Insights&Inspiration

Welcome to my new website!

I decided to redesign aprilmgeer.com. It began as a project just to figure out how to custom design a WordPress blog, but now that I have the hang of it I definitely prefer the convenience and structure of working within a CMS so I am here to stay.

Still a few pieces I am working on, so comments, feedback, or advice are all welcome.

Thanks!

I’ve been playing baseball in the California Women’s Baseball League for the past 4 years (on and off), and have became much more passionate
Photo by State Library and Archives of Florida on the topic since playing in the October Roy Hobbs Cactus Classic tournament held in Tucson, AZ.

A Little Background on Me and Baseball

I began playing little league baseball when I was 5 and absolutely loved it.  But after a few years of noticing fewer and fewer girls in the league, I realized it was because they were all switching over to softball.  I really wanted to stick with baseball, but felt the push to make the switch.  I switched back and forth a few times, and then eventually stuck with softball after realizing at a certain age the coaches were no longer willing to “put up” with having a girl on their team.  I wanted to be where the girls were, but wanted to play baseball.  I realized I couldn’t have both.

When I got to high school, I still had that itch, so I asked the baseball coach if I could try out for the team. He told me they were only allowed to let girls tryout if the school didn’t have a softball team, which they did.  Implied it was a rule, written in stone, so I reluctantly gave in and instead played 4 years of softball.

After high school, my old tournament softball coach contacted me to let me know he was coaching a team in the California Women’s Baseball League and he wanted me to come out for a tryout. And thats where I have stayed.

The Dilemma

But in reflection, it makes me sad that all these years all I wanted to do was play baseball and that I was constantly discouraged in various ways and convinced that it wasn’t a girl’s game and that softball was a fair alternative.  Now that I am much more mature in my knowledge of both games, I can tell you that not only is softball not a fair alternative, it is a completely and utterly different game.

What brought up these memories is reading this LA Times article:

A national pastime for only half the nation.

It features a girl I play ball with, Lillian Jacobson, and her mother Jennifer Ring, a college professor and social critic. Its a great article, and for anyone (guy or girl) who supports the concept of women being able to play baseball, I encourage you to read it.

If it peaks your interest further, Jennifer Ring has written a book that just recently was released called Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball.  You can get it on Amazon.

2016 Olympics here we come!

Photo by Stabilo BossIn the opinion of many social media skeptics:

Facebook
Use to flood your friends’ news feeds with how many points you scored in bejeweled and what fruit the quiz of the day claims you are most like. Tell everyone how hard life is and how sad you are about your breakup. Also great for wasting massive amounts of time. Used primarily to communicate with friends in various ways though.

MySpace
Use to start fights, play mafia wars (and spam your friends to get them to play too), complain about your life, tell everyone how depressed you are, or brag. Also used secondarily as a way to communicate with actual friends.

Twitter
“I don’t get the point of Twitter.”

Side note: I have heard that to those who get it but don’t like it, Twitter resembles a giant game of telephone/operator.

And my take:

Facebook
An innovative form of social media predominantly used to provide various means of communicating with friends,; form the quick note (comment/wall post) to the full email (direct message), as well as through looking at photos and other media a friend may post and give your comment/feedback on those items. Apps are just an added benefit for those who spend a lot of time on the site and want to do something other than just snoop on friends all day. Also is a great way to hook people who aren’t as into the friends aspect, or don’t have a lot of friends they keep in touch with on Facebook, but still keep them on the site. Also great medium for viral marketing,

Myspace
See previous post: Why I am officially over myspace.
I think myspace was great at one time, but now the only people who use it are those who are left hovering between myspace and Facebook due to the split of friends who remain on myspace vs. Facebook, or those who are really just not up on the times and don’t realize how much better Facebook is.

Twitter

It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to sue it to keep up on celeb gossip, then you follow all your favorite celebs and that’s what it is. If you want to add to your giant selection of great quotes, there are a lot of people you can follow who constantly post great quotes. In my case, I want to use it primarily to network and gather knowledge/resources from fellow web developers and designers as well as advertising professionals so I can learn and improve my skills/knowledge, I follow a lot of great people who are constantly sharing links to articles, tutorials and the like. Secondarily, I use it to just keep up with friends and it can be great for that as well.

It seems that as of late, the pedal is to the medal when it comes to social networking. The average user probably has at least 3 social networking pages – the advanced user I would say 5, at the least. This increase in number of social networking sites has given way to options. But the more I see what is possible in these spaces, the more demanding I have become of the functionality I want/need and the usability I expect. That being said, I think the time has come for me to let go of myspace and move on to bigger and better things.

My synthesis of why I think I am not the only one who is making this transition:

Facebook’s hold has grown stronger than MySpace’s over the past few years due to a number of variables. I think the number one and number two variables here are the convenience of posting photos and the status update features (in conjunction with the convenience and thoroughness of the news feed). The ability to comment on anything in a news feed has only increased the interactions the average user has day to day within Facebook. Afterall, since the beginning, the main fascination has been the ability to snoop on your friends and acquaintances without them knowing. At first you feel wrong for doing it, then overtime everyone admits they do it too. It was at that point that Facebook made a smart move and played directly to that snooping desire we all have, creating the news feed. This allows you to get the entire scoop from all your friends with minimal effort. The ability to comment on the news feed has made it acceptable not only to obsess about what others are up to, but to actually insert yourself into the conversation anytime anything of interest to you occurs within your friends space. Consequently, I believe this has had an adverse effect on the amount of time average myspace/Facebook user spends on myspace.

Over the past year, myspace has been forced to attempt to attempt to mimic the features that we have grown to expect, thereby copying Facebook and in effect, losing its unique identity that it had entered the space with. I think at this point myspace is just too far behind the race to catch up – unless they somehow come up with a mind-blowingly impressive feature that Facebook has not yet come up with. And then implement it before Facebook comes up with something better – quite a feat. Facebook also developed a more useful mobile app before myspace did, which only added to the myspace to Facebook migration.

Don’t get me wrong myspace – your innovation spurred quite a shift in how people use the internet socially, and you deserve your props for that. But your ability to keep up with the times and continue to adapt to respond to the market’s demands seems to have been proven inferior to that of Facebook – and I think the time has come for you to pass the torch. I’ll always remember you though ;)