Is High Tech on a Tech High?

Today, I think I will focus on technology and how it’s changing the way we communicate with each other – and how news spreads – and how much you can miss out by being afraid of “new” technology that shifts the way you spend your day. Do you pay for a land-line? According to CBS news in 2010  – they determined that 1 out of every 4 homes in the United States have a cell phone and no land-line.

This a trend that will continue as we move to a society that communicates over Skype, Facebook or our Smart Phones. Who needs to pay the phone company for a service that you can get for free or for pennies through your computer or via a cell phone plan?

Nowadays, people want to be connected at all times and are carrying around more information on their cell phones than inside their wallets. Google is paying over $8 billion dollars for Skype, which allows you to make calls or use your computer’s webcam or smart-phone to make video enabled calls. I’ve been using Skype for about 5 years – most recently so my East Coast family can join video calls with my young kids.

Why is this important? Skype has become the largest international voice carrier – and resistance is futile. If you want to pay more – keep paying the phone company for something you can do easier and cheaper on your cell phone, PC or tablet. Microsoft is banking that you will drop your phone company and use one of their mobile devices or PC’s to do everything in life.

We can already connect with our old high school friends, get breaking news as it happens (more on that later) and do business on single sites. This purchase is a big gamble – but Microsoft now owns one of the coolest pieces of technology to sell you on this idea. This is going to have an impact on how you spend your dollars making phone calls.

You already use their operating system – why not use their video and phone product? We call this a “single point of failure” in the high-tech world. One piece goes down – it all crashes.

Facebook, not Google, is the biggest online site in the U.S.  Why? Because you can do just about anything on it – and eventually you will be able to make calls and it will cook you breakfast. OK, maybe not the last one, but trust me – someone is trying to make that happen somewhere.

How do you communicate? Better yet, how do you get your news? Twitter.com was the first site to break the bin laden news, even though this micro-blogger didn’t even know what he was writing was the biggest news of the decade.  I worked for the news industry for over 5 years – ending my career in news when I saw the fine line between journalism and revenue generation becoming a blurred mess.

I never thought I would hear about Bin Laden’s news from Facebook – but I did – and so did just about the rest of the nation. Facebook even asked their users where they heard about the news? (see pic) . This gives new meaning to the phrase “ where were you when you heard about xxxx?”

Most people – 25 years ago – would have said “in front of the TV.” Nowadays, it’s “on my phone while I was out & about somewhere.” No one gets their breaking news from newspapers anymore, which is unfortunate. The American people want instant gratification all the time – and right away.

Some people prefer the quiet solitude of reading a newspaper with their morning coffee – the only sounds being those of birds chirping and the paper rustling (or highway noise, depending on where you live) – while some prefer the clickety-clack of a keyboard or the eye straining brightness given off by an Iphone screen.

Hyperlocal news sites like the La Mesa Patch allow you access to your ultra-local news, which will helps those living in La Mesa see the real stories behind the local events that are buried once a week in the Union Tribune.

On a side note, I like the local reporting in the U-T, especially by Karen Pearlman – but the paper’s Marketing department is kidding themselves with their “over 1 million readers ---- per week” marketing spin. If they are counting online and paper readers – 1 million divided by 7 days in the week = 142,857 per day and the San Diego Metro population is around 3,095,313 people , that means less than 5% of people in the San Diego area are getting their news from the Tribune each day. 95% of people in San Diego County are getting their news elsewhere.

Big Business wouldn’t be spending BILLIONS on companies if they knew they were going to fail or NOT offer something extraordinary to the populace – it’s up to Big Government to do that.