The Bitt On Media

This really might be the funniest comment on the Internet

Zee — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:39:49 PDT

This was posted on Reddit as someone’s “funniest comment ever posted” on the site. If you’re familiar with Reddit, you’ll know the laughs come by the bucket load so I was dubious…I was wrong to be. This is hilarious.

Before you read this, you should know Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and coined “Knowledge is Power.”

Mary Meeker’s 2011 Presentation On Internet Trends [Slides]

Alexia Tsotsis — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:43:58 PDT

Kleiner Perkins partner and former Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker is about to take the stage here at Web 2.0 Summit to present on Internet trends, as she does every year.

I’ll be writing this up live, so keep refreshing. For now, you can flip through the slides above and take a gander at her 12 trend topics below.

View this document on Scribd

1. Globality – We Aren’t In Kansas Anymore…

Meeker revealed that 81% of users of the top ten global internet properties are outside the USA, which makes global markets a force to be reckoned with.

2. Mobile – Early Innings Growth, Still…

iPhones, iPods and iPads have revolutionized the market. But Android tablets and phones, at a different price point, are not to be underestimated.

3. User Interface – Text/Graphical/ Touch / Sound / Move

“Sound is going to be bigger than video. Record is the new Qwerty,” say SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung.

4. Commerce – Fast / Easy / Fun / Savings = More Important Than Ever…

The ability to click and buy on a mobile device is making a huge difference in mobile commerce. “It’s now an expectation that if you see it on your screen, you can click and buy it,” says Meeker.

5. Advertising – Lookin’ Good…

Look at Google’s click growth for an indicator of advertising health: 23% of clicks on ads is a good sign Meeker says.

6. Content Creation – Changed Forever

Meeker refers to Joanne Bradford from DemandMedia doing a better job at talking about content creation.

7. Technology / Mobile Leadership – Americans Should Be Proud

64% of smartphones have U.S.A. OSes (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) versus 5% 5 years ago.

8. Mega-Trend of 21st Century = Empowerment of People via Connected Mobile Devices

“The ability to get realtime fast and broad information flow is only going to get greater,” says Meeker.

9. Authentic Identity – The Good / Bad / Ugly. But Mostly Good?

“One of the biggest topics of the next ten years,” Meeker says.

10. Economy – Lots of Uncertainty

Despite lots of indicators of uncertainty, “We’ve had a good two weeks.”

11. USA Inc. – Pay Attention!

The US ranks 10th on a list of country by debt. Greece, by comparison, ranks number 3.

Apple Steve Jobs The Crazy Ones - NEVER BEFORE AIRED 1997

(author unknown) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:37:34 PDT

I liked a YouTube video: Steve Jobs narrates the first Think different commercial "Here's to the Crazy Ones". It never aired. Richard Dreyfuss did the voice for spot however Steve's is much better 1997

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage."

(author unknown) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:15:00 PDT

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

- Anaïs Nin

506. Don't call me just to complain. That's what your mother is there for.

(author unknown) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:01:00 PDT

Old People Versus Webcam (Goes Viral)

Nalts — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:41:02 PDT

What? What'd you say, honey?

An elderly couple struggles with a webcam… it’s the latest “viral” video according to ABC. Thanks to a tech savvy and vigilant grand daughter (Miss Morgan) for sharing this clip of Bruce and Esther Huffman, who live at the Hillside retirement community in McMinnville, Ore.

Granny’s Doing Fine

David Frum — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:46:57 PDT

The Census reports that over 65s have actually seen their income rise during the Great Recession:

Perhaps no households have weathered the downturn better than those headed by people 65 and older, whose incomes rose 5.5 percent from 2007 to 2010. By contrast, household income for every other age group fell. Among people ages 15 to 24, it plunged 15.3 percent.

Partly that is because older Americans get more of their income from pensions and investments, so a job shortage hurts them less. Also, the generation now retiring has been the most prosperous in history, so as poorer Americans die off, the income of the age group grows.

And the policy response to this remarkable exception to the trend?

Why – it is to exempt the over 65s from any and all budget cuts while hammering hard the future benefits of the age groups who are currently doing worst.

