Zuckerberg’s Top 10 Trends in Silicone Valley

by Kerry Williams

Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, Randi Zuckerberg, is in town and it turns out she is quite accomplished in her own right. Before joining Facebook as their CMO she graduated from Harvard and gained experience working at Ogilvy & Mather in New York.

She tells stories about her time at Facebook that correlate closely with the Facebook movie: that it all started with a bunch of guys in a house working on their passion and of all night ‘hackathons’ where staff were challenged to build something new in 24 hours. She recounts her experiences witnessing global events unfold on Facebook newsfeeds - countless global elections, 2 Olympic Games and many disaster relief efforts - and lists receiving a call from the White House during a US Presidential Election as the highlight of her career so far.

These experiences have led her to distill a list of the ‘Top 10 Trends in Silicone Valley Today’. What do you think?

1. Luxury on Demand
Every day consumers want little pieces of luxury in their lives and they’re willing to splurge to pay for them.

www.renttherunway.com – Premier designer dress rental

www.uber.com – Everyone’s Private Driver

www.jetsuite.com – Private air travel for everyone


2. Mobile Everywhere
From mobile payments to home security systems and baby monitors, we’re all acutely aware of this trend. Randi Zuckerberg’s advice: focus on one mobile use case and make it awesome.

www.squareup.com – mobile payments

www.dropcam.com – baby monitor

www.runpee.com – best times to run and pee during a movie


3. Rise of the Entre-Employee
Big companies are starting entrepreneurial tracks inside their organizations to hold-on to their best talent.


4. Big Data

The whole point of big data is extreme personalization. The more data there is in the system about you the better the personalization becomes.

Pandora

Yelp

www.waze.com – Social GPS


5. The cloud has replaced our memory

We panic about losing our phones not because we can’t communicate but because it means we’ve lost our memories.

www.evernote.com – Remember Everything


6. Cars are the new mobiles

Developers are now focusing their attention on cars. Next generation cars will have native apps built in for things like shopping and the weather and it won’t be long before we all have self-driving cars.

7. Gamification of everything
Game mechanics are being applied to everything to make life fun and increase adoption.

Snooze App – donate money every time you hit the snooze button

Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale – scale that tweets your weight

www.nikeplus.nike.com - social running app

www.runforyourlives.com – zombies chase you while you run


8. Everyone can have a second job
The collaborative economy is here - if you have a job you need done you can outsource it.

www.liftshare.com – car sharing

www.taskrabbit.com - personal assistant

www.porky.com – crowd sourced new product development

www.etsy.com – arts and craft market place

www.99designs.com.sg – crowd sourced design


9. Brands are now media companies

Today, companies not only have to create new products but they also have to entertain customers.

Red Bull astronaut

Oreo 2013 Super Bowl

Diane Von Furstenburg + Google Glass runway show


10. It’s time for a digital detox

People crave a chance to be unplugged. 70% of Americans don’t go to sleep without checking their email and it’s now become socially acceptable not to give someone your full attention and use your phone whilst talking with them. New products are being developed to allow people to ‘unplug’ from it all.

www.drivesafe.ly – the app to stop distracted driving

Full Contact – a company paying employees a $7500 bonus if they disconnect their work email whilst on holiday

Kerry Williams is a native Australian and is currently an Associate Director with a leading telecommunications company in Singapore.

Does having the last word matter?

I had the last word. Pretty much… but my last words weren’t exactly what I felt.

I guess this is the price you pay when you choose to be amicable about things. People would probably tell me that it’s not worth it. This person isn’t worth my time, my anger, the trouble to speak to him. But I just feel that I have kept everything inside for all this time.

I can’t say he didn’t suffer in any way. But at the end of the day, I don’t know how he feels about it all, and I can only examine and deal with my own feelings. At first it was just disappointment, sadness, regret… but now, it’s changing into anger.

I don’t identify with the all’s fair in love and war thing. Yes, I have received forgiveness for hurting people before, and the person said the same to me; there is not right and wrong in a relationship. But if you ask me, I would say that despite this ‘doctrine’, there are just some things you don’t do to people if you want to be viewed a normal human being.

At this point, I just want to sit him down, and rant, and tell him how I felt deceived, how I felt hurt, how I felt used, how I was not appreciated, how he could’ve been more honest in the beginning and how he can’t keep treating people this way. I know he may not care for what I have to say, and obviously it’s not going to change him, but I do want to get it out of my system. Why? Because I have never once confronted him about anything… not with anger.

