With the launch of Google+, the inevitable tech fan boys preaching the downfall of Facebook–because a new shiny cat toy caught their attention–was laughably predictable. As SEO’s, internet marketers, and social media consultants, we have to be involved in these games, or we risk losing our competitive edge. However, what we really need to understand is that this is a war for consumer data and attention.
Google wants to make it as easy for advertisers to spend their advertising dollars targeting you as your local super market makes it to buy a can of Cambell’s tomato soup…
Make no misunderstanding, when you use a service and there is no subscription fee, you aren’t the customer, you are the product being sold to advertisers. These services will go to great lengths to develop features that will keep you on the site, engaged with other users, so they can gather as much data and profile you as effectively as they possibly can. To show you how good companies like Google have gotten at gathering and packaging this data, you should know they are working on developing a marketplace to sell it in neat little packages to advertisers. To put it another way, Google wants to make it as easy as possible for advertisers to spend their advertising dollars targeting you as your local super market makes it to buy a can of Cambell’s tomato soup. Think about that the next time you hear someone from Google say “We do it for the users.”
Hopefully you have come across the term Dunbars Number in your life. If you haven’t, go click that last link and acquaint yourself with the concept because it’s important. For those of you who are lazy, it basically says people can only pay attention and care about a limited number of people or things in their lives. It varies from individual to individual, but the average person can pay attention to about 150 people or things; beyond that, things start to slip through the cracks, unless people use some automated reminder tools like a CRM database.
What does this have to do with Facebook and Google+? You need to apply the Dunbars number concept to regular people. SEO’s, marketers, and social media experts HAVE to be on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, but most people don’t. People have a limited attention span and a limited amount of time, and they will choose the one that connects them best/most with the people or subjects they are most interested in and enjoy. They may have accounts on the other services, but they won’t use them much if the other services don’t satisfy their need for information, pleasure, or entertainment. Keeping up on all three services is work and, unless your paycheck is dependent on your involvement, you will eventually give it up when it stops being fun. Don’t believe me? Look at how many people stopped blogging and switched to twitter. Blogging is work and, if you didn’t figure out how to monetize your blog, it has to satisfy some other need you have (like creative expression) or you were doing a lot of work for free … and no one wants to do that.
The techno weenies are all hopped up on how much better Google+ is at driving traffic to their blogs than Twitter or Facebook. However, they are living in a narcissistic bubble and can’t see what’s really going on. Number one, Twitter referral stats are inaccurate, in some cases wildly inaccurate, and unless you used hash tag tracking or some other method that closes the holes, you would never know that. The second aspect is that Facebook is filled with a population that much more closely reflects society as a whole–i.e., normal people, not propeller-headed weenies who think arguing about whether a star destroyer or the enterprise would win in a space battle is important or think that being on the homepage of techmeme is a noteworthy accomplishment. If your audience is tech-centric, go after Google+ traffic the way crocodiles go after migrating herds of wildebeests at narrow river crossings. If your customers are regular people, take a wait-and-see approach for now. If Google+ can come up with some way to get regular people to make the switch, then it’s time to pay attention and look for ways to leverage that traffic to your advantage, but for now it’s as smart as trying to rob a bank before anyone has made any deposits. In other words, it’s a complete waste of time.
2 Sessions of Office Hours Today: When Can You Check In? This week, the White House is holding office hours to answer questions directly from the public, live via Twitter. Today, there will be two separate sessions with Senior Directors on the National Economic Council - the first with Jason Furman (1 p.m. EDT), and the second with Brian Deese (3 p.m. EDT). Follow @WhiteHouse for the latest updates or submit a question using the hashtag #WHChat.
What the Americans with Disabilities Act Means to Me To honor the 21st anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, White House Intern Krista Simeone reflects on all the improvements in transportation, employment, and civil rights for people with disabilities to ensure equal
Today's Schedule
All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
9:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing
11:00 AM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney
12:00 PM: The Vice President chairs a regular meeting of senior officials to assess progress in Iraq
3:00 PM: The President meets with Secretary of Treasury Geithner
3:30 PM: The President meets with Secretary of State Clinton
I wrote about this five years ago (reprinted below). A myth is why this video is funny.
Isn't that the dream of any marketer? To create a myth?
Brand as mythology
Just under the wire, L. Frank Baum's heirs have no copyright protection on The Wizard of Oz. As a result, there are Broadway musicals, concordances, prequels, sequels and more. All of which creates a rich, emotional universe (and makes the copyrighted movie even more valuable).