That buzzing in my ear didn't mean I was about to die

Seth Godin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:27:07 PDT

Six weeks ago, at midnight, I found myself awake but wiped out from jet lag. I was in a lumpy bed, in the dark, in an obscure, $20 a night, John-Waters'-esque former country club. I was in Kitale, Kenya, near the Ugandan border.

A mosquito was buzzing in my ear. (Why do they buzz in your ear?). I had meds, of course, but what if I didn't? What if, like so many who live here, I had kids and no money for medicine?

Try to imagine that for a second before you click onto the next thing you've got on your agenda for today.

Today is End Malaria Day.

Right this minute, right now, please do three things:

Buy two copies of End Malaria, an astonishing new book by more than sixty of your favorite authors. In a minute, I will explain why this might be the most important book you buy this year (not the best book, of course, just the most important one). You should buy one in paperback too so you can evangelize a copy to a colleague.
Tweet or like this post, or email it to ten friends (It only takes a second.)
And, visit the End Malaria Day website and share it as well.

What would happen if you did that? What would happen if you stepped up and spent a few dollars?

Here's what would happen: someone wouldn't die.

A child wouldn't die from malaria, a disease that causes more childhood death than HIV/AIDS.

It's that direct. Malaria bednets are simple nets that hang over a window or a bed. They're treated with a chemical that mosquitos hate. The mosquitos fly away, they don't bite, people don't get malaria.

Every single penny spent on the Kindle edition goes to Malaria No More, giving them enough money to buy one or two bednets and to deliver them and be sure they're used properly. Low overhead, no graft, no waste. Just effectiveness. And if you buy the beautiful paperback edition, you can easily give it away when you're done and the same $20 donation gets made. None of the authors or anyone at the Domino Project sees your money, there's no ulterior motive, just the fact that a kid won't die.

Wait, there is one ulterior motive: You might be inspired. One of the sixty plus contributors might share a gem or spark an idea.

And I guess there's a second motive: Stepping up feels right. It's a few clicks to buy a book, one you might be able to afford. And for the rest of the day, or even a week, you'll remember how it felt to save someone's life.

Please.

And if you could, after you buy a copy, please tweet or post or email your friends. It matters. Thanks.

13-Year-Old Designs Efficient Solar Array Inspired By Oak Trees

Matylda Czarnecka — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:17:50 PDT

When it comes to renewable energy solutions, sometimes nature has the best ideas. That was 13-year-old Aidan Dwyer’s conclusion after a wintry hike in New York’s Catskill Mountains, a trip that inspired him to build a unique and effective solar array design.

Dwyer observed patterns in the trees and, after further research and contemplation, realized the branches matched up with the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical pattern found throughout nature, such as in falcon flight paths, nautilus shells and ratios within the human body.

Dwyer speculated that this pattern aided the trees in photosynthesis and tested his hypothesis by building a miniature tree-shaped solar array. The project won him a 2011 Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History.

The 7th grader describes his experiments in a detailed essay:

I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible.

The design generated up to 50% more power than the model of a traditional solar installation during periods of low sunlight. The individual solar panels’ various angles help the array capture light even when the sun is very low in the sky. And, since they don’t lie flat, many of the panels are also less affected by shade and snow.

At this point, Dwyer’s design a backyard experiment, but perhaps in the future we’ll see roof gardens planted with solar tree arrays.

Images courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Musuem.

Market Correction? Try Perma-Crisis

Umair Haque — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 08:21:00 PDT

It's been a scary couple of days. I'd bet, given recent events in the markets, like many, you'd like to get to the bottom of what the heck is really going on here. Why does everything we try to fix this crisis seem not to work?

Let me recap my take of what's happened over the past several years:

In 2006-7, the prevailing narrative discussed a never-ending boom thanks to hyperfinancialization. I suggested, instead: a historic, generational crisis — not just a crash, but a titanic reconfiguration of the global economy.
In 2008-9, the prevailing narrative switched between "Zomg what just happened?! What kind of banking crisis is this? Is this a liquidity crisis? Is this a solvency crisis?!" I suggested that it was none of the above — it's an institutional crisis, hardwired into the DNA of our economic "rules of the game" (which, as they stand, fail to reward the creation of authentic, enduring, meaningful value, and so can't generate real prosperity).
In 2009-10, when the prevailing narrative was "Ah, that was just a banking crisis — we're going to recover next quarter!! Whoops, I mean — next quarter!! Whoops...." I argued: we're in for a prolonged period of generalized stagnation (replete with toxic dynamics like mass unemployment, falling real incomes, wealth transfers, regulatory failures) — because we're still in an institutional crisis, not out of a simple "banking crisis."

