Category Archives: Trends

About a month ago, I talked about my experiences with the hiring process at Company A. I still maintain that in the job search process, you have a responsibility to yourself to trust your own instincts. However, there also comes a time when you just need to pay the rent, instincts be damned. That’s how I ended up at Company B.

The same week I was offered the Company A job, I was also offered a position at Company B. Company B represented everything I could have done back in Cincinnati. It wasn’t a change; it wasn’t technology; it wasn’t in a great location; it didn’t have the focus I wanted. It did offer slightly more than my minimum salary requirement and it would suffice in the short-run. It even had a decent job title, so taking the job wouldn’t be setting me back in any way. But in no way was this the dream job I’d moved across the country to find.

Remember all those red flags I should have paid attention to with Company A? Even Company B raised some red flags. Unfortunately, I had to pay the rent. Company B interviewed me six times, including phone interviews, between early September and my start date in December. I was told different things by different people throughout the interviews. In particular, I kept probing into how were they using learning technology. The question was answered differently each time. I think it depended on how much the interviewer wanted to sell me on the position as to how they answered. In the end, I crossed my fingers.

Have you ever wanted to build your very own mobile application? Are you having trouble trying to figure out the server-side backend functionality? Well don’t waste precious time on that–a new startup has emerged out of it’s “beta” phase to help you out. It’s called Parse and it was started in June 2011 as a service designed to “provide cloud service for mobile developers. It makes it dead simple to add a backend to your iOS or Android app.”  With over 10,000 developers already signed up with Parse, the goal for the company is to be, quite frankly, considered the “Heroku of Mobile“.

A Y Combinator-funded company, Parse was founded by startup veterans, including co-founders Ilya Sukhar, James Yu, Tikhon Bernstam, and Kevin Lacker. Just within their first year, Parse has raised over $7 million in funding from angel investors like Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Yuri Milner, Garry Tan, Don Dodge, SV Angel, and many others, in addition to a Series A round covered by Ignition Partners. With all this funding, what problem is Parse really trying to solve? Well according to Mr. Bernstam, a co-founder, many mobile app developers just aren’t “deeply familiar” with the server-side code that you need to manage things like databases, user authentication, notifications, and even other common features. Parse hopes to cut through all that angst and just let developers push out their mobile apps a lot quicker by simply leveraging the service’s extensive library of resources.

Have you wondered what’s the largest website (based on visits) are in the United States? You might think it would be Facebook with it’s enormous user database, but you’d be a bit off on your count. In a 24/7 Wall Street report by Douglas McIntyre and reported on MSNBC today, a look at the top sites has been done to see which Internet property is dominating the rest in terms of traffic. It’s estimated that that there are over 240 million users on the Internet as of 2010, and in the two years since then, it’s probably drastically increased. If you look at the list curated by Mr. McIntyre, you might be surprised by a couple of things: it’s being reported that each one technically has a different business model and none are in the same business as the other. I’ve looked at the list and it seems that some are actually in the same business, but it isn’t their primary competency. But when it’s all said and done, this year, the largest web properties are mostly dominated by those with capabilities in search and have an offering in social media.

The list by Mr. McIntyre includes the world’s largest search engine, web portal, video site, software company, social network, encyclopedia, and e-commerce site. Technology has certainly done a tremendous job at cornering this list, but then again, it’s not that unexpected right? The Internet is all about technology so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to expect these sites to not be on the list. It should be noted that this curated list only includes size of the site and traffic. The revenue generated isn’t necessarily factored in–according to MSNBC, “revenue is not essential to size online, but size can be essential to revenue.”

So what Internet properties took top honors as the largest websites in the United States?

Over the past several years, lots of people have been excited or confused by what has apparently been all the rage and has become the standard of measurement: digital influence. This unique form of measurement has been thrust into the spotlight through the high interest of services like Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, and many others. The intrigue one gets by looking up their score and determining their stature against their peers is quite interesting and on services like Klout, you can even give props (or +K in Klout’s case) to help show others why you think that person is influential. Consumers also like these services because the more chatter you throw onto the Internet through the use of social media can make you eligible for perks–and they’re not insignificant either…I’ve received Klout perks for Virgin America flights, TV shows, Eye-Fi cards, discounts to conferences, and much more. Real brands are starting to pay attention to these services because they feel that it can help them reach influential people and increase sales.

Well hold on a minute…trying to find a way to increase your reach and influence the influencers is one thing, but for brands who want to rely solely on those scores that these services provide you can be a bit misleading. Consumers probably don’t care about the breakdown of their scores, but for brands, it just might be the key selling point. They’re interested in knowing whether the score you have on Klout, PeerIndex, or Kred will tell them whether your social media engagement is relevant to their goal. Well shockingly, none of the major top measurement services seem to do just that. And what brands need to know is how to better understand the concept of “digital influence” and in a new report written by Altimeter Group’s Brian Solis, companies may have their answer.

