The Death of the PC?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about the collapse of PC sales. Is this an economic indicator or is it evidence of a shift to tablets and other non-PCs??

Something to ponder...

I'm an info-addict

I've noticed for a long time now that it takes me longer to get certain things done nowadays than it used to. Writing and reading online are frequently interrupted by emails, cell phone calls, Twits, etc. I've spent the better part of the last two weeks writing, and re-writing proposals for work. In order to get this process completed, I've had to shut down Twitter, turn off my cell, avoid my blog, and log out of Google Reader. I think I'm an info-addict.

I read Wikipedia voluntarily and with no real purpose. A simple Google search for research on e34 BMW's will send me on a half hour mindless trip through the blogosphere clicking here and clicking there and ending up on a graduate student paper on political intrigues between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines in the Twelfth century Holy Roman Empire. Clearly, I have a problem.

We all do, really. Technology has been designed to get us all the information all the time. We don't need it, but it's there now. It's inescapable.

Gordon Gravitz of the Wall Street Journal has an article about information overload and some of the steps being taken to deal with it. Here is a quote:

Warning: On average, knowledge workers change activities every three minutes, usually because they're distracted by email or a phone call. It then takes almost half an hour to get back to the task once attention is lost. So if you're trying to read this column at the office or within range of your mobile device, what should be a few minutes can take much longer. Consider the rest of this article an 800-word test of your ability to maintain attention.

A decline in our ability to focus is a side effect of the otherwise powerful tools we use to gather and analyze information. A new organization has just been launched, the Information Overload Research Group, whose founders include executives from companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM and Intel. These are the very companies that have done the most to create the information tools that undermine our ability to focus; indeed, an initiative from them to address too much information could be compared to video-game programmers launching a line of Zen meditation centers. Still, it's encouraging that the most information-intense companies are trying to overcome their own overload.

I know now that there is no way I can absorb all the information provided for me. Even bookmarking and crowd sourcing websites are of limited value- I see too much "majority rules" bias in them. I have to be very disciplined about what I read, and why. I don't think that a software filter will be able to do this very human task. Many human beings aren't going to be able to discipline themselves, and will still have a need for trusted authorities.

Yahoo Profits Up or Not?

Based on the stories I'm reading there is a little confusion about whether Yahoo's profits were up or not.

The Wall Street Journal says yes: "Yahoo Profit Lifted By Alibaba Gain"

MarketWatch say no, they were artificially grown by IPO and takes the China angle: "Yahoo's earnings boosted by China holdings"

TheStreet says hell, yes: "Yahoo!: How Do You Like Us Now?"

All in all it's a bit confusing- a result, I'd guess, of armies of Microsoft and Yahoo flacks arguing opposite points as Yahoo tries to maneuver itself into a higher valuation.

Media Down, Marketing Up

Today, I started off by reading the Wall Street Journal and found a link to this story in AdAge, "Media Work Force Sinks to 15-Year Low." It begins:

U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), slammed by the slumping newspaper industry. But employment in advertising/marketing-services -- agencies and other firms that provide marketing and communications services to marketers -- broke a record in November (769,000). Marketing consulting powered that growth.

Here's the reason behind the disparity: Marketers still invest in marketing, but they have options far beyond paid media: digital initiatives, direct marketing, promotions and events, just to name a few. That creates more opportunities for consultants to help define strategies.

Agencies also have adapted, expanding beyond simply creating and placing ads. Indeed, Ad Age DataCenter research has shown that U.S. marketing-communications agencies collectively in 2005 for the first time generated less than half of their revenue from traditional media and media planning/buying.

We've all been hearing about the struggles of traditional media, especially media, but I didn't have any idea that the agency world was a growth industry.

Ah, the Gov't At Work...

Because of my business development activities, I spend a lot of time talking with a variety of innovative cybersecurity companies. Security, whether intrusion detection, identity assurance, testing, spam blocking, thumbsucking prevention, is an incredibly complex problem with many proposed solutions. One aspect with biggest potential for damage is lack of security around critical infrastructure.

Dams, nuclear power plants, Wall Street and government installations are now all connected to the Internet in a way they weren't even a decade ago. The government admits that they haven't done nearly enough to secure these facilities from cyber attack.

The problem? Well, the Internet is a private asset, and idea of the government inserting itself into the management and security of that asset raises everyone's alarms about privacy and the proper role of government. Add to that the Bush administration's wonderful track record explaining themselves, and I think you end up with an all out battle if they should try to do anything.

