This is the future, people. If Google make this into a consumer product, their stock price will go through the roof.
There are lots of mental and technological barriers to break first, though.
via Jeremiah Owyang
Posted in Innovation
Why do people decide to share what they share? What makes something go viral? What kind of things can companies do to encourage more sharing from their users?
These are the types of questions that my friend Matt Schlicht and I ask ourselves pretty much every day. Studying why people share helps us understand human nature.
Matt, the co-founder of Tracks.by (a company I advise), has come up with a few theories about social, but he needs to test them. That’s why he’s decided to start a Social Experimenter’s Newsletter to try and test out his theories.
I encourage you to sign up for Matt’s Social Experimenter’s Newsletter. It will be a fascinating look into why we share and how we can encourage more of it.
Posted in Innovation
Women are still paid far less than men on average. Women make approximately 0.77 cents to every dollar a man makes, according to Time Magazine.
There are a lot of contributing factors to this problem, but one that a lot of people don’t focus on is how most women are losing out during the salary negotiation.
I ran across an extraordinarily interesting thread on Reddit today. The thread is by a person who performs the salary negotiations for a large multinational technology company.
“I regularly hire women for 65% to 75% of what males make,” the anonymous Redditor says. “I am sick of it.”
More from the thread:
“Our process, despite the pay gap, is identical for men and women. We start with phone interviews, and move into a personal and technical interview. Once a candidate passes both of those, we start salary negotiations. This is where the women seem to come in last.
The reason they don’t keep up, from where I sit, is simple. Often, a woman will enter the salary negotiation phase and I’ll tell them a number will be sent to them in a couple days. Usually we start around $45k for an entry level position. 50% to 60% of the women I interview simply take this offer. It’s insane, I already know I can get authorization for more if you simply refuse. Inversely, almost 90% of the men I interview immediately ask for more upon getting the offer.”
This problem continues to the counteroffer. Men will simply put out a higher number, while many women in this person’s experience don’t even put out a number, so the negotiator continues to lowball it.
You may say that this type of salary negotiation is unfair, but this is how markets work — two sides haggling over perceived value. The fundamental issue here is how women perceive and carry themselves during these negotiations and how often they ask for a raise.
This is an issue that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, a woman I deeply admire, has continually noticed. “Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” Sandberg told an audience during her famous TED Women talk. 57% of men negotiate a higher salary for their first job out of college, while only 7% of women do the same.
Fighting this issue is not just about laws and regulations, but awareness and mindset. Tell that young college senior niece or daughter of yours that she is worth more and that she should be confident in demanding more. If a company doesn’t accept her terms, it’s their loss and not hers.
I’ve embedded Sheryl’s TED talk for good measure. Let me know what you think of the male-female salary gap issue in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr, GS+
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, My musings
The day before the Groupon IPO, a friend not in the tech industry asked me what I thought about the IPO. “Do you foresee the company’s stock going up a lot?” he asked me.
I had a four word response: “Down. Bad stock. Toxic.”
By the looks of it, my market prediction has come true.
Look: I’m rooting for Groupon to succeed. I want Chicago, my home city, to become a major tech hub. A successful Groupon would go a long way towards bringing money, innovation and talent to the Midwest. But I stand by my Social Analyst column on Groupon and the entire daily deals industry:
“There are still a lot of daily deals startups in the market right now. My day isn’t complete without at least three pitching me for a story on Mashable. But while more daily deals startups may be getting off the ground, the big players are clearly realizing that this business is being commoditized by intense competition and fatigue by consumers and local businesses. Fifty-two percent of U.S. consumers say they feel overwhelmed by the number of daily deals emails hitting their inboxes.”
Groupon Now hasn’t taken off the way the company wanted it to, and the antics of its CEO aren’t helping. I really, really hope they can mastermind a turnaround, but my prediction is that Groupon isn’t even close to the bottom yet.
(Side note: I’m not a professional stock analyst. Don’t depend on me for your stock picks.)
Posted in Innovation
Dear friends, family, colleagues and supporters,
Friday, November 18, was my last day at Mashable. I want to thank the Mashable team for 3+ amazing years. They truly have been the best years of my life.
I also want to thank everybody who has been part of my journey. Your help and kindness have been constant sources of strength. I don’t know what I would have done without you.
During my time at Mashable, I wrote 2,446 articles, explored the technology world through my column and interviewed everyone from Ashton Kutcher to Mark Zuckerberg.
But most of all, I learned so much from the thousands of entrepreneurs that I have met. I will not forget their struggles, their triumphs and their ideas. I wish I could have written more of their stories. It was a true honor.
As for what’s next: I am considering several opportunities right now and will definitely keep you all posted as to my future plans. I want to leverage the national platform that I have built and use it to help, empower and reach as many people as I can. I’m exploring options in the media world, the entertainment world, the startup world, the venture capital world and elsewhere. But as always, I’m open to suggestions.
