firstnamedotlastname

We can has cheezburgers

Pet Holdings just launched the Lijit search across all their sites, including the flagship: ICanHasCheezburger.  To celebrate we ordered the whole company tasty cheeseburgers for a Friday lunch treat.  Todd snapped a quick video of me enjoying mine.. Check out Tara’s post at the Lijit blog for all the photos.

Tools for your twitter lifestyle

Check out the latest (beta) version of Tweetdeck.  It has a really cool integration with Facebook that pulls in Facebook updates exactly like a twitter stream.  Looks like Facebook is about an inch away from replacing twitter updates.  I set it up to show: All Friends; Replies; DMs; Searches + Facebook updates!

The second thing I think is really interesting (depending of course on how you set it up) is Twitterfall.  I got that one, courtesy of David Henderson.  Anyone that wants to track a trend, or a real-time view on any topic via Twitter needs to set this up.  You can even hone in on specific geographic locations.  In this case its giving me a real-time stream of people tweeting about Lijit and Lijit-related stuff.  A must for anyone in marketing or needing to pay attention to a market or trend.

Everything is so amazing, and Nobody is happy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

For some reason the embed feature is “disabled by request”.  Worth the 4 minutes and makes you think……

Interesting Bear Market Chart

Innovating our way out

Thomas Friedman has a short op-ed in the NYT today.  I think he hits the mark on how we should be thinking about investments and bailouts in this country.  If we want to come out of this economic crisis in better shape than we go in, we need to invest in people that are passionately solving big problems.

Don't call it a comeback

How ironic is it that we (you and me - via the government) give money to bailout the big 3 car makers and exactly 24 hours after the announcement the radio and TV are full of 0% financing Ads?  Some of these ads even say that the incentives are back because of the bailout funds.

Lets get this straight.  Consumers (you and me) didn't buy their crappy cars.  They're mis-managed companies under mountains of systemic costs and debt burdens - but - where do our bailout funds go?  Subsidizing the prices of cars so you and I can buy them...

What exactly changed with the companies? nothing.  Who is paying for the incentives? you and me.  How ironic.

OK. that’s just not right..

Several things seem to be out of place these days.  Not only did PETA start selling coffins:

But the realism in the auto industry (and what people seem to focus on) seems to have completely gone off the rails.

 

John Dingle said recently that 1 in 7 jobs in the US is in the auto industry.  That’s probably not correct, but then again, anyone that has been in a job for 53 years can’t realistically be expected to have perspective.  Nothing against Dingle, its just a fact.

In any event, consider this: foreign car companies sell over 50% of the cars in the US today, but employ far less than 50% of the workforce of the big 3.  According to the Wall St. Journal, the average hourly wage at a foreign manufacturer with operations in the US is $21/hour.  The big 3 hourly average wage is $24.  Not too big a difference, but here’s where it gets whacky.  The total loaded cost of an hourly worker for the foreign companies is approx. $44/hour, now compare that to the loaded hourly cost for a big 3 at $74/hour and its easy to see where things go sideways.

Back to Congress: why the hell would anyone throw money at a company that has crappy products, has made those crappy products for a long time, and has shown the complete inability to control costs and run an effective business?  The problems are way deeper than the CEO’s or executive management.  The companies have a corrosive culture that has lost its ability to win.  A bailout of these companies does nothing more than stave off the inevitable. There is nothing that is written anywhere that the US must have 3 big (and bloated) car companies.  If you build a product that no one wants, why should you deserve to exist?  Why not let the next generation of innovative US car companies rise up and fill a market need?  You know they eventually will.

The financing proposed gets even weirder. If I lend money to a company and its their last resort for financing, I should be able to get my money back first.  I’m, by definition, lending at the highest risk and this is a common stipulation of that risk.  Moreover, if a company says that the need a specific amount of capital and then you under-fund it like the recent “band-aid” $14B, then you effectively do nothing more than put all your money at extreme risk and give the company just enough time screw things up worse.  If the “band-aid” goes through, we are effectively pregnant with having to completely bail out these guys regardless of the $ they ask for next time around.  Now, more than before, they have us all over a barrel.

The logic suggested the banks that they should be entitled to compensation for the government nationalizing something in this instance is novel, but insane.  This further goes to show that entering into a business arrangement with the government is stupid.

It stinks that the downfall of the big 3 will put people out of work.  But, its not like this is a big surprise.  Their policies, management, quality, and innovation went the way of the buffalo a long time ago.