Today I'm posting somewhere else

Posted by on Feb 11, 2009 in Blogging | 1 comment

… over at Chris Brogan’s blog. See you there.

Micro?

Posted by on Feb 10, 2009 in Rant | 17 comments

A serious question in a bit. First, consider:

Micro-famous.
Micro-blogging.
Micro-finance.
Micro-marketing.

Are we so desperate to feel any sense of importance that we’ll attach the word micro to anything just so that the definition includes us? (by the way, the same applies to new and social)

No disrespect to the creators of the terms, but it seems that we attach micro, social, or new to anything that we can’t otherwise measure up to.

Not famous? Micro-famous!
Too lazy to blog? Micro-blog!
Can’t get a loan? Micro-finance!
Don’t have the juice for large scale marketing? Micro-market!

What do you think?

inspired by the famous Chris Brogan.

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Why marketers don't understand the Amazon Kindle (or Kindle 2)

Posted by on Feb 10, 2009 in Books, Marketing, Technology | 32 comments

KindleI’ve read and heard a lot of buzz about Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle 2 lately. Of the folks who are not wild about the device, the main criticism is that it’s not a book. It lacks the real world charm of books – the feel of the paper, the smell of the book, etc. You’re right – the Kindle is not a book, and that’s the whole point.

A quick story. Last year, I was flying back from Tampa on a business trip and sat next to Grandma Rosenblum, a wonderful 80 year old great-grandmother. I was surprised, amidst the usual contents that an 80 year old carries, to see an Amazon Kindle in her purse, and asked her about it, since my stereotype of 80 year olds generally doesn’t include cutting edge technology. Her response? “I love my Kindle. Everyone I know at my senior center has one. We all love that you can make the letters as big as you want. One of my friends has really bad eyes but she can read again now!”

I asked her about the other features of the Kindle – blog subscriptions, newspapers, etc. and she said she didn’t read anything like that, just books and the occasional article. Except she was wrong. She did read a couple of blogs – Huffington Post was in there, as well as mainstream news sources like the New York Times. She just didn’t call the Huffington Post a blog. It was merely, to her, a series of articles.

The Kindle 2 has even more stuff. Based on initial product description, it’ll have the 3G wireless component, but it will also have document conversion and a basic web browser. Guess what, gang? That’s not an eBook reader any more. That’s a tablet computer. Granted, you may not be working in Excel or playing Warcraft on it, but with the addition of a browser and document conversion, the Kindle is now a computer that can be used for productivity above and beyond reading stuff.

What’s the takeaway here? The Kindle 2 seems to be a workable tablet computer disguised as a book reader, rather like the iPod Touch is a workable PDA disguised as a music player. If you’re a business type, I would bet you’ll get some enhanced productivity out of the new Kindle.

If you’re a marketer, all I have to say is this: you had better be cranking out eBooks, you had better be cranking them out in Kindle-supported formats, and as a bonus, if you have the absolute trust and love of your readers, you might even get them to register their Kindle document conversion email addresses to get new eBooks from you when you have them. (did you know you can email documents to Kindle for conversion?)

Full disclosure: links to the Kindle are paid links for my employer, using Amazon’s affiliate program. Purchasing a Kindle through these links earns my employer the standard Amazon commission.

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Yes, you're in a depression

Posted by on Feb 9, 2009 in Economy, Politics, Rant | 11 comments

There’s no formal economic definition of a depression like there is a recession. That said, a depression is basically a really bad recession. The current environment fits that description aptly. Despite wishes to the contrary, more folks are realizing that we are in the midst of a new depression.

Wall Street Journal:

International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the world’s advanced economies — the U.S., Western Europe and Japan — are “already in depression,” and that the IMF could slash its global growth forecasts further. The “worst cannot be ruled out,” he said.

The IMF managing director’s comments to reporters after a speech in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, represent the most dire estimate thus far of the state of the global economy by a major political figure, and were far more pessimistic than forecasts released by the IMF as recently Jan. 28.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Scotland On Sunday:

‘WE SHOULD agree as a world on a monetary and fiscal stimulus that will take the world out of r… depression.” Thus spake Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions last Wednesday, creating shock waves as far afield as Washington (“He said the D-word!”).

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen:

The economy is “severely depressed,” and the U.S. faces “horrific” deficits over the long term, Yellen said in response to audience questions.

Manhattan in the depressionYes, it’s a depression. The D-word. It’s okay to say it. It’s okay to admit it, because to use it brings our public discourse in alignment with reality.

