Last September, I attended the annual National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) conference in Washington, DC. The keynote speaker at the luncheon was Neil Golden, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer for McDonald’s USA. During his speech, he shared an important observation. McDonald’s had determined in its marketing research that minority consumers enjoyed games of chance while white consumers enjoyed games of strategy. Mr. Golden’s point in sharing this information was to explain the success of some of its urban promotions including its popular scratch off games.

I think this view can be applied, to a very limited extent, to how we as minorities view the use of technology. From computers to cell phones, to high speed connections, these technologies were introduced to make work more efficient and profitable. Their entertainment value would come later as they were offered to the masses. While I wouldn’t describe technology’s use by the mass consumer market as chance, the early use was strategic.

I’m also suspect of a recent description of minorities as the demographic that makes technology popular. This was the premise of a recent article in NewsOne by Johan Thomas. Mr. Thomas set out to describe why blacks make technology popular. His rationale was that we adopted technology such as pagers as social tools, turning them into fashion accessories, and experimented with them while innovating their use and looks.

I believe that we popularize new technology that is affordable; I’d dare say technology that supports cheap entertainment. We won’t take a chance on broadband because, while it can be used to deliver entertainment, that delivery system is far from cheap. Yet we see all around us the application of broadband technology to productive use.

Just look at your online media companies in which I would include Facebook and Google. Look at how other going concerns use broadband for research and transmitting data. We have to ask ourselves are we taking a chance missing out on profit and employment by not being strategic in how we get broadband into more hands and how we become more effective with it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook may be entering into a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding when Facebook subscribers are notified about the changes in the use of their personal information. Facebook will allegedly submit its privacy practices to an outside audit for 20 years.

Mr. Zuckerberg would, according to the article, like to make it easier for subscribers to control how much of their personal data is released to the public.

If I were investing in Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and read Mr. Zuckerberg’s last statement about making user control over privacy easier, I’d dump the stock. It’s like a cattle rancher telling his herd, I’ll make it easier for you to escape.

The information that Facebook collects is the raw resource that it converts into ad and other sales. The more information that he can package for sale to advertisers and other data aggregators, the better it is for Facebook and other social media firms. Better meaning greater profit.

By failing to get in front of regulators, all he has done is driven up the cost of acquiring his most important factor input: personal information. A good cattle rancher knows how to head of the herd at the pass.

I’m all for app development, creativity, and free market capitalism, but this piece in The Wall Street Journal caught me Afro-Carib-Irish eyes this afternoon.

Seems like broadcast and cable channels are considering developing applications for wireless devices that would allow viewers to interact with TV show actors and advertisement.

Just imagine Bobby Bubba sitting on the couch with the iPad on his lap and the 100 inch flat screen in front of him. Also imagine First Lady Michelle Obama having a fit as she tries to convince home slice to get off the couch.

If you work from home and have a couple kids buzzing around, you should be able to deal with the added distraction apps can provide.

I can see a broadcaster leveraging a platform like Twitter or Facebook to deliver content to listeners or viewers wherever they may be, while eliciting their comments. I guess the big difference is that with the app, a broadcaster can engage real time with the viewer while advertisers hawk their products to Bobby Bubba.

I for one don‘t care for the intrusiveness and would rather that businesses that I regularly patronize, like my grocery store, or gas station, offer me a free download of their app. That way I know who is bombarding me with ads, but I wouldn‘t mind so much because I already have a relationship with the advertiser.

I am not surprised by the changes Facebook makes, nor should we be up in arms about how a private organization goes about conducting its business. Facebook is an information aggregator, displayer, and distributor. Information is a product, and Facebook gathers it and sells it to the highest bidders. We should either learn to exploit it for our own gain, or as the author suggests, log-off.

Facebook is introducing a new video chat feature in partnership with Skype. The platform will provide one-on-one chat services powered by Skype. Mark Zuckerberg and company may be responding to a little heat from Google’s new social networking platform, Google +, which also has a video chat feature that allows members within groups to video chat with each other.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to try Google +. As a blogger the last thing I need is another reason to remain floating around in cyberspace with more “friends” and “followers”, most of whom I’ve either not met or seen since I was in the first grade.

More importantly, here, at least sometime down the road, is another reason to worry about spectrum crunch. All it’s going to take is for a few businesses to form focus groups online, or a bunch of AKAs to hold a grad chapter meeting online and boom, you’ll have an increased demand for spectrum.