Now the prevailing narrative is more or less: "Uhh, Bob...do you know what the daylights is going on here? Steve? Bill? Todd? Bueller?!! Anyone...?!! Heeeellp!!" The shouty talking heads still largely struggle to understand what this crisis even is.

But the market turmoil we've witnessed in the past few days might should not have been a surprise — and wasn't — to those who have been paying attention. Less because of near-term political gridlock, and more because of real stagnation combined with the end of central bank life support for the markets.

Who has been paying attention? People like Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller at the Roosevelt Institute, John Robb at Global Guerrillas, economists and management scholars and thinkers like Joe Stiglitz, Gary Hamel, John Hagel, Richard Florida, and Roger Martin, all of whom have centrally challenged the tenets of what you might call financial determinism — the idea that simply by hurling money at banks, corporations, or investors, this crisis will automagically self-correct — and have instead suggested: it's fundamentally grounded in the institutions we use to (mis)manage the economy. They're deeply broken, and throwing money at broken institutions doesn't fix them — it does the very opposite: it entrenches them, shores them up, fortifies them against the future.

Hence, here are six lessons on crisis that help explain why we're still in one:

When you don't reinvent institutions at a time of systemic failure, the problems they're creating don't just magically disappear.
When you prop up (read: bail out) the institutions causing the crisis, instead of reinventing them, the crisis will deepen.
When dysfunctional institutions prop one another up, prosperity's a house of cards. Crisis becomes stagnation.
When propping up failed institutions has drained your resources, you've turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
The longer it takes you to see a crisis for what it truly is, the disproportionately worse it's likely to get.
When people who are prisoners of the paradigm that caused the crisis are in charge of fixing it, bet on...more crisis.

This crisis — like many historic crises — isn't likely to vanish, like a mirage in the desert, just because we soldier on. Rather, it will take deep-seated institutional reinvention and transformation (before you ask me "how?!", check out my book, or read back through this blog). If we don't get serious about it soon, well, my hunch is: this pretty much is the shape of the future. Hence, the final lesson just might be: fail to heed lessons 1-6 for long enough and you're on the Express Train to the Federation of Banana Republics. If we don't, my guess: today's market turmoil is probably just the pregame for the main event.

The Debt-Ceiling Disaster Flick, Hollywood-Style

Dr. Worden — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:08:33 PDT

During the last two weeks of July 2011, the American media was focused on the debt-ceiling negotiations. In the midst of a summer with plenty of natural distractions, an increasing number of Americans were cluing in to find their federal government at a stalemate as the clock ticked to a possible economic catastrophe said to begin on 12:01am on August 3, 2011. The U.S. Treasury department had estimated that it would run out of ways to make up for the lack of additional borrowing authority on August 2^nd. To the media, that meant a clock ticking down to 12 midnight. In actuality, tax revenues were up so the actual date was said to be around August 10^th. In any case, the U.S. would not implode at precisely 12:01am on August 3^rd by any account, yet that made better drama, which in turn increased viewership.

I contend that the American people were, by in large, taken for a ride by the media and members of Congress who tacitly worked to build suspense toward a precise crisis-point in order to gain the attention of the people. Never mind that the possible crisis was self-inflicted; the media companies would have higher viewership numbers and the elected representatives would be at the center of attention. To deflect blame, the politicians used their press conferences to take partisan shots at the other party. The idea was basically this: I get the attention and you get the blame. Meanwhile, msnbc.com assures its viewers that it would be covering the crisis all weekend.

I suspect that the suspense was faked. The Congressional leaders quietly admitted that they would not allow the U.S. Government to default. Few viewers apparently picked up on that; nor did it stop the news networks from continuing with their ticking clocks and instilling still more fear of a financial collapse. Put another way, were the politicians really as worried as they said they were, they would not have been spending their press conferences to bash the other guy. Were an asteroid rapidly hurling toward Earth, members of Congress would really be too scared to be concerned that the other party had gotten a good shot in and therefore should be countered. The officials would not even think of partisanship if there were a real danger of collapse. Nor would they allow themselves to get distracted by bringing in other obfuscating priorities. Instead, they would be concentrating on coming up with a plan to blow up the rock.

