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With the somewhat-sudden loss of Steve Jobs, everyone is wondering about the future of Apple. The stagnation of Facebook also has people wondering what Mark Zuckerberg has up his sleeve next. Twitter has taken flight and is continuing to gain speed as it moves towards the horizon. Everyone in Silicon Valley is scrambling to be the next big thing.
Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.
Many people, in the United States and across the world want to have that single great idea that makes them millions. They want to find a niche in the technology world to fill. Once you think the market is saturated with tech companies, innovative ideas and more services you didn’t know you needed, something else comes up. It seems almost inevitable.
It’s one of the great things about innovators like Steve Jobs. They keep on re-inventing and they keep on moving forward.
But this post is not about Steve Jobs.
We are suffering from a lack of clear vision and focus. So many people get start-up money, rent some office space, add “fun extras” and wait for the money to roll in. Google did not gain it’s place in the marketplace by offering gourmet meals to it’s employees and adding treadmill-desks to the offices. They did it by working hard and thinking outside of the box.
I think too many of us fail to do the same. We expect that our great ideas will be enough to carry us through.
What we need are fresh injections of new ideas and new perspectives. I came across a blog entry that made the statement that we need to see more women in tech. I think that’s only a partial answer. I think we need more of everyone in tech. Many people of color and most socio-economic statures never venture into tech. Often it’s the lack of education. But there are many other factors at play. Many people think it’s too hard. Or too boring. Some people just don’t have the financial or emotional support to dedicate the hours needed in order to put good ideas into action.
It’s not to say that the people who make technology now aren’t doing it well or fast enough. But if we have more people with different cultural and educational perspectives, I’m sure that we’d see technology move even faster than ever.
Are you up for the challenge?
Ebonye Gussine is a recent graduate in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She loves writing, reading, and is an avid fan of John Steinbeck’s works. In her spare time she sings off-key and travels to new places.
I’ll venture a guess and say that most of you have heard of Mark Zuckerberg. I’ll venture another guess and say that most of you have not heard of Reid Hoffman or Jack Dorsey. Hoffman and Dorsey are at a decided disadvantage here as Zuckerberg is the centerpiece character in the Oscar nominated movie The Social Network. No big screen for Hoffman or Dorsey. But I’m thinking that’s just fine with Hoffman as his company will soon go public. That said, Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn, and Dorsey is the founder of Twitter.
Left to right: Zuckerberg, Hoffman, Dorsey
In full disclosure, I really never understood the fascination with Twitter – or, at times, with Facebook. Pardon my learning curve but status updates like getting ready to vacuum just do not strike me as the depth of information that needs to be posted for public consumption. But far be it from I to make the perfect the enemy of the good. As social network platforms, there is no denying their power and significance in today’s interconnected world. Connections matter. Get on board or get left behind.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses that John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie, along with a number of other capitalists of that era, were all born between 1830 in 1837. It was the dawn of a new era saliently marked by extraordinarily robust growth in the oil and railroad industries. These men prominently stood at the epicenter of such industries, in the right place, at the right time. We saw a similar occurrence during the computer revolution. Had Bill Gates and Steve Jobs been born in an earlier time, Microsoft and Apple might not exist today. To their credit, all of these men comprehensively harnessed the technologies and infrastructure advancements that were available to them at the time, and ran with it, while the rest of the world remained pedestrian. They were risk takers and unyielding in there myopic focus in seeing what others could not, or would not, envision. But it was the combination of internal forces and external facilitators (most of all, timing) that ultimately brought their embryonic visions to fully matured fruition.
In a sense, Zuckerberg, Hoffman, and Dorsey are today’s Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie. They are visionaries, entrepreneurs, business luminaries, and billionaires. Like their predecessors in their respective sectors, these contemporaries figure prominently at the forefront of the newly created social networking space. J.P. Morgan dressed in a three-piece suit and top hat as he walked through Central Park while Mark Zuckerberg goes to work in a Gap sweatshirt and flip-flops. Yet, both have had an astounding impact on the world. They all deserve celebration and should be lauded (unlike many “celebrities” who have accomplished remarkably little and often contribute nothing of value to our society – read: Kardashians) for their respective, significant creations that we all may opt-into as participants. They are corporate titans of the highest magnitude, even in flip-flops.
John Brigantino is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. He enjoys writing, non-fiction books, traveling and the many cultural and leisure experiences Manhattan has to offer.
Yesterday, news broke that MySpace, the one time crowned king of social networking, will be laying of 47% of its staff. That means upwards of 500 employees may find themselves without a job. Casualties of a battle that MySpace lost years ago. Sure, the NewsCorp powered spin machine is in full effect saying that thanks to the site’s recent refocus and redesign they have streamlined their operations and are doing just fine, but no one is really buying that. Mainly because nothing says “I’m doing just fine” quite like firing half of your staff.
But the writing was on the wall long before their hip new redesign. It seems like no one at MySpace got the memo that no one uses their site anymore. And that’s all thanks to Time’s Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg
If you’re not familiar with Mr. Zuckerberg (and really, after a semi-biographical hit movie and the aforementioned Time Magazine cover, you probably should), you’re definitely familiar with his product. You’re probably mildly obsessed with it as well.
With more than 500 million active users, Facebook is nothing less than THE most important and socially relevant communication tool of the last decade. Forget about your iPhone, forget about your email account, and definitely forget about your MySpace account. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have not only changed the world, they’ve secured their position as the industry leader that will CONTINUE to change the world for the foreseeable future.
If you want to know just how unconcerned Mr. Zuckerberg is about alleged competition, look no further than his financial support of the anti-Facebook social networking site Diaspora.
In a world where every piece of technology you invest in is out of date two days later, it’s safe to say that Facebook is here to stay. They’ve grown too large to just disappear. So if you’re looking for the best place to network online, Facebook is the perfect starting point. Sure there are other niche sites that are well worth your time (they will be discussed in detail as this column continues). But for better or worse, Facebook is the undisputed king of social networking. Not even Google has been able to topple them.
Though it’s entirely possible, that someone might turn Facebook into a MySpace-sized dinosaur, it is equally likely (if not more so) that they are here to stay. They have built a company infrastructure that will be able to grow and adapt to their audience’s needs. Conversely, their audience has proven that they’re invested enough to stick with them through a series of very public privacy concerns. If major issues like that aren’t enough to shake Facebook’s base, it seems quite clear that they have filled the needs of their audience so well that no matter what they do, people will stick around. Of course there will be some vocal complaining – it’s the internet, you should expect no less – but people will all but forget about it after a week when they get sucked back in to all the features the site provides.
An artist's rendition of what a map of the world's online communities would look like based on size. How many have you used?
So how many of you are active Facebook users? What other sites do you use for networking and staying in touch with friends and contacts? Do you think there’s anything on the horizon that can put a dent into Facebook’s global empire?
Shawn Abraham is SPS’ Virtual Campus Manager, which means he gets to have a lot of fun building an online community for the school. He also has a lot of fun reading books about zombies. These two things rarely intersect.