Most of us remember the mythology stories they taught us in school (Zeus and Thor and the rest of the comic-like heroes.) Myths allow us to project ourselves into their stories, to imagine interactions that never took place, to take what's important to us and live it out through the myth.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of entertainment mythological brands. James Bond and Barbie, for example.
But it goes far behond that.
There's clearly a Google mythology and a Starbucks one was well. We feel differently about brands like these than we do about, say Maxwell House or Random House.
Why do Santa and Ronald McDonald have a mythology but not Dave at Wendy's or the Burger King?
Let's try the Wikipedia: Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests.
So, if I were trying to invent a mythic brand, I'd want to be sure that there was a story, not just a product or a pile of facts. That story would promise (and deliver) an heroic outcome. And there needs to be growth and mystery as well, so the user can fill in her own blanks. Endorsement by a respected ruler or priest helps as well.
The key word, I think, is spiritual. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can't find on our own... or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own spirituality on.
People use a Dell. They are an Apple.
This can happen accidentally, but it often occurs on purpose. A brand can be deliberately mythological, created to intentionally deliver the benefits of myth. Casinos in Las Vegas have been trying to do this for decades (and usually failing). But talk to a Vegas cab driver about Steve Wynn and you can see that it's been done at least once.
There's a mythology about Digg and about Wikipedia, but not about about.com. The mysterious nature of rankings and scores and community ensures that, combined with the fact that the first two have public figures at the helm... heroes.
It's easy to confuse publicity with mythology, but it doesn't work that way... there's no Zune mythology, for example. It's also easy to assume that mythology will guarantee financial success, but it didn't work for General Magic, a company which successfully leveraged the heroic reputations of its founders, created a very hot IPO but failed to match the needs of the larger market.
It did, on the other hand, work for Andersen's, an ice cream stand in Buffalo (!?) that has a line every single day, even in January.
Hard to explain, difficult to bottle, probably worth the effort to pursue.
Those charts show just how anemic this recovery has been. I asked Doug for two additional charts, showing "real" inflation-adjusted, population-adjusted charts of durable goods ex-defense, and ex-defense and ex-transportation.
Courtesy of Doug Short here are those charts. They will be posted on his site tomorrow.
Durable Goods Excluding Defense
click on chart for sharper image
Durable Goods Excluding Defense and Transportation
click on chart for sharper image
I asked for those charts because they offer a better picture of "core" durable goods orders of consumers (TVs, furniture, appliances, etc.)
The per-capita and real-per-capita charts tell a story of decay, and that decay started with the ascent of Chinese manufacturing and continued even through the housing boom years.
Ex-defense, the peak per-capita durable goods production was September 1997.
If durable goods take a dive, and I believe they will, expect the stock market to take a dive as well.
Addendum:
I asked for one more chart that I thought would show the effect of the housing bubble. Durable Goods Ex-Defense, Not Inflation or Per-Capita Adjusted
click on chart for sharper image
The 1990's was fueled by the internet boom and the 2000's by the housing bubble. Durable goods are still not back to the internet bubble peak in 2000 in spite of massive global stimulus.
Chris Christie takes on Republicans and Democrats in a blast at both party's unwillingness to compromise. Christie also takes Obama to task for failure to produce a plan at all.
When you take these jobs, and you have to exert executive leadership, you have to put your cards on the table. The fact of the matter is the president has spoken in platitudes, but we have not seen a plan in writing form the president. That does not give an excuse to Republicans or Democrats to not come to an agreement.
There is no substitute to executive leadership. That means taking risks. We did it here [reducing entitlements and spending], but that only happened because I took risks first. I put a plan out there in writing.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and the president of the united states has to put his plan in writing and show it to people. And let's have a great debate about it. But you can't lead from behind.
I will put up our record of accomplishment, in divided government, with bipartisan work together against anybody in the country.
Chris Christie would make a tremendous president. I hope he reconsiders.
Brazil imposed a tax on bets against the U.S. dollar and warned it may boost intervention in the nation's derivatives market in a bid to weaken a currency that reached a 12-year high this week.
As part of a new round of currency measures unveiled today, the government levied a 1 percent tax on short dollar positions in the country's futures market above $10 million in notional value. The government may increase the tax up to 25 percent if needed, according to the decree signed by President Dilma Rousseff and published today in the Official Gazette.