It is interesting, by the way, that in spite of such sustained and constant news coverage of the "crisis" over weeks, an intensely concentrated or focused public analysis did not ensue. Rather, there was merely more time for "talking heads" to pontificate and argue over the partisan shots and distracting other priorities that kept attention from being focused on the debt-ceiling question itself. In other words, even saturated coverage by the news media did not proffer a better public discourse on the topic. Is there perhaps a limit to how well public discourse can function in a union of republics or countries (i.e., on the scale of empire)? Even if so, the conduct of the representatives in the representative democracy does not give one more confidence.

For example, neither the media nor the public had an accurate understanding of default. Rather than happening at 12:01am on August 3rd without a raise in the debt-ceiling, it would not have happened until or unless the Treasury department missed interest and principal payments on Treasury bonds. Going on a cash basis and even closing some government agencies do not signify default, which pertains only to servicing existing debt. To the extent that the final agreement was accepted under the assumption that default would ensue in a day or two, the various errors concerning the nature of the doomsday contributed to the problem.

What most concerns me, however, is that the actual behavior of the members of Congress may have belied their attention-grabbing scare tactics. Sadly, I think the American people were taken in by the disaster-film narrative; we gave the news media and the politicians the attention they craved and we let them convince us that it was do or die on August 2, 2011. We bought into the notion that the world as we know it would end abruptly at 12:01am on August 3^rd. Consistent with the Congressional leaders’ quiet admission that not raising the debt-ceiling was “off the table,” a compromise arrived just in time, like a vintage ending of a Hollywood script--arriving just in the nick of time. The suspense was pushed just to the brink (defined as 12:01am on August 3^rd), then the quick climax, just as in a standard screenplay. No more than ten or fifteen pages are allowed after the critical event when everything comes to a head.

I contend that the powers in Congress and the White House were quietly managing this drama, and that it ended just as they sought (i.e., maximizing the dramatic element, and thus the attention). Compromise did not have to come at the eleventh hour; the agreement was reached because it had been agreed that it would be. In other words, the politicians were not primarily oriented to averting "crisis"; they allowed their other agendas to intercede and we enabled this by giving the attention they craved. In other words, we rewarded the very behavior that belied the representatives' own claims, and we did so by tacitly agreeing to sit through the self-inflicted (by us and them) drama.

If I am correct, the problem involves a conflict of interest wherein the news media and politicians had as much or more of an interest in the attention that goes with even a self-inflicted crisis than in solving the immediate problem itself (i.e., deciding whether to raise the debt-ceiling). To the Americans who thought the Russian roulette was for real—that the politicians would actually permit default—the attention-grubbing plot was undoubtedly not appreciated. Nor was it in the interest of the United States. It is as though the politicians in front of the microphones were indifferent to the stress being put on people already stressed out over a languid jobless “recovery.” But the politicians came out as screwed up, you retort. Yes, and Congress itself has an even worse reputation than it had before the "crisis."

It should be remembered, however, that politicians (and journalists) yearn for attention for its own sake, and they will do their utmost to shovel the blame on the other politician's sidewalk so to get both the attention and the credit for averting the crisis the very possibility of which they themselves created. If this doesn't sound rational, it is because it isn't. The politician's desire for attention can be intoxicating and even self-destructive. In the case of the debt "crisis" orchestrated drama, simply for us all to go through it was destructive. We were so oriented to the clocks ticking down to doomsday that we missed the real destructiveness going on in our being taken in by the ruse itself. Put still another way, if the members of Congress really thought the U.S. could be facing economic catastrophe, engaging partisan shots would be beyond reckless, given the pivotal role of the members in "saving" the country. Their own partisanship and other intervening priorities belied their claims of the magnitude of the risk of default. At the very least, something was amiss in how the politicians were presenting the drama itself, given their conduct. Sadly, we, the American people, were taken in by the torrid narrative itself, and therein resides the true destructiveness of the drama.

