There are not many websites and authors who I can say directly affected and inspired me to start blogging, but over the past few months, I have been fortunate enough to interview almost all of them. People like Walt Mossberg of the Wall St. Journal, David Pogue of the NY Times, and MG Siegler of TechCrunch are just a few examples.
Yesterday, just in case you were not online, was Apple’s annual WWDC event. I wrote how Apple’s announcements won’t really change anything for the industry. I was wrong!
By now, we all know that “Geek” is the new “Cool”, and I have met my share of geeks in my time, but David Pogue is on a whole new level. David has been writing a weekly personal technology column for the New York times since November, 2000. He also writes a monthly tech column for Scientific American. In addition, David is a featured guest on various TV shows including his CNBC appearances every Thursday, CBS Sunday Morning, and his show “Making Stuff” on PBS.
Twitter, with all its shortcomings, is truly a revolutionary platform. Why do I say that? Not because of the the active role it played in the world’s most recent revolutions. I am also not saying it because of the major world events for which the news first broke on Twitter. I am talking from a personal perspective. The people I have had the chance to meet and even interview, are people I would never ever have had the opportunity to connect with, had it not been for this platform.
A few months back, I decided to start something a little different with this site and in addition to posts on tech and marketing, I decided to add interviews as well. I wanted to interview the shakers of the industry, but first and foremost, I wanted to get the opportunity to interview the people that inspired me to start writing. I can now say, mission accomplished.
Someone has to seriously put an end to this insanity. The problem with the Web in general is that everything is black and white. It is either great or terrible. This is true about so many industries. Take for example the mobile space. Every phone that comes out is either an “iPhone Killer” or it is so 2010 and does not belong in a market with the iPhone. Is there no middle ground?
Developing an app is far from an easy task. As app consumers, we always hear about the success of apps like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and others. However, as someone said last week at an event I attended, “For every Angry Birds, there are a lot of angry developers”. This is not a post about the challenges of app development, but if we were to sum up two of the major issues developers face, it would be discovery and monetization.
By now, I have done quite a nice amount of interviews with some of the most awesome people in tech. You can see a partial list here. All of the people I was fortunate enough to interview have had an effect in one way or another on my career as a content and marketing guy. However, MG Siegler leads the pack for me. He is one of the main writers/journalists on TechCrunch, which is widely accepted as the Web’s top authority on tech and startups, but that is not why I am such a fan.
One of the things I try to do here on this blog, is interview people who have inspired me and many others in the online world. My interviews include Guy Kawasaki, Walt Mossberg, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Mike McCue, Alyssa Milano, Peter Vesterbacka, Ben Parr, and many more. All of the interviews were done via email, as in I send the questions over email and get the responses over email. However, my latest interview was a little different.
As time goes by and I spend more time on Twitter, two things seem to be happening. On the one hand, I am finding that the number of great people and amazing relationships I build on a daily basis, is only growing. As more people join Twitter and the micro blogging service hits the mainstream, I am regularly meeting new folks that are not necessarily part of the “early adopter” community, and that is great. On the flip side, more and more people are talking about Twitter and its explosive potential, which results directly in people trying to manipulate the system.
This post is somewhat of a rant. As a person who pretty much lives on the Web, I am very exposed to the power of social media. Having said that, I think by now, that topic is pretty much covered from all angles. What is not covered and what people like to brush under the carpet, are the potential down sides and even outright dangers accompanied by the advancements that social media bring.
