If you simply read the headlines, you’d think that the economy — or at least spending by the average consumer — is on the comeback:

Thanksgiving Day saw an 18% increase in online spending to $479 million.

U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15% from the corresponding days last year.

Sounds good, until you remember that the income gap is real and the average consumer doesn’t matter so much in the broader context:

When discussing “the consumer,” it is important to remember that in reality, “the consumer” is the top 20% of income earners and then everybody else. The top 20% of income earners (who own about 80-90% of the equity market) account for about 40-45% of all spending in the economy.

via Business Insider and TechCrunch

During my weekend readings I came across two snippets that present an interesting take on what the future of work holds. I’m fascinated by the future of work and I’m glad to see some refreshingly unique perspectives on what to expect in terms of evolution…

First Kevin Kelly on why ‘productivity’ is a worthless metric to be optimizing for:

There is more to be gained by producing more opportunities than by optimizing existing ones.

Productivity, however, is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy.

The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs. Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do.

In the coming era, doing the exactly right next thing is far more fruitful than doing the same thing twice.

Next, Ben Casnocha via Arnold Kling on why ‘hard-to-define’ jobs may be a sign of job security:

Generally, the harder it is to explain to someone you’ve just met at a cocktail party what it is you do on a day to day basis, the more interesting the work you’re engaged in.

Arnold Kling applies a related rule of thumb to job security:

A job seeker is looking for… a well-defined job. But the trend seems to be that if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced.

The marginal product of people who need well-defined jobs is declining. The marginal product of people who can thrive in less structured environments is increasing.

This summer while booking my trip to Europe I noticed something I hadn’t seen before across a number of hotel aggregator sites: the use of real-time notifications to ‘let you know’ who is also looking at the same hotel and when the last room booked was.

I’m not exactly what I think about this tactic as a consumer, but I’m sure it’s effective for sellers.

Having the constant pop-ups is a similar feeling to being in a bricks and mortar store where you’re ‘considering buying a shirt,’ but have put it back on the rack. Someone else walks up and starts looking at the same shirt! It’s both a validation (that you had a good eye) and a major source of pressure —  now that other person might now take the shirt and leave you high and dry!

Anyway it’s interesting to see the web evolve, especially e-commerce as it tries to replicate more tactics from the offline world. These real time notifications strike me as a really different approach and one that is likely to spread to other verticals outside of hotels very soon.

To see for yourself, surf around on Booking.com and click through several hotels where they are showing limited inventory.

Image above is for a London hotel via Booking.com.

Can you consider these startups ‘missed opportunities,’ or did they only come into being because the founder(s) left to work on something outside corporate walls?…

Click image for full-size

Some notes following an awesome two week vacation to Spain (Barcelona, Rioja, San Sebastian and Bilbao) and London:

• The number of nice cars in London is outrageous
• Eating Pinxtos in San Sebastian is the best. Question: why does this style of restaurant not work in a City like New York? Health code?
• Food prices in Spain are very reasonable; great place for a culinary trip
• A good concierge/bell hop can make a trip (especially if you didn’t have time for pre-trip internet research)
• Ironically we also had an Airbnb mishap: Despite excellent customer service, I’m not sure if I would trust it internationally again. A trust network is definitely needed (startup idea?)
• It’s funny that wifi is less expensive (or free) the cheaper the place you stay
• The new Travel Pro rolling bag I bought six months ago is my favorite purchase of the year so far. Amazing.
• It’s great to have free museums (DC/London) but the crowds are insane. No museum should allow photos simply because it eccacerbates the above issue as everyone tries to do posed pictures creating back-up and frustrated tourists
• Foursquare really needs to improve its explore functionality!
• Foursquare is annoying when traveling internationally because you can’t check-in while offline – wish I could download on offline map/venue list
• It’s difficult to find international stamps

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF SEARCH QUERIES ARE…

All information compiled/taken from Quora answers

2010 was a challenging year for me personally and I took a fair amount of time off from blogging. I’m hoping to get back into the groove of writing this year.

Initially I thought I’d write a lengthy retrospective about my year, but who wants to dwell in the past? So I’m going do a quick catch-up for those who may think me AWOL and then get into some of what has me excited going forward. If you have specific questions feel free to ask in the comments, or email me, and  I will gladly answer.

