Inspiring women to enjoy technology
The new KMD Edition mobile phone takes the sparkling trend to a whole new dimension. It features 18 karat gold and real diamonds. This clearly confirms the tendency for mobile phones to become more like accessories and jewellery. Unfortunately, this model is a rather expensive piece of jewellery starting at 49.000 Euro (around £ 36.000) and probably out of reach for most of us.
Staying with the Lee Majors and The Six Million Dollar Man theme below, I just learnt that NBC’s re-invention of the Bionic Woman is coming to the UK soon. The original Bionic Woman was a spin off of the Six Million Dollar Man, played by Lee Majors. The re-invented version deals mainly with Jaime Sommers who is involved in an accident but saved from death due to bionic prosthetics and implants. Throughout the series the main character struggles to use this technology-enhanced body. I am sure such a technology-enhanced body would foster game performance even more. However the technology is portrayed in such a way in the series that it does not seem to be too much of desirable solution.
It seems there is no end to marketing opportunities and development of products that we clearly ‘need’ to keep your brain well oiled. From brain training to this.
A gaming pill to improve your first person shooter performance. Its been introduced by German PC builder Tomarni who state that their “staff use FpsBrain at least four times a week to enhance their mental performance and their work efficiency.”
From what is reported from Gizomodo, its just a load of vitamins with a shot of caffeine. I can’t see an audience for this, although I said that about brain training.
There may be a rationale for this product: If hardcore game-geeks exist on a diet of pizza and Dr. Pepper then A multivitamin supplement like this might be just what they need to live a slightly healthier lifestyle. As the nature of gaming is changing, this cliche of the nocturnal acne-faced game-nerd is on the wane - I’m not sure that there is a substantial audience who would identify with the need for this product.
Are we so vulnerable and dissatisfied that we would resort to products like this? I hope not. I am sticking to my decaff latte (recently told it was referred to as a lesbian latte)
Like technology design and consumption, business has been stereotyped as an area mainly for men. It is then not surprising that many leading business thinkers are men, too. However Stuart Crainer has argued The Times that new generation of business thinkers will be more diverse and include more women. This in turn will provide new inspiration and challenge old assumptions.
Many tech companies have long been criticised for the lack of diversity at the top. Notable exceptions are Meg Whitman at eBay and Carly Fiorina at formerly at HP. This is due to change with the appointment of Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products, to Apple’s board of directors. Andrea Jung is said to help tapping new markets: not only does she speak Mandarin fluently, she could also be a real asset in marketing technical products to women. Avon is after all a provider of beauty products through a direct seller networks referred to as the ‘Avon ladies’. Does this mean more pink laptops for women? Hopefully not. After Millard Drexler joined Apple’s board, Apple opened its retail stores. At that time most people thought it was a crazy idea but they seem to be rather successful. Andrea Jung is an experienced marketer and she will surely come up with very creative strategies to market technology to women.
The latest research from the Future Foundation, presented at the Women & Technology seminar in Dec 2007, shows that whilst the frequency of Internet usage of men and women is similar, women & men use the internet for different things in different ways. For example, women are more likely to have uploaded photos, videos or music to a web-site. Women are more likely to have created a personal blog. Women are more likely to have created and updated a personal profile on a social networking site.
According to the Future Foundation, women use a social networking site on average 3 times a week (compared to 3.2 times amongst their male counterpart). Whereas men are more likely to consider “making my opinion heard”, “sharing views” and “displaying personal creativity” key reasons for social networking, women are more likely to use the sites to form communities and listen to the views of other women.
My own experience of Facebook echoes this. At first, I loved it. I discovered that I could get in touch with people that I had lost contact with. I enjoyed adding them to my growing friend list (which made me feel popular) and discover what they were up to. For a while I updated my profile religiously and I imagined that my contacts would be curious about what I was up to.
However, as my friend-list grows I found myself overwhelmed by updates from my modest list of friends. I began to realise that there is a very good reason I do not keep in regular contact with the extended cloud of contacts with whom facebook shares my updates.
The truth is that I’m not that all that curious about their lives and nor are they with mine otherwise we would have never have lost contact in the first place. Most of the ’status updates’ consist of mundane activities of people I barely know any more. Consequently the more friends I add, the less valuable Facebook becomes.
Cory Doctrow was one of the first to debate the diminishing value of social networking: The more people get involved in a social network, the more users are likely to encounter people they’d rather avoid. And whilst it may be socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list, deleting them from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war.
The problem seems to be that Facebook treats a mundane update like ‘watching TV’ with the same degree of importance as ‘Getting married’. Likewise it cannot distinguish between my closest friends and people I’ve not seen since I was a child but thought it would be fun to add to Facebook.
My own usage of Facebook has declined rapidly after an initial bubble of enthusiasm. I no longer feel a desire to monitor my friends’ updates. The barrage of mostly meaningless email solicitations from 3rd party plug-ins. In Cory’s words, the social network has transformed into something which has “the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, “I know something, I know something, I know something, won’t tell you what it is!”
Obviously the social networks need to find a balance between 3rd party added-value and the proliferating nuisance from third-party extensions. That should be easy enough and a good start, but there is a much bigger problem to solve:
In order to make the networks more appealing to women, companies and brands need to find a way to stay relevant post that initial bubble. I’d like to see a social network which can recognize that not all friends are created equal.
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