I’ve always wonder if it really is a virtue that I never throw tantrums, or it’s just stupid of me for never expressing myself when I needed to. Each time I felt angry, I would end up talking around in circles because I didn’t how to express my thoughts. Full-blown anger would rile him, emotional blabber annoys him, and while I know the best way is to stay calm, be rational and give good examples to illustrate things, it’s so difficult when you feel upset. The biggest problem is when he starts responding, and I lose my train of thought, and get swayed by his opinion. Sometimes I even get intimidated, God knows why…

I’m rambling now. I can feel my emotions welling up and I’m starting to lose my train of thought, but somehow writing always seems more effective for me; at least when I get lost, I can compose myself and try again. I am well aware that this post is pointless, other than helping me air my thoughts… so… yea. I just want to yell at him now, because I never did.

I wish I were a cold, hard bitch sometimes. It might have either made me more resilient, or at least I would not take shit from anyone. But I guess one can never eliminate their true nature. The fact is I will always be a softie, and I just need to learn to put on some armor. Anger is how I protect myself from feeling sad and forlorn, so I guess my defense mechanism is kicking in now.

I honestly hope I never have to write a post like this ever again... It's not productive at all :P

Where is the love?

There is so much going on in the world today. Whenever we go on the internet, be it on Facebook, Twitter or simply a news site like Yahoo!... we’re be hard-pressed not to find something outrageous or scandalous to read about.

I’ve been living a partial hermit life as of late. I find myself often bothered and sometimes saddened by the things people would post on Facebook, or be harassed by dozens of game requests. I find it meaningless to continue reading about the troubles in the world and to even discuss it with the people around me. It’s not because I have no will to stay abreast with current issues, but it’s simply because the world feels so forlorn and disappointing these day.

So where do I spend my time now? When I go online, I visit the websites of my favourite Christian ministries such as Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. When I am not online, I read numerous self-help books and also attempt to study the bible. If the question has popped up in your head, then my answer is, “Yes, I have accepted Christ as my savior.”

Years ago, I would never have understood the devotion of my devout Christian friends. But I can see now that in a world full of violence, hatred and hurting people, it seems having faith is the only way we can stay sane. Morality and integrity has deteriorated to such a low point. People have come to only believe we should ‘trust in ourselves’, ‘be confident in ourselves’ and ‘look out for ourselves’. You see the pattern? The majority of society has become entirely interested only in self-preservation. Black Eyed Peas released a popular song some years ago, entitled ‘Where is the love?’. I ask the same question:

Where has love gone to? What is love to people these days?

Even I, myself, had practiced selfish love for the longest time. I was mainly interested in how people viewed me, and what they did to show me they loved me or approved of me. But being Christian has taught me something new: Love starts from within us. There is no conspiracy in the bible’s teaching that we have been called to love people. I found that when we started to love people, mainly by being nice, putting others first and making the effort to reach out to help people who need us, we soon forget about our personal issues. And when we forget about ourselves, that is when selfless love comes about, and we eventually become happier and more contented people because we’ve forgotten about what we wanted and stopped fixating on the ‘problem’ in our lives.

These days, I like to believe I have zero problems. If I had any, I believed that I just needed to act in faith, and let God take care of the rest. There is so much relief in knowing that I don’t have to spend my entire day pondering on something and worrying about something that I can’t change with my own strength. Most of the time, we really do need to ‘ride it out’ or let things run their course, rather than immediately act on it. The only situations that require immediate actions are life & death situations. If it’s nothing of the sort, we can probably wait on it after we have done what rightfully needs to be done.

I find myself slowly growing into a more joyful, positive and strong person as of late. I still battle with my insecurities, fears and other issues from time to time, but it is getting easier with each battle won. I am looking forward to being a more complete person, and one who is steadfast in my faith, able to always love and give to others.

I am not here to preach that Christianity is the best religion in the whole wide world, because it is still a world of free will, but we must always remember with free will comes responsibility for the things you do unto others. I will leave you with a very good answer to the question, “What is the best religion?”, and it was the Dalai Lama who provided this wonderful answer…

“The best religion is the one that gets you closest to God. It is the one that makes you a better person.”

The Dalai Lama also imparted this very important teaching:

Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words.
Take care of your Words because they will become Actions.
Take care of your Actions because they will become Habits.
Take care of your Habits because they will form your Character.
Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny,
and your Destiny will be your Life.

I leave you with the link to the dialogue between His Holiness and theologian Leonardo Boff. I hope you have also learned something today, like I did :)

http://inthefootstepsofthebuddha.com/your-religion-is-not-important/