Finance Minister Guido Mantega said that the measures give the government a "bigger arsenal" of tools to defend itself from "speculation" that the real will continue to rally amid global economic uncertainty. "We're reducing the advantages enjoyed by speculators, and we expect the real will weaken or stop appreciating," Mantega told reporters in Brasilia.
The measures, the latest attempt by policy makers to ease capital inflows behind a 48 percent rally in the real since the end of 2008, are unlikely to reduce the attractiveness of Latin America's biggest economy to foreign investors, said Jankiel Santos, chief economist for Espirito Santo Investment Bank in Sao Paulo.
Investment is pouring into Brazil as the nation develops offshore oil finds and prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Foreign direct investment jumped to a record $69 billion in the 12 months through June, the central bank said yesterday.
Today's measures, while applicable to all investors, will primarily affect foreign investors who hold the bulk of about $25 billion in bets against the dollar on Sao Paulo's future exchange, said Nelson Barbosa, executive secretary at the Finance Ministry.
Brazil's Currency Regulation Knocks Real Off 12-Year Highs
Brazil's currency slumped Wednesday as the Brazilian government introduced harsh controls on currency derivatives, knocking the real off 12-year highs against the U.S. dollar.
The real has gained 7% against the greenback so far in 2011, and has advanced about 20% over the past two years. The strong real undercuts manufacturers and exporters, which struggle to compete with cheaper alternatives both at home and abroad.
Some analysts and economists also question whether the latest measures will once again prove unable to stem the real's rise, given the inherent weakness in the dollar because of the ongoing U.S. debate over spending cuts and raising the debt ceiling. Europe's difficulties with sluggish economic growth and heavy debt loads also have weighed on the euro in recent weeks.
"If the [Brazilian real] is strengthening versus the [U.S. dollar] because of the perception of adverse developments in the U.S., there is little that the Brazilian government can do other than implement measures that will increase domestic competitiveness," Goldman Sachs said in a report. Such items could include reducing local tax burdens and productivity-enhancing reforms, the firm said. The full impact of the measures is unclear right now, especially given that they will likely be followed by others, Goldman Sachs added.
When I hear statements like these, it feels like the move up in commodity prices might be near the end. I cannot stress more the fact that high prices fueled by zero interest rates in developed and many emerging markets (for many years now) are a fruit of rampant speculation.
We have our own credit bubble here, which in my opinion has a good chance of busting sooner rather than later, via one or more of the following:
Central Bank over-tightening local rates
Slowdown in China, which would change our terms of trade and contract global capital flows to EM and Brazil (as we are suppliers of commodities to China), tightening monetary conditions here as a result
Deterioration of credit crisis in Europe (and US), would also contract global capital flows and tighten monetary conditions here
I took the liberty of forwarding you a FT article about Brazil.
I think you might appreciate this as maybe a topic for future posts of yours, since you are keen in identifying and warning readers and investors of potential bubbles around the world that may be close to busting. For the record, I will say that in my opinion, Brazilian real estate, many local stocks, and our currency (the Real), are extremely overvalued as well.
Average rate of interest on consumer loans 47%, up from 41% in 2010
Consumer debt service burden was 24 per cent of disposable income in 2010, slated to rise to 28 per cent in 2011. This compares with 16% for an "overburdened" US consumer and a mid-single digit reading for other emerging markets such as China and India.
Debt service burden for the so-called "middle class" in Brazil has now breached 50% of disposable income
Delinquencies in Brazil (defaults in excess of 15 days) have begun to move up rapidly, from 7.8 per cent to 9.1 per cent of total loans between December 2010 and May 2011.
Delinquencies are now rising at a very hectic rate. They have risen at 23 per cent in the first five months of this year in absolute terms or at an annualised rate of 55 per cent.
Normally credit indicators cyclically lag the economic cycle. When they begin to deteriorate before any economic weakness it usually represents a structural problem relating to underlying cash flow or underwriting weakness in the quality of credit – Brazil has both problems.
FDI Will Reverse, Real Overvalued
My comment at the time : I am inclined to agree with Otavio who says the Real is "extremely overvalued".
I see no reason to change my stance now.
It's important to realize Brazil is not a passive victim. Inflation is rampant and government spending is a "whopping 40 percent of gross domestic product" according to Alberto Ramos, Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs in New York, as noted in Guido Mantega Mulls New Currency Measures
At some point FDI and hedge fund bets on the Real will reverse in a spectacular way. I suspect it will be when China slows taking commodity prices with it. However, reversals can happen at any time.
