The Economist (September 12)
“The last time the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate, there was no one to tweet about it.” That was in June 2006 before Twitter’s IPO. “Nine years on, as the Fed readies itself to raise rates again, the public debate between hawks and doves is much noisier.” Even though markets are counting on least one rate rise this year, “it does not pay to go early: a rise now would needlessly risk America’s recovery.”
The Economist (October 11)
Bosses today are under more scrutiny than ever. They still need to worry about the press, but they also run “the risk of being pecked by Twitter’s swarm of angry birds. Thanks to the digital revolution, chief executives now live in glass houses. An ill-judged remark can be broadcast to the world in an instant.”
Tags: Bosses, Digital revolution, Executives, Press, Remark, Risk, Scrutiny, Twitter
Wall Street Journal (March 24)
The Obama administration announced plans “to give up U.S. control of the Internet to a still-to-be-determined collection of governments and international groups.” It’s hard to imagine this creating a better governing body. “It’s easy to imagine a new Internet oversight body operating like the United Nations, with repressive governments taking turns silencing critics. China could get its wish to remove FreeTibet.org from the Internet as an affront to its sovereignty. Russia could force Twitter to remove posts by Ukrainian-Americans criticizing Vladimir Putin.” Congress should override President Obama’s decision.
Tags: China, Congress, Critics, Governing body, Icann, Internet, Obama, Putin, Russia, Sovereignty, Tibet, Twitter, U.S., Ukraine, UN
Wall Street Journal (July 15)
“India’s state-run telephone company delivered its last telegram on Sunday. We are told an era is ending, as if mankind’s desire to communicate isn’t ageless.” For 163 years, telegrams served a purpose in India, but e-mail, SMS and Twitter are increasingly filling the need. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited had been losing approximately $23 million annually on telegrams since volume dropped to 5,000 daily “from 160,000-odd before smart phones and email.” In the U.S., Western Union eliminated telegrams in 2006 for similar reasons. Ironically, the short Twitter format of “140 characters pushes the limits of verbosity in a telegram,” but of course at greater speed and zero cost.
Tags: Cost, E-mail, End, Era, India, Smart phones, SMS, Speed, Telegram, Telephone, Twitter, U.S., Volume, Western Union
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