Often quoted are the unemployment rates during the last depression – 25% of the workforce. During the last depression, that accounted for 11,385,000 people at the peak.

On Friday, we hit 7.6% unemployment – 11,616,000 people.

Percentage-wise, the percent of the labor force unemployed during the depression of the 1930s was much higher than today. That’s what you hear politicians say over and over again as they try to soothe anxieties of the public that are looking at a very different reality than the marbled chambers of Congress.

In terms of real families, real kids’ mouths to feed, real parents awake late into the night, we’ve just surpassed the last depression.

If we’re willing to drop false pretenses and admit in our public conversation that yes, this is a real depression, perhaps that’s the wakeup call that our political leaders need to hear. Drop your stupid partisan agendas, BOTH parties, listen to the economists who have been proven right over and over again in this climate (Nouriel Roubini, James K. Galbraith, many others), and get America moving again.

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What's all the stuff in the early morning tweet about?

Posted by on Feb 5, 2009 in Economy, Money | 49 comments

More than a few people who follow me on Twitter have been asking about what all the stuff is in one particular Tweet that I do daily, more for my own benefit to see where market indicators are. Here’s your morning tweet cheat sheet.

Sample:
DJIA +146 VIX 42.28 TED 95bps 3mo LIBOR 1.17 1mo OIS 20bps MSCI +1.53% BDI -2.54% 30yr 4.85% BCF 51.39 GLD 919.90 RR 12.30

DJIA: Dow Jones Industrial Averages futures for the day, based on Bloomberg after-hours market data. Gives an idea of what the market sentiment will be at the start of trading, typically due to Asian and European market movements.

Updated: At the recommendation of Mike LaLonde, I’m throwing the S&P 500 Futures (SPX) in right after the DJIA. The S&P 500 is a measure of a broad range of companies, giving a bigger picture of market sentiment.

VIX: Chicago Board of Options Exchange Volatility Index, based on Yahoo Finance data. The VIX is considered by some to be a leading indicator of how crazy the market is, based on S&P futures. A high VIX number (above 20) indicates that something’s going on in the market.

TED Spread: The difference between Treasuries and Eurodollars, typically T-bills and LIBOR (London Inter Bank Offering Rate), as measured by Bloomberg. A big TED spread indicates banks don’t trust each other and would rather borrow from the government.

3mo LIBOR: The interest rate for 3-month LIBOR, as measured by Bloomberg. This is the rate banks charge each other in London for borrowing money and is a good non-government measure of interest rates.

1mo OIS: 1 month overnight index swap, an interest rate that measures risk and liquidity in the money market, as measured by Bloomberg. A higher OIS indicates less cash in the system as banks hoard cash. A lower OIS indicates banks are willing to lend more freely.

MSCI: A stock market index of world stocks (MSCI used to stand for Morgan Stanley Capital Int’l), as measured by Bloomberg. This is an index containing stocks from 23 countries, and tells you how the world market is doing.

BDI: Baltic Dry Index, as measured by Bloomberg. This is a daily average of the price to ship raw dry materials, and is a good current indicator of economic health for goods and services. The reason why is that it costs money to put stuff on a boat and ship it – so if BDI is low, it means producers and retailers aren’t shipping stuff and the economy is unwell. A high BDI means that people are paying real money to ship stuff.

30yr: The average 30 year fixed mortgage interest rate. Since housing is such a vital component of the economy, seeing what mortgage rates are doing is useful for figuring out how housing is likely to be doing.

Updated: At the recommendation of economist Maria Simos, I’m adding BCF and GLD.

BCF: Brent Crude Futures, as measured by Bloomberg. This is the price of barrel of Brent crude oil, which gives a sense of where energy costs will go based on the source product. Neat trick – take the price of a barrel of oil and divide by 25, and you often get very close to the retail price of a gallon of gasoline.

GLD: Gold 100 oz futures, as measured by Bloomberg. Gold is the, well, gold standard, of a third party measurement against inflation. As countries inflate or deflate their currencies, the price of gold goes up or down.

Updated again: I’m adding RR: Rough Rice futures, Chicago Board of Trade. Why? Most of the planet eats the stuff, far more than other grains. When rice prices are high, you’re talking about a global increase in prices on the consumer. i was debating corn or rice, but chose rice because it’s purely a food stock, whereas corn has additional deviations due to things like ethanol.

Any one of these indicators has economic implications, but combined, I think they’re a good quick snapshot of different parts of the economy and how things are going on a day to day basis in a broader perspective than just the stock market.

What public leading economic indicators do you think are important?

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