Certainly the situation is unstable, much like it was with the the Icelandic Krona before Iceland imploded.
Orders for U.S. durable goods unexpectedly dropped in June, raising the risk that a slowdown in business investment will weigh on the world's largest economy in the second half of the year.
Manufacturers face a slowdown in consumer spending just as they are poised to rebound from the parts shortages caused by Japan's earthquake, indicating production may keep cooling. Companies are also cutting back on hiring, which may further temper household demand.
Orders excluding volatile transportation equipment, like commercial aircraft, increased 0.1 percent after a 0.7 percent gain, the Commerce Department said. Demand for transportation gear dropped 8.5 percent, countering industry data.
Boeing Co. (BA), the largest U.S. maker of aircraft, said it received orders for 48 airplanes in June, up from 27 the prior month. Industry data, nonetheless, may not correlate precisely with the government statistics on a month-to-month basis because it doesn't take into account the prices.
Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a proxy for business investment in items like computers, engines and communications gear, decreased 0.4 percent after rising 1.7 percent the prior month. The drop signals companies scaled back investment plans.
Demand for machinery dropped 2.3 percent, the most since January. Computer bookings fell 0.8 percent and those for automobiles decreased 1.4 percent.
Xerox Chief Executive Officer Ursula Burns said the temblor that struck Japan in March and hurt the company's suppliers will affect the provider of printers and business services in the second and third quarters.
"Let me be clear: Demand is not the problem here," Burns said in a July 22 call with analysts. "This is a supply issue. The second quarter impact was expected and created a backlog for orders taken in the quarter, orders that we'll be filling during the balance of the year."
Supply Side Nonsense
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns: "Let me be clear: Demand is not the problem here. This is a supply issue."
One has to wonder "What the hell is she smoking?" On the slim chance this is really only a supply issue, it is unique to Xerox.
New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $4.0 billion or 2.1 percent to $192.0 billion. This decrease, down two of the last three months, followed a 1.9 percent May increase.
Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.1 percent.
Excluding defense, new orders decreased 1.8 percent.
Transportation equipment, also down two of the last three months, had the largest decrease, $4.2 billion or 8.5 percent to $45.4 billion. This was due to nondefense aircraft and parts which decreased $2.8 billion.
Shipments
Shipments of manufactured durable goods in June, up six of the last seven months, increased $1.0 billion or 0.5 percent to $196.0 billion. This followed a 0.5 percent May increase.
Machinery, up four of the last five months, had the largest increase, $0.7 billion or 2.6 percent to $29.1 billion.
Inventories
Inventories of manufactured durable goods in June, up eighteen consecutive months, increased $1.6 billion or 0.4 percent to $357.2 billion. This was at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis and followed a 1.2 percent May increase.
Transportation equipment, also up eighteen consecutive months, had the largest increase, $1.2 billion or 1.1 percent to $109.1 billion. This was also at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis and followed a 1.7 percent May increase.
Capital Goods
Nondefense new orders for capital goods in June decreased $3.0 billion or 4.1 percent to $69.8 billion.
Defense new orders for capital goods in June decreased $0.3 billion or 3.9 percent to $8.6 billion.
Summary
Shipments Up
New Orders Down
Capital Goods Orders Plunge
Record High Inventories
That anemic mix does not portend well for the second-half.
The German bank Deutsche Bank has reduced by 70% exposure to debt issued by countries of the periphery of the euro as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy in the first six months of the year to 3.669 million euros, according reported by the entity. In particular, Germany's biggest bank by assets reported June 30 that its net exposure to the Spanish sovereign debt was 1,070 million euros, 53% less than at the end of 2010, while 87.5% cut their Italian debt exposure, which stood at 996 million.
The chairman of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, has noted that between April and June there was a worsening business conditions to increasing concerns over the sovereign debt of Greece and other eurozone countries, and for recovery the whole economy. "As a result, during the quarter we see more volatility [in] global financial markets, as well as a withdrawal from riskier assets, including the sovereign debt of some countries in the euro area," said Ackermann.
Many people have asked where they can find details of what the budget cuts proposed by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.
Because the plans have been in a constant state of flux, and because President Obama did not release details of ongoing discussions, it has been difficult to properly analyze the credibility of the recent proposals.