South by Southwest Interactive 2012 is now over and it’s taken everyone probably a few days to get well-adjusted back to their normal routines and to take note of all the people that they’ve met, recount all the new things that they’ve learned, reminisce on the great memories they’ve made, and basically just detox from the incredible fun they had. This year had a bunch of highs and lows and if you happened to be at SXSW (or even if you weren’t there), here are a few things to note that helped shape this year’s conference into what it was:

Celebrities invade SXSW

This year probably saw more well-known celebrities hang out with the masses within the confines of the interactive part of SXSW. Sure, it may have been coincidental that they showed up at all the interactive parties and sessions while the Film portion was going on, but then again, it’s not that far-fetched to hear about celebrities taking an interest in technology. Hell, Two And A Half Men star Ashton Kutcher has invested in several well-known startups and even created one called Katalyst that sponsored the Foursquare party last year at SXSW. Even, The Social Network co-star Justin Timberlake is one of the owners of MySpace, while comedian Will Ferrell created the hit comedy site Funny or Die. Other celebrities include Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and MC Hammer.

So at SXSW, the stars were out in force again to take note about the new and emerging tech while others chose to promote their very own startup. First spotted was Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker who sat down with Shira Lazar for a live episode of What’s Trending from the Samsung TechSet Blogger Lounge where he announced that he was joining a collaborative film studio and social media platform Juntoboxfilms.com. Other celebrities that crossed paths with the tech world include former Vice-President Al Gore, who was on stage to interview famed entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker, Danielle Pannabaker, who was at the Tweethouse to talk Twitter and acting, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Lukas Haas, and Kevin Connolly, all of whom were spotted at the Mobli launch party.

Smashing Pumpkin’s lead singer Billy Corgan also made an appearance at SXSW and showed up on stage for an interview with Altimeter Group’s Brian Solis to talk about the music industry and how it could change. Prior to that, he sat down with Ms. Lazar for What’s Trending in the Samsung TechSet Blogger Lounge to give a preview of his talk.

And if you count musicians, SXSW interactive was definitely one hell of a party–Jay-Z made an appearance this year and held a truly interactive concert hosted by American Express. This was a milestone for the rapper, as it marked his first solo performance at the festival (music, film, or interactive), and the show was even simulcast over the Internet–it became an instant trending topic.

The winners of SXSW

It’s clear that no one really won this year. No emerging technology was the most talked about like we experienced with Twitter and Foursquare in the past. But besides that, there were some great things that won over the people. In fact, one of them was probably the main thing that people will see over the next few years: food trucks. Yes, that’s right…this year we saw more and more trucks being parked around the downtown Austin area. From Mashable to Whole Foods, and even NBC’s Today Show, there was a lot of options for people to get their grub on without needing to wait around in the long lines at the nearby establishments or even in the convention center. These are great opportunities to really connect with the masses and fortunately for everyone, the weather wound up clearing up and let people enjoy the outdoors for a while.

So I suppose that leads me to the next winner: the event planners who had expected to hold their events out in the sun. Weeks before SXSW, many people probably thought it was going to be hot and sunny all through the interactive portion. Unfortunately, the early days of interactive wound up being a bit of a rained-out mess, but after a couple days, the sun peeked its head out through the clouds and brought warmth and sun to the festivities. Bing, who had an open-air lounge, was able to operate without having to have people stay inside, while the Nike area, which enabled people to get a bit of exercise, could actually be useful. Even those events in sheltered venues were able to reap the benefits since most people probably didn’t want to stay close to their hotels and could now venture out without being drenched on.

Next up? If SXSW this year showed us anything, is that with each passing year, more and more apps are coming out to get our attention and with each successive year, more and more of our phone’s battery will start to drain away requiring us to practically be tethered to an outlet at all hours of the day. Thankfully, the invention of tools like the Mophie powerpack or other similar portable battery devices have become a godsend to many people who eagerly wish to use the latest and greatest application available out there. Even TechCrunch is declaring the Mophie the real SXSW “winner”. Sure, there were charging stations centered around all downtown Austin, but that would require people to only stay in one spot and, as we know from it being SXSW, you can’t be in one spot longer than a few minutes or you’re going to miss something. Having a device like the Mophie has become more crucial than ever and if the mobile device doesn’t find a way to increase the battery life, better stock up on your portable batteries for next year!

What’s this about proximity apps?

As SXSW neared, there was a lot of hype given to the new age of proximity apps like Highlight, Glancee, Banjo, etc. and some thought that it would become the next big thing. Unfortunately, with the issue surrounding battery life and the drainage people incurred as a result of these apps, most of the time people stuck to using more tried and true methods of finding their friends like using Foursquare, Twitter, and even group messaging services like TextPlus or GroupMe. With over 20,000 people in attendance at SXSW, it’s going to be hard to pick out someone in the crowd that is right near you, especially if you’re in a darkened area like a Jay-Z concert or in a crowded area like Mashable’s party or trying to get into the Foursquare event. Even with all this against them, some probably managed to “steal the show”, but didn’t really seem to garner the interest like you would expect with Twitter or Foursquare.

If you do a search on proximity apps on Google and how they’ve fared at SXSW, one of the things you might notice is that the one app that stood out and got the most buzz was Highlight. Reuters has cited it as the star of the show (although that remains debatable). If anything, it’s one of the most-talked about apps that didn’t really earn all the hype that it was hoping to receive. I’m sure that there’s some more in store with proximity apps, but at SXSW, it just didn’t live up to the hype.

So there you have it…a quick recap of some of the things that went down at this year’s SXSW. If you ever want to look at some of the photos from the festivities, make sure you check out my Flickr photostream.

Photo credit: All photos shown here were taken by Ken Yeung.