Fastenerblog.net

Note to self:  Make friends with young, smart people.

I recently saved an article from the USA Today that I got in a hotel lobby.  The headline was, “Amazon to acquire Twitch for nearly $1B”.  A billion dollars for Twitch!  Quickly I asked myself, what the hell is Twitch and why would Amazon squander a billion dollars on this?  Twitch is “a video service aimed at gamers that allows them to broadcast their virtual exploits to other online”.    So, as I read the article, I started to get it.  I know my kids (mostly boys) would play Xbox and PlayStation games for hours with their friends and I could even hear their friends voices over the speakers when they were miles away at my own home.  The article also stated, “Twitch hosts more than I million broadcasters.  In July, 55 million unique visitors watched more than 15 billion minutes of content”.  Wow.  I was pretty impressed when I got to 200 subscribers on my old Fastenerblog website.  Now I’m starting over again and not near that number.

I don’t think it is just this product in particular that I am unaware of.  I think there are hundreds of companies worth millions, if not billions of dollars that I have never heard of or even understand what they do.  I could be wrong about Twitch.  It could have been started by some grandpa with a lot of time on his hands, but I somehow doubt it.  The point is, I had never heard of Twitch and I suspect there are loads of technologies of which I am ignorant.  Gaming technology does not bother me that much.  I’ve played Xbox a handful of times with my kids till they humiliated me with my slow reflexes.  But, I know there are a lot of business related technological developments that probably would be useful to me that I am unaware of.  Things that would make my life easier and more efficient.  And who has the time to keep up on all this?

So, I think I’ll just go find myself a young person that will sort through all this information and tell me what I need to know.  I would ask my children but they have absolutely zero patience showing me anything on a computer.  NONE.   “Dad, just move over”!