As you requested, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the impact on the deficit of the Budget Control Act of 2011, as posted on the Web site of the Committee on Rules on July 25, 2011.
...
In total, if appropriations in the next 10 years are equal to the caps on discretionary spending and the maximum amount of funding is provided for the program integrity initiatives, CBO estimates that the legislation would reduce budget deficits by about $850 billion between 2012 and 2021 relative to CBO's March 2011 baseline adjusted for subsequent appropriation action.
As requested, CBO has also calculated the net budgetary impact if discretionary savings are measured relative to its January baseline projections. Relative to that baseline, CBO estimates that the legislation would reduce budget deficits by about $1.1 trillion between 2012 and 2021.
There you have it. Boehner has proposed a $850 billion reduction over 10 years, a minuscule $85 billion a year on a deficit of $1.4 trillion.
Bear in mind it is far worse than it looks because it is heavily back-loaded. The 2012 reduction is only $4 billion.
Boehner's plan is an abysmal joke, with $4 billion in discretionary spending cuts in 2012 growing mysteriously to $111 billion by 2021, and $0 billion in debt service reduction for 2012 and 2013 (growing to $37 billion in 2021), for a combined cumulative deficit impact of $850 billion, which on a NPV basis is more like $50 billion, but at least it is a plan.
In the meantime, here is what is going on on the other side of the spectrum.
From the NRO: After bobbing-and-weaving for nine minutes, Carney [Obama's Press Secretary] finally says what everybody knows: the president won't put his plan on paper because he doesn't want it to become "politically charged" before a compromise can be reached. In other words, you've got to pass it to find out what's in it.
The $2.7 trillion debt-limit increase proposal offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid contains a $1 trillion gimmick meant to disguise the plan's shallowness on spending cuts. Supporters of the Reid plan are measuring their savings against a baseline that assumes the continuation of surge-level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the President has neither requested this funding nor signaled that he might request it. Instead, the President has signaled the opposite: a troop drawdown over the next few years. In other words, the Reid plan is claiming credit for "savings" that were already scheduled to occur, and for "cutting" spending that no one has requested.
Writing on the credibility of Obama's budget assumptions in 2009, George Will concludes ...
Although only a small fraction of the supposedly countercyclical stimulus will be spent by the end of the year, the budget assumes that by then the economy will have perked up, and that it will grow robustly -- 3.2 percent, 4 percent and 4.6 percent -- in the next three years. Growth supposedly will cut the deficit in half -- growth and the $1.6 trillion "saved" by first assuming, and then "canceling," a 10-year continuation of the surge in Iraq.
Why, one wonders, not "save" $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt and then canceling the proposal?
Obama's Growth Estimates
3.2% 2009
4.0% 2010
4.6% 2011
How credible was that?
Veto Credibility
The president has vowed to veto deficit cutting legislation if it contains a balanced budget amendment or if it does not go past the 2012 elections.
How credible is that threat? The correct answer is not at all. The veto threat is nothing but hot air because Reid will see to it that such bills will never make it out of the Senate.
Whatever does make it out of the House and Senate, Obama will sign. Thus, a veto is an imaginary threat.
With that backdrop, it's time to rate the Obama, Reid, and Boehner Deficit reduction plans on a credibility scale.
10-Point Credibility Scale
Golden
Rock Solid
Fudge
Jello
Marshmallow
Cream Puff
Nauseous
Gaseous
Imaginary
Delusional
Scoring the Proposals
Given a $1.4 trillion deficit, the latest plan from Boehner to cut a minuscule $85 billion a year (and back-loaded at that) is somewhere between nauseous and gaseous. It's no wonder that various Tea-Party members will not vote for it.
Obama's plan is imaginary or delusional depending on whether or not the President actually believes he has a plan, when he doesn't.
Parts of Senator Reid's plan are gaseous and the rest is clearly imaginary.
In contrast, the gang-of-six $4 trillion deficit cutting plan has something of the consistency of Jello, fudge, or marshmallow depending on details that were never disclosed.
$4 trillion sounds like a lot but it is only $400 billion a year, while the deficit is $1.4 trillion. Thus it's tough to give that plan a rating higher than Jello, and impossible to give it a rating higher than fudge.
At this late juncture, the best one can reasonably hope for is a nauseous resolution. Unfortunately, the odds now favor something between gaseous and imaginary with delusional a distinct possibility.
The higher the score, the lower the credibility, and the better for gold.
Postări
