Barron’s (July 25)
There is a social media bubble. “Investor enthusiasm for social-media stocks is way overblown.” To illustrate Barron’s points out that 8 social media companies (Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, LivingSocial, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pandora Media and Zillow) with recent or potential IPOs only earned combined revenue of $3.5 billion. Alone, the Washington Post earned $1 billion more than the eight companies combined, but the market value of the Post is just $3.4 billion. In contrast, Twitter has been valued at $8 billion and Facebook’s theoretical value is $100 billion. While these may be great companies, they appear to be bad stocks for investors.
Tags: Bubble, Facebook, Social media, Twitter, Washington Post
LA Times (July 24)
“Too many countries are playing Russian roulette when it comes to seismic risk.” It is “a human triumph of the first order” that so few buildings collapsed as a result of “Japan’s Sendai earthquake on March 11, which released 600 million times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.” But many governments have yet to adopt Japan’s stringent building standards. In many earthquake prone countries, a similar quake could kill a million people. Seismic risk mitigation is “the greatest urban policy challenge the world confronts today.”
Tags: Earthquakes, Japan, Seismic risk, Sendai