2010 saw me transition out of Workstreamer, a company I started 4+ years ago. Workstreamer is going strong under new leadership. Ben and I sold the company during the late summer. It’s hard to let go of your baby.

Since leaving Workstreamer I started two projects. The first, Eat.ly, was started with three friends (now all  employed at Foursquare). Eat.ly was recently acquired by Foodspotting. The second project was one that truly excited me and I had hoped to work on going forward. The concept was most closely related to what BranchOut and Identified are up to: essentially bringing Linkedin to Facebook. Sadly, the project had to be abandoned for personal reasons. However, I am positive we were in a really ripe space that will see a breakout this year. People need jobs and Facebook is where the people are.

Over the summer and fall I consulted for two companies that I expect to make noise soon: Red Rover and Bundle.  Consulting was fun, but it was also difficult to not be the person making the really tough calls. I need ownership in projects I am involved in.

Most recently I’ve spent several months focused on researching trends and teaching myself some code.

Also, I am really excited to now be formally involved with my good friends at Rocketfuel, where I’ll be serving as an in-house entrepreneur of sorts, helping incubate an as of yet undetermined startup. Zvi will also be involved :)

So what has me excited for the year ahead?

First on a personal level I feel pretty happy; I have a ton to be thankful for and I have learned some difficult lessons over the past year that have left me stronger and hungrier than before.

I also am starting to get excited about startups again. At several points last year I questioned whether I wanted to stay in startups or move back into finance. Partially this was because I experienced some tough on-the-ground lessons. Partially it’s because I’m not as certain as I have been previously about where the big opportunities lie. Toward the end of 2009 I knew that Facebook, Location and Gamification were where it would be at.  Recently I have been less sure. For example something about Twitter still makes me think it isn’t as exciting as expected.  Other services like Quora and Foursquare have me really jazzed. Mobile is going bananas. I think ‘timing’ [example, example] will be a meme. Follow on rounds and talent shortages have me a bit worried and I think 2011 will be a challenging year for many for those two reasons. I’m excited that startups are going mainstream — kind of hard to explain what I mean specifically — but articles like this are the general idea.

So we’ll see what happens, but I’m ready to get building again.

Anyway, here’s to a fantastic 2011 and a resurgence in blogging.

It feels good to be back!

Sam

**links to come

Very interesting article in the New York Times discussing the growing disparity in income among Americans:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent [article] on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

While it seems impossible to many, the US now has a level of income disparity comparable to China. As many are (rudely) discovering, we are undergoing some really massive transitions; educational costs skyrocketing and the middle class continues to pay educational premiums (college, graduate school), though in many cases for less and less of a return. Many of my friends with tremendous liberal arts educations continue to struggle with the job search while also shouldering massive debts. Skills are at a premium. The increasing income inequality (and decreasing wages) reflect a new premium paid for skills and decreases in wages for the unskilled due to increasing competition.

On top of educational/skill shifts, the allocation of taxes against this disparity is also hotly contested. Business Insider produced a great info-graphic showing that the top marginal tax rate correlates inversely with the income share of the top 0.01% of earners.

Yet, despite what appears to be worrisome/shocking data points I’m also reminded of a great Paul Graham essay (hat tip to Quora) on the difference between ‘wealth’ and ‘money’ (see excerpt below).

Ultimately I’m unsure how, or if, this new disparity affects the overall ‘wealth pie’:

If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is as old as human history. Far older, in fact; ants have wealth. Money is a comparatively recent invention.

Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn’t need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn’t matter how much money you had.

Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? It is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand how to make money.

Money is a side effect of specialization. In a specialized society, most of the things you need, you can’t make for yourself. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to live, you have to get it from someone else.

How do you get the person who grows the potatoes to give you some? By giving him something he wants in return. But you can’t get very far by trading things directly with the people who need them. If you make violins, and none of the local farmers wants one, how will you eat?

The solution societies find, as they get more specialized, is to make the trade into a two-step process. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, silver, which you can then trade again for anything else you need. The intermediate stuff– the medium of exchange– can be anything that’s rare and portable. Historically metals have been the most common, but recently we’ve been using a medium of exchange, called the dollar, that doesn’t physically exist. It works as a medium of exchange, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U.S. Government.

The advantage of a medium of exchange is that it makes trade work. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means. People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage– just a shorthand– for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.