Over the Edge, Back In Action
Returning to my computer science journal is long over due, and to start it all off I am going to be looking at the fun and hassel of the latest craze, webbloging.
I spent the start of this week vacationing down in Tampa, Florida. Not only did I need to visit my best friend since childhood but I needed to checkout Ybor City where every year they celebrate the Gaspardilla festival. When leaving Tampa though I wanted to find some reading material to pass the time on the air plane. These days I turn to USA Today to get in the know on what is going on in the world.
In the September 20th Life section they had an article on "How Many Friends Are Too Many?" The article looks at teenager's and young adult's quest to have the largest list of friends on MySpace.com. There are some interesting things that I read about and amazingly have a hard time connecting with. Perhaps it is because I am in Generation 'X' instead of Generation y.
Teenagers today seem to be under the impression that technologies such as instant messaging is new and anyone older than 20 just doesn't get it. Today, while I am hard at work developing new advances in software I have an application called AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) up and running. My friends and I have a chat room we go to everyday and have running conversations to help pass the day. My teenage buddy, let's just call him "David", uses the same service and after reading this article I am not sure if he falls into the "Friend" victimization or not.
I got the feeling that most teenagers would look at my buddy list and laugh. Why? My buddy list contains my wife and about eight friends. The USA Today article focused on 17 year old girls who would only consider being friend with people who have over 100 friends. "If they only have 4 friends they must be losers", one of the girls tells USA Today.
"David" who is 14 years old today probably doesn't realize that I have been using AIM since they early 90s, I think 1993 to be exact. At that time though it wasn't called AIM, it was America Online (AOL) or just plain old "A" from AIM. Given I was in college I can say everyone I sent instant messages to was complete strangers. My buddies went to the same college and I saw then in class, after class, at parties, on road trips, etc. Today my buddy list contains only those who I do similar activities with today. In fact my buddy list contains real life friends, not some people who read my blogs and think I am cool. Let's face it, this journal along with Rejections From the Broadside are my attempts to do blogs and if you wanted to be my friend based on this I would love to know what your image of me is.
I have seen "David's" buddy list. The list of screen names goes on forever. How many of these people are real friends he hangs out with in real life, probably 12 to 20. As a soon to be father issues like this interest me cause I want my child to be aware of the good aspects of technology and the people who abuse the tools that technology provide. "David" is not an abuser, he doesn't subscribe to the "virtual list of friends is my identity" theory that teenagers seem to be falling into.
The article shows a picture of one of the girls who has a friend's list of over 100. For the photo she printed out and framed pictures of some people from her friend list. One of the pictures shows a teenage boy wearing sunglasses looking smug for the camera. "Ok he looks cool" I think to myself but then I wonder if he is cool, just acts cool, does he do anything interesting? If she knows the answers to these question cool but what if that person is only a friend cause he looks cool? All I can think of as a soon to be father is I hope the friends that I have now I will have in ten years so my child has an example of how real world friends can be balanced with the online buddies. That is probably the missing piece of the puzzle. I know my parents know nothing of technology. For me and my peers we were here using the computer when Marc Andresen was making the web browser cool.
So for teenagers, social circles are being built by people who read blogs and enjoy what the read. In the money section of the same news paper it turns out small businesses are generating revenue from customers who enjoy reading blogs about the inside working of the company. According to the article customers enjoy reading blogs as it helps establish a more personal connection with the company. The recommended business blog update should be three times a week and for some smaller companies has added an additional 12% to their customer base.
Now this got me thinking as to what a blog of my workings at a small company would be like. Right now it would be "I'm coding, still coding, oh dear God there is more coding!" Of course there is the company blog that would be written by my boss: "Ugh, I want to pick a differential credential disposition... that Gaspar keeps dumbing it down... QA just encourages it." Computer security requires a certain level of seriousness thanks to the vulnerabilities the world has to live with from Microsoft. Bloging the daily routines of the Research and Development group I am part of will definitely have high school graduates consider studying for a career in computer science but for the company's bottom line, well the jury is still out.
Now while marketing the security products I develop is not going to happen here, with some releases of "Gaspar's New Paradigm" due to hit the public domain soon I can blog about my decisions to take the software in the direction it is going in and some of the internal debates about how features should work. This maybe where bloging is helpful. Providing insight into the application at this level may help some customers who do research consider buying our product, especially if some of the considerations I made effect how they do business.
While this type of information doesn't open the door as much as a good marketing campaign and awesome looking brochures, it does get down the bare bone basics of the problems the solution is developed to address. Will it be useful information? Who knows, the bigger question is will I have time to actually blog. For me, writing code is more fun than talking about it. But talking about my code will generate interest in the skills I have to offer. Perhaps it is time I revisit the idea of frequent blogging. The worst that could happen is hundreds of teenagers add me to their friends list. Granted they will be computer nerds but hey with those types of numbers I will be cool. Thanks for joining me in this mental trip Over the Edge!