To paraphrase a former president, "well, here they go again."

From today's Wall Street Journal, Bush Looks to Beef Up Protection Against Cyberattacks:

President Bush has promised a frugal budget proposal next month, but one big-ticket item is stirring controversy: an estimated $6 billion to build a secretive system protecting U.S. communication networks from attacks by terrorists, spies and hackers.

Administration officials and lawmakers say that the prospect of cyberterrorists hacking into a nuclear-power plant or paralyzing Wall Street is becoming possible, and that the U.S. isn't prepared. This is "one area where we have significant work to do," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a recent interview.

The White House's proposal has already dismayed lawmakers concerned about civil-liberties violations. Democratic lawmakers are also frustrated by what they see as the White House's refusal to provide details of the program, and say that could threaten the fate of the initiative.

Blogging for Dollars?

My colleague Tarun pointed out an article from the Wall Street Journal showing how bloggers are using new services to generate advertising revenue. Personally, I'm not looking to generate any cash flow from this blog. I added Google AdWords to this fine blog mainly to see how it worked. So far, I've managed to "earn" 58 cents. Weeeeee.

For a well known blogger I can see how this might add up to real money. But for most people, ad revenues aren't going to add up to much.

Here is a quote from the WSJ article:

Many of the most widely used programs are adding features to allow users to customize the appearance and placement of ads on their sites. Some also are introducing newer money-making mediums such as audio and video ads.

"There's going to be a lot of new business models in 2008 that are geared toward more monetization," says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of strategic services for Nielsen Online, the Web analysis unit of the Nielsen Co.

Blog publishers could certainly use the help in making money. The vast majority of publishers make less than $10 or $20 a month through advertising, according to Internet-advertising experts. How much money is made through advertising on a site depends much on how much traffic a site gets, the trustworthiness of the content and how relevant the ads are to the visitors.

As for a business to business technology company, blogs are going to be part of the way that it communicates with its employees, customers, prospects, traditional media, analysts, other bloggers and other audiences. It's not going to be a source of revenue.

Economics Post!

I have economics degree from American University (go Eagles!) so I try to keep up with the latest economic news and I tend to view business and commerce through a more objective economist's viewpoint (well, I try anyway). Sometimes this is helpful and sometimes not so much...

Anyway, I read a really good, concise, easy to understand article in the WSJ just now on our current economics situation- credit crisis, slumping growth and all that. A subscription is required to read it (for now anyway). But go buy the dead tree version- you'll thank me.

Here is a juicy quote:

What's with all the gloom about the U.S. economy? The problem is that we have two problems. One is that the economy is slouching toward recession or, at best, slow growth. It's the consequence of falling house prices, higher energy prices, flagging consumers and shrinking profits.

The other is that the market for credit, the lifeblood of a modern economy, isn't functioning well. That problem is amplifying the pain caused by the first.

Just a few weeks ago, a lot of folks were arguing that the worst was behind us. Housing was still ailing. But after a big wallop, markets for credit seemed to be moving toward normalcy. The Federal Reserve ended its Oct. 31 meeting declaring that the "upside risks to inflation roughly balance the downside risks to growth." If Fed officials truly believed that then, they no longer do. They'll likely cut interest rates again on Tuesday. Only the most optimistic observers expect the U.S. economy to rebound quickly from its fourth-quarter slump. The argument now is between those forecasters who expect growth to be so slow in early 2008 that the unemployment rate climbs a little, and those who see a recession in which it climbs more.

In ordinary times, this would be unpleasant, but not so frightening. The Fed knows how to treat this condition: cut interest rates.

Sure, it's tough to get the timing right. And administering the remedy is more complicated with the dollar drooping and inflation returning to the Fed's agenda for the first time in years. Still, this is a familiar disease. Although the Fed has not and cannot abolish the business cycle, the U.S. has suffered from recession only 16 months in the past 25 years. (In the quarter-century before that, there were 64 months of recession.)

But these aren't ordinary times.

For years, banks and investors lent freely. They took big risks for surprisingly little reward (known as "low risk premiums" in the patois of the trade). Now, they're shunning risk. Big banks are reluctant to lend even to each other for more than a few days, and are hoarding cash. In a symptom that the financial fever hasn't broken, interest rates for one- and three-month loans among banks are up sharply. The Fed and the European Central Bank are now forced to consider the economic equivalent of alternative medicine.