Click to add a question or comment on whether the “crisis” drama was orchestrated by members of Congress and the news media

How to Protect Your Finances in a Default

David Frum — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:19:14 PDT

Six months ago I thought a federal default unthinkable. Default now seems all too sadly possible. How can individuals protect themselves from the economic consequences of a worst-case scenario?

Some thoughts:

In a default, cash will be worth less (because the dollar will plunge), and debt will cost more (because interest rates will rise). If your situation allows, you should give serious thought to more rapid discharge of debt.

In a default, foreign currencies will rise in value against the dollar (as the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar and Swiss franc have done over the past 30 days). But other so-called hard assets may not do so well. Gold for example is very sensitive to increases in interest rates: since gold does not pay interest, the opportunity costs of owning gold become more onerous if rates rise. Real estate is often thought of as a hard asset, but real estate is also an immobile asset, exposed to the fluctuations of the dollar.

The impact of the crisis on the stock market may be surprisingly muted. Corporate profits have been strengthening this spring and summer, and it is corporate profits that the stock market most fundamentally cares about. Yet individual sectors will suffer: government contractors, obviously; retailers that sell to poorer people who depend on government transfers to support their consumption; and (pay attention to this) banks. Banks have booked great profits by borrowing from the Federal Reserve at almost zero, and then lending to the Treasury at a premium. Money does not get earned easier than that. But in a rising interest rate environment, this carrying trade will be rendered much more difficult.

Foreign stocks will appreciate, or at least seem to appreciate from the point of view of those who bought in pre-crisis dollars. I especially like Canadian bank stocks, they have been the best thing I’ve bought in the past three years. Too bad the Norwegian oil company is state-owned.

Even a few days of crisis would be a shock to the economy: many people expecting payment from the government will not receive it. If the crisis lasts longer than a few days, the effects will hit harder and harder. The US government is the largest purchaser of goods and services on the planet. If it cuts back dramatically and abruptly, the US economy will plunge back into recession.

One thing I can’t figure out: will Congress’ decision to rebrand the US as a banana republic be bullish or bearish for banana futures?

Obama’s 5 big mistakes

bspcn — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:50:52 PDT

Written by David Frum

Washington (CNN) — If the debt ceiling crisis were a movie, President Barack Obama would deserve an Oscar for his performance in the role of “the last reasonable man.”

But of course the crisis is not a movie. The crisis is a deadly serious clash of ideas and interests. And there, the president has lost his way

Obama has lost his way so badly that even his core liberal supporters should be questioning whether they have got the right man in the job.

The indictment has five headings:

1.Obama has ceased to lead on the economy.

The management guru Stephen Covey famously said: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Economic recovery is — or should be — the main thing. In 2009, Obama advanced a series of bold proposals to accelerate recovery: his big fiscal stimulus, the auto bailout and so on.

The president’s proposals did not fail, exactly. But they did not work as advertised. The American economy limps weakly forward, leaving millions out of work.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt demanded from his administration “bold, persistent experimentation.” By contrast, Obama put measures in place at the beginning and waited for them to yield results. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, at the end of 2010, he added one more measure to the mix: a partial cut to the payroll tax, included as part of the deal that renewed the Bush tax cuts.

The payroll tax holiday is welcome if late. But it was small (2 percentage points out of the 12.6% paid by workers and employers) and was almost immediately offset by the surge in oil prices after the so-called Arab Spring. That surge took back from workers every dollar of the $110 billion in tax relief delivered by the payroll holiday.

And since December, Obama has surrendered entirely to the claim that we can somehow fix the economy by fixing the debt problem. The truth is the opposite: Fix the economy, and the debt problem will shrink to much more manageable proportions.

2.Obama does not effectively use the domestic powers of the presidency.

Talk radio shows accuse Obama of acting like a Third World dictator heading a thug government. That’s a devilishly ingenious line of attack on a president who actually makes weaker use of his domestic power than any since Jimmy Carter.

Example: The U.S. recovery that commenced in the summer of 2009 stalled in the spring and summer of 2010. Many economists blame the stall on the Federal Reserve’s April 2010 decision to stop providing additional monetary stimulus for fear of igniting inflation. Those inflation fears proved utterly misplaced, and in late 2010 the Federal Reserve resumed its monetary stimulus.