I do intend to continue writing and commentating about the technology and entrepreneurial world, though. Therefore, I will continue my Social Analyst column on BenParr.com for now.
I remain an advisor to NerdsUnite Productions, Tracks.by, Code Academy, Women 2.0 and a few other startups. And I am always interested in working with other brilliant entrepreneurs with ambitious business ideas.
As I’ve told many people, the driving philosophy in my life is this: I have the ability and thus the responsibility to change the world for the better. I want to find a way to empower every person on the planet, so they can pursue their dreams. Today begins the next stage of my journey to fulfill that purpose.
If you want to chat, I can be reached at ben[at]benparr[dot]com. My Gchat is also ben[at]benparr[dot]com, and you can find me on Skype as ben_parr. And of course, I can be found on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Thank you all. I know we will have the opportunity to work together to make a dent in the universe.
Cheers,
~ Ben
Image courtesy of Flickr, Altus
Posted in Announcements, Innovation, My musings, Social Media, Tech
On Sunday, I made another appearance on NBC’s Press:Here. In this edition of the program, NBC’s Scott McGrew, BBC’s Maggie Shiels and I interviewed Michael Shermer, best known for founding The Skeptics Society, creating Skeptic Magazine, hosting Exploring the Unknown and contributing a monthly column to Scientific American.
The conversation covered all the bases: the end of the world, whether vaccines cause Autism, and the impact the web has had on our belief in the odd and the supernatural.
In addition to interviewing Shermer, we also chatted with Samsung’s Jim Elliott about the solid state drive (SSD). Check out both interviews via the videos below:
Posted in Innovation
Tagged interview, Michael Shermer, Samsung, Solid State Drive
About a year ago, my friend Amber Rae asked me to contribute to an ebook she was writing. It was about the “ah ha moment” — the “moment when everything clicks and you know precisely what to do next.”
Amber Rae collected a lot of those stories, and eventually she turned it into Revolution.is, a collection of “weekly stories from change-makers and culture-shapers who take initiative, trust their gut, and create revolutions in their work.” The blog already has a fantastic group of stories, and this week it published mine.
From my mini-essay:
“Before I became the Editor-at-Large of Mashable, I lived and worked in Chicago. In 2008 when I graduated from Northwestern University, I started working for a startup. A few months after taking the job, the company folded and I was left to fend for myself in the job market.
At about the same time my entrepreneurial mentor asked me to join him in building up and expanding a popular health website. Although I wasn’t specifically passionate about health, I was excited about joining my mentor in the task of growing the company. When he left the company a short while later, the excitement withered away.
The job was fine and I did a great job maintaining the website, but I started to realize that my “comfortable” job wasn’t testing my limits or cultivating my passions for entrepreneurship and technology. I knew that I had to make a change.
I didn’t have a singular “ah ha!” moment, but rather a series of thoughts and conversations that led to a decision.”
I highly encourage you to check Amber’s blog out, especially if you’re looking for some inspiration.
Image courtesy of Flickr, nhuisman
Posted in Innovation
The good people over at Dublin-based Websites Made Easy recorded and edited a talk I gave at the Dublin Web Summit in March. My talk, “The Top Questions in Technology,” focused on fostering a discussion around the big issues that have kept the tech world buzzing, including whether we’re in a tech bubble and what part of the world will become the next Silicon Valley.
Thanks to the cuts, the video’s short, sweet and gets right to the core parts of my talk. It also gives you an idea of my speaking style (“high energy” doesn’t quite describe it). As always, if you’re interested in having me speak, check out my Speakergram page.
Posted in Innovation, Social Media
VC and GRP Partner Mark Suster had a fantastic piece in TechCrunch on what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and how it isn’t for the feint of heart.
While I suggest reading it in its entirety, there were two parts that resonated with me. First was his list of qualities/attribute entrepreneurs should have. Here’s the list:
- Not very status oriented
- Doesn’t follow rules very well and questions authority
- Can handle high degrees of ambiguity or uncertainty
- Can handle rejection, being told “no” often and yet still have the confidence in your idea
- Very decisive. A bias toward making decisions – even when only right 70% of the time – moving forward & correcting what doesn’t work
- A high level of confidence in your own ideas and ability to execute
- Not highly susceptible to stress
- Have a high risk tolerance
- Not scared or ashamed of failure
- Can handle long hours, travel, lack of sleep and the trade-offs of having less time for hobbies & other stuff
The other part that struck me was his description of the highs and lows of the startup life, from getting that first round of funding to losing one of your top VPs and a big contract in the same week. We romanticize the startup life here in Silicon Valley, but the truth is that it’s hell, and if you aren’t prepared to walk through fire for your startup, then don’t do it.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Innovation
The definition of Anecdotal Evidence, via Wikipedia:
(2) Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example “my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99″ does not disprove the proposition that “smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age”. In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, My musings, Productivity
Tagged Anecdotal evidence, Evidence, Scientific Method