"History," Alan Greenspan warned back in August 2005, "has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of prolonged periods of low risk premiums." He wasn't right about everything (and, yes, he may have contributed to today's problems by keeping rates so low for so long). But he was right about that.

Just a friendly update on today's world from your friendly neighborhood, amateur economist/PR blogger.

You may now return your attention to tonight's game between the great Chicago Bears and lowly Washington Redskins.

Nardelli is back for more

Shifting gears (!) a little from my normal topics, I was interested to read about Bob Nardelli accepting a management post at Chrysler. You may remember ole' Bob as the guy who, while CEO of Home Depot, pissed off the shareholders by refusing to answer questions during the annual meeting and (more importantly) generating flat returns on the stock price. Known as an operations guy at GE, he mis-extended Home Depot into the wholesale market and lost traction again Lowes. After getting fired for all that, it was revealed that he had negotiated a nice $210 million severance package for himself.

All in all, not the greatest PR a guy could get. People spent the better part of a month flagellating the guy. I just assumed he'd buy a house in the Hamptons and do whatever really rich people do: sail a boat, marry a younger woman, whatever...don't get me wrong, it's not his fault Home Depot agreed to this monstrous severance package, he is certainly entitled to enjoy the fruits of his "labor".

But you have to give this guy credit, here is today at a press conference talking about his plans for turning around Chrysler. Quite a bold move for a guy with a bulls eye on his back. Of course, now, the only shareholder he has to deal with is Cerberus, a private equity firm.

Here is the Wall Street Journal's take on the deal:

The iPhone is coming! The iPhone is coming!

Well, is the damn thing any good?...according to Walt Mossberg it is...

(I had a video but it's not playing in blogger. Grrr.)

Here is his text review.

I've had a Pocket PC for a number of years and the only complaints I've had are the short battery life and low volume (speaking and ringing). My phone is four years old so I'm do for a new one. Hmmm...perhaps an iPhone might do (eight hours of talk time!!)

Here is what the NY Times has to say about the iPhone.



Lastly, read about USA Today's positive review. Either this phone really is that good, or Apple's PR team deserves a round of applause for a job well done.

Happy Monday Morning! I read a very interesting article ("Political Device Goes Corporate"-registration required) in the Wall Street Journal on political campaign operatives moving from the political world to the corporate world. Aside from this article being a nice promotional piece for the Republican staffers fleeing the sinking ship to set up their own consultancies, there are some interesting points made.

Sara Taylor, the marketer highlighted in the article, claims that she has refined traditional database marketing under the pressure of modern political campaign.

"Microtargeting lets you pinpoint not only the issue an individual cares most about, but also what it is about the issue that is most likely to motivate the person to support a candidate," Ms. Taylor says. "That could be true of a corporation's products too."

Another benefit is that she and her peers have squeezed the slowness out of ordinary market segmentation due to the short timeline of a campaign.

At first blush, this seems like a great thing. Who wouldn't like to save money by having one's market analysis done in record time! After all, I'm sure she bills hourly...but with this efficiency comes some cut corners.

In politics, unfortunately, a candidate only needs 50% plus one of the voters with a single call to action on one day every couple of years. Negative messages (fear, doubt and uncertainty) are effective at rallying your supporters and discouraging your opponents. One doesn't care if you piss of the other 50%- in fact, that's a good thing!

Corporate marketers have higher ambitions than 50% of the marketplace. And this (hopefully) higher share must be continuously induced to all sorts of calls to action on a sometimes daily basis. Add in all sorts of legal restrictions and liabilities and the corporate marketers job starts to seem harder and harder.

Something I think Sara will learn very early on in her corporate marketing career...as did these former politicos when they botched the WalMart engagement for Edelman.

A very interesting post from B.L. Ochman's blog:

"Study: 82% of Americans Trust Social Media Before Corporate Sites"

While corporate web sites are obviously full of self serving hot air, I'm a little surprised with the 82% number. That's a lot. Social media, to me, is a very interesting medium with a lot of potential but full of biased, barely credible people. It's very interesting that most people are looking to online social networks as a source of information.

Again, this is another data point to support the theory that public relations will become more and more important as companies lose their grip on the mass communications techniques that served them so well for the last 50 odd years.

And then we read about "Blogola" from the Wall Street Journal. Will the pendulum swing too far and destroy the credibility that social media seems to inherently have? Seems possible...