Where was the president during this crucial debate? AWOL.

Yes, yes, the Federal Reserve is independent and all that. But other presidents have succeeded in making their views known and respected on monetary policy. Obama had a unique chance to influence the debate, because through the summer of 2010 two of the seven seats on the Fed’s Board of Governors stood vacant. The president nominated expansion-minded governors to fill the seats. The nominations were put on hold by Republican senators. And what did the president do? Did he take to the airways to demand action on his nominees? Did he punish the senators by stopping federal projects in their states? Did he fill the seats with recess appointments?

To borrow the answer from Fred Armisen’s imitation of Obama on “Saturday Night Live”: “I’m seeing two big accomplishments: jack and squat.”

3.Obama cannot communicate empathy for Americans in economic distress.

Remember that video of the Obama supporter expressing her exhaustion and disappointment with the president’s record of help to the middle class?

Watch it again, and pay careful attention to what the president does. He first makes a perfunctory effort to connect with the woman in front of him as a fellow-parent. Then he rattles off a list of small programmatic changes: in the student loan program, in credit card regulation, none of them especially relevant to the woman in question. He finishes with a “stay the course” message that must ring hollow in the ears of all those for whom the “course” means unemployment of 38 weeks or longer.

Notice what the president does not do. He does not thank his questioner for defending him. He does not ask her questions of his own. He is so determined to sell his narrative, that he cannot hear or honor her fears. And indeed the questioner did lose her job a few weeks after the town hall meeting.

For two years, Obama’s economic message has been “recovery is around the corner.” He has delivered this message from factory floors and restaurant tables. He has not spoken in front of groups of unemployed; he has not spoken at welfare offices.

Obama’s disconnect from those in distress may explain the remarkable collapse of his support among younger whites, once one of his most important groups of supporters. Pew reports a 10-point surge in Republican identification among whites under age 30 since 2008. These are some of the voters hardest hit by this recession. They are voters to whom this president has spoken least.

4.Obama over-relied on banks and bankers.

Like President George W. Bush before him, Obama took bold and necessary action to save the U.S. financial system in the early spring of 2009. A lot of ugly things were done. A lot of reckless people got away scot-free — in fact, richer than ever. But apocalypse was averted, so congratulations all around. Afterward though: Where was the reckoning? The administration remained focused on reassuring bankers long after it had finished the job of saving the banks.

Yes, Congress did pass a law, Dodd-Frank, that addressed some of the worst abuses of the 2000s. For example, Dodd-Frank exposes ratings agencies to private lawsuits for “knowing or reckless” failures to conduct proper investigations of the bonds they rate.

Unless you follow banking law closely, however, you would have little idea that any preventive measures have been taken against the next bubble. What got the headlines instead was the president’s appointment of one high-profile banker, William Daley, as his chief of staff — and a rumor that he intended to appoint another as his second secretary of the Treasury, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.

Little enough justice was done. Almost none was seen to be done.

5.Obama is not a good negotiator.

It’s really striking that any time the president inserts himself into a negotiation, he ends up with zero results and all parties mad at him. The Middle East may be the most extreme case, but there are domestic counterparts, too.

When he negotiated the renewal of the Bush tax cuts in 2010, why didn’t he get himself an increase in the debt ceiling at the same time? The tax cuts expanded the deficit beyond what it otherwise would have been. Republicans dearly wanted the tax cuts extended and would have paid for them. But no.

In this round of debt negotiations, the president has drawn red lines. He has threatened to veto a small increase in the debt ceiling, one that would force him to return to the argument before the election in 2012. By contrast, he has not threatened to veto debt-ceiling measures that cut too deeply into social programs. His red lines are drawn for his political advantage — not to protect his core supporters’ values and interests. His red lines are not theirs.

Whether it was health care or the deficit or now the debt ceiling, direct encounters between Obama and his Republican opposite numbers have always ended badly for the president. Yes, the president faces unusually extreme and intransigent opposition. But that’s a description of the difficulty, not an excuse for failure. Presidents win negotiations when they can mobilize the public behind them. That was Ronald Reagan’s secret weapon in 1981. It has never been Barack Obama’s. And the results are as we all see.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.

An earlier version of this commentary incorrectly attributed a quote from Stephen Covey.

