SNW INTERVIEW -- Sep 20 -- I met Daniel at the Social networking conference in San Francisco in
July. He runs a young network of thought-leader techies who are
available for project work, and for advising on the idiosyncracies of
marketing to teens. - Mark Brooks
Daniel, tell me about yourself and what you have going on project-wise.
I’m a 15 year old blogger, broadcaster, entrepreneur and soon to be author. It’s still being written but it’s a series about teens in tech. Currently I have my own podcasts, I have my own blog, I work for a couple of companies and do some consulting. Then, of course, I have my startup.
Teens in Tech is a community for teenagers who want to start podcasting and blogging and producing new media content. And because there are so many age restrictions on sites because you have to be 13 or something like that, there are no age restrictions in Teens in Tech because it’s for teens and by teens.
What inspired the company?
One of the big things that inspired it was a personal experience. I couldn’t find good audio hosting; it was extremely hard to get good hosting for my podcast. I told myself that I would make it easier for the other teens who want to do it. So that’s when I came up with this idea. I called a couple of friends and started working on it, and now we’re launching this month.
You have supportive parents. What do they do for a living?
I do have very supportive parents and I’m very happy for that. My mom is a senior manager at Oracle and my dad is the Director of ASP Services and Database at an HR company that makes software.
What do you think teens want more than anything now, technology-wise?
I can say that there are a couple of things that I would like to see. One of those being free G cards for anywhere in the world that I can access the Internet to email my parents and tell them I’m ok. When I travel, I only get Internet access where there is Wi-Fi. I think it would be great if cell phone providers would give free data plans for teenagers, or to anyone, because staying in touch is something we really need to do, and having to pay something like $80 a month to AT&T for the new iPhone is a ridiculous amount.
What do you see in the future for Teens in Tech?
We want to launch this month but we don’t have an exact date yet because we’re still working out the small bugs. But after that we just want to have teen’s podcasting and blogging and producing new media content where they couldn’t before. This will be a centralized hub for all of that.
