the whole social networks topic. I'm very fortunate to be linked in to great people and great friends who share that type of thought. I took my college as an example, but there are many many people from both my younger years and my professional careers who I can relate like that in some way. I like it when we can bring up the most random topic, and find something interesting to day. Cheers to everyone who is also l(in)ked (in).