In May of 2000 I moved to the Bay Area to start a new job at AvantGo. At the time the company was about 200 employees and I was part of an expansion to build out our consumer product, the AvantGo Mobile Internet service.
Over the next year and a half I experienced our IPO, traveled across the country, helped grow our content providers from 200 to 1,500, worked with the top media brands in the world, watched our user base grow into the millions, saw good friends receive pink slips and finally received one myself. After 14 months and an acquisition by Sybase/iAnywhere Solutions, I was invited to return and spent three more years working on the AvantGo team.
Just like any other career, the job had its highs and lows, but on the whole working at AvantGo was one of the best professional decisions I ever made. I had some of the best managers and co-workers of my career, learned volumes, and made life long friends.
I made the decision to leave AvantGo to pursue new opportunities in 2006. Today the service is shutting down and the brand is being transitioned to a new product line. In honor of that, former employees are meeting in Palo Alto tonight to raise a pint and share memories. If you are a former employee, please stop by.
Last night I met with an old colleague of mine, @pddooley , for drinks at Kate O’Briens to discuss Web 2.0 marketing strategies. He is just about to complete a class on the subject taught by Peter Young and wanted to pick my brain on how he should use Twitter.
My friend’s concern was around the proper mix of personal and professional content and the affect mixing may have on his online reputation/personal brand. I found myself reaching back to a post I wrote regarding a Mashable article on the do’s and don’ts of Twitter and reiterating the same point I focused on from that article - 3. Do let it all hang out.
After reviewing that post today I decided and that the subject needed to be explored in more depth. The mix any person chooses is ultimately up to them, but I have found that mixing is better than not.
My blog, which you are reading, is my professional voice, yet it also features links to my accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Yelp which are either a combination of personal and professional or purely personal. I am a person with thoughts and opinions which not everyone will agree with, but providing a one dimensional voice online tends to create one dimensional posts. These sites add depth and substance to my identity online and in turn to my blog and to me this is a good thing.
Think of your last job interview. Did the conversation strictly adhere to your skills and performance, or did it wander? Did you discuss personal experiences, hobbies and attributes that were not directly associated with the position? Employers look for the whole person, not just your body of work. Twitter and other social media help round out my online personality.
Do I censor myself on Twitter? Yes (as I do on other social networks as well), but I try to do so in a way that still allows me to communicate effectively. Could some of my comments on Twitter (or this blog) prevent me from professional opportunities? Perhaps, but if that is the case, I would bet that those are opportunities I am better for not taking.
One of the most used third-party applications on my iPhone is Yelp (iTunes link). From finding restaurants nearby to looking up a number for reservations, the app has proven immensely useful. In the next few days they will be releasing an update that will make it even more valuable.
New Features:
Quick Tips
Review Drafts
Enhanced GPS capabilities
Friend Feed feature
The enhancements look great. You can see a tour of the new application below and read a full review is at TechCrunch.
March Tweetness alllows fans to find, follow and engage with the most exciting March Madness conversations happening in real-time. You can follow specific games, teams, players, fan groups.
Users can comment in favor or against a team in any game. The window for any particular team appears to be pulling posts from Twitter directly, including those that are not basketball related. The UNC window has ‘tweets’ regarding the upcoming game against Gonzaga, the rights of unborn children in NC and a bar tending competition currently occurring on the NC coast. It looks like the use of # posts may not have been implemented correctly.
The site looks interesting and has huge potential. At previous companies we had discussed the value of fan ‘taunting’ due to the high level of involvement around college and professional sports. If they could only limit the content to that of the game at hand this might be a real winner and a new revenue source for Twitter.
The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
This is an incredible proposal to embrace emerging trends rather than hiding from them. It is commonly accepted that reaching kids in meaningful ways includes using the mediums and tools they use while not forsaking the pillars of education. It would be great to see the American school system incorporate similar strategies.
The areas of new functionality that get the content/news geek in me excited are the application subscription and expanded content purchases. Look out for some exciting new apps from paid content providers.
In 1998 we did a case study on Palm, then a subsidiary of US Robotics, in one of my business classes. At the end of the class my professor passed his Palm Pilot around the class for us to demo. The OS was simple, elegant and solid. From that moment on I was hooked. That week I manipulated some finances and went out and bought the Palm Pilot Professional.
Two years later I packed my car and moved to the Bay Area where I had secured a job with AvantGo, a mobile software provider. I attended user group meetings and learned as much as I could about personal digital assistants and what they could do.
Nine years have past and I am still working the mobile space. The passion has stayed with me, and lead to this blog.
Now the Palm OS is being put to rest. Long overdue for an update it will be replaced with the Palm Pre and webOS. Engadget posted some pics and a video from a user group in Hong Kong bidding the Palm OS a find farewell. Enjoy the trip down memory lane.
Jimmy Fallon had a good first week as host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The guests and musical acts were some of the greats - Robert DeNiro, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore to name a few.
But that isn’t the real story from my perspective. The groundbreaking aspect of this show is its use of technology to interact with fans. Last week Jimmy allowed users to submit questions via Twitter. The show site is essentially a blog with RSS and tags. The site features online video and connects to myNBC, a community of fans.
Last night Jimmy Fallon took it one step further and had Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky as his guest, and he brought a surprise - a Palm Pre. Considering the the Pre has not been seen out in ‘the wild’ much since CES this was a fairly big step for Palm. It could be argued that Jimmy’s audience is primarily composed of iPhone owners, and Palm is going after them head on. Jimmy’s excitement over the device was evident, and he asked if the Pre is better than the iPhone. At the end of the interview he ‘gave’ the phone to his drummer (Questlove from the Roots.) The results of this pre-release viewing are yet to be seen, but I bet is only adds to the hype around the upcoming release of the Pre.
Joshua and Jimmy palled around at CES this year and their chemistry is spot on which make me believe Josh will become a regular guest. Late night TV could become the new showplace to debut technology.
My name is Kemp Mullaney and I have been in the mobile industry since 2000. This blog covers my thoughts on products and practices in the mobile and general technology spaces.
Email:
kemp at kempmullaney dot com
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My name is Kemp Mullaney and I have been in the mobile industry since 2000. This blog covers my thoughts on products and practices in the mobile and general technology spaces.