Bonus: F**k Pennies

Stand-up Economist Yoram Bauman on Politics and the Federal Budget

CalculatedRisk — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 05:57:47 PDT

Here is a new routine from stand-up economist Yoram Bauman on YouTube ...

Earlier:
• From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates conditions deteriorated in July
• Consumer Sentiment declines sharply in July
• Industrial Production increased 0.2% in June, Capacity Utilization unchanged
• Eight Banks Fail European Stress Tests
• Key Measures of Inflation ease in June

Top 10 Real World Easter Eggs and Cheat Codes

bspcn — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:58:32 PDT

Written by lifehacker

You might think that you have to wait in line, buy only what’s offered to you, subject yourself to advertisements, and generally go through you day accepting nuisances because that’s just how the world works. But just like on your computer, there are easter eggs hiding out in the real world just waiting to let you unlock the bonus levels of life. Here are our top 10 favorites.

10. Get Free Money

As far as cheat codes go, picking up some extra coins was always a pretty sweet deal. You might be able to do the same in real life by searching unclaimed money sites likeMissing Money and TreasuryDirect. Not everyone has free cash with their name on it (like me, sadly), but it only takes a few minutes to check to quickly become a little bit richer.

9. Eat for Free On Your Birthday

When it’s your birthday, you shouldn’t have to pay for food. That’s how I feel, anyway, and a lot of restaurants agree. If you join their rewards programs, you can pick up tons of free goodies. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if it’s your actual birthday, but rather just your birth month. Either way, there’s plenty of free food with your name on it.

8. Find Your Car Easily by Using Yourself to Amplify Your Keyless Entry Remote’s Signal

When you can’t find your car in a parking lot, pressing the lock button a few times will generally make it beep and honk so you can track it down quickly—but this only works if your car is in range. Putting the keyless entry remote in your mouth and pressing the lock button can help extend the range. Some Reddit users suggest that you just need to put it under your chin and it works because the signal resonates in your skull.

7. Open an Airplane Lavatory Door from the Outside

Full size

Those airline bathroom doors? You can unlock them from the outside. All you have to do is flip up the lavatory sign on the door and slide open the lock. You don’t want to be doing this to unwitting strangers, of course, but this could be useful in case of emergency (or just to play a cruel joke on a friend).

6. Order Secret Items at Fast Food Restaurants

Just because it’s not on the menu doesn’t mean you can’t have it. There are plenty of secret menu items at plenty of chains. Starbucks has a tiny-sized coffee for light drinkers. Chipotle will make practically anything that can be accomplished with their available ingredients—like quesadillas. Wendy’s will make you a "meat cube" burger, knowing as the Grand Slam, that consists of four heart attack-rendering beef patties. In and Out, on the other hand, offers a grilled cheese that is essentially a hamburger-less hamburger (but somehow really tasty). And if you’re torn between being a carnivore and vegetarianism, Fatburger will make you "The Hypocrite"—a veggie burger topped with bacon. You don’t have to order what’s presented to you. If there’s something you want, ask for it. You might just get it.

5. Get Shopping Discounts by Pretending to Be (or Actually Being) a Tourist or Student

Several retail stores give you discounts for being a tourist. You don’t necessarily have to actually be one, but just say you are. At most you’ll have to provide some sort of out-of-state identification (which you can always say you left at the hotel if you’re unable to provide it). Being (or pretending to be) a tourist can save you around 10 to 11% off your purchases, so it’s always worth asking if the store you’re at provides that kind of discount.

Getting student discounts forever is also pretty easy (and likely more useful than when you’re actually a student and don’t need them as much as you do when paying off loans). For online verification, you can generally just Photoshop the date on your ID. If you need to send an unofficial class schedule and make it look official, it’s not that hard to spoof an email address. Alternatively, pay some college kid a few bucks to get the discount for you or enlist a student you know. You have plenty of options, so these discounts are pretty easy to come by if you’re okay with bending the rules.

4. Go Directly to Voicemail When Making a Phone Call

Do you ever have a phone call to make that would be a lot easier if you could just talk to an answering machine? Rather than leaving it to chance, or trying to call when you think the other person won’t answer, just use slydial. All you do is call 267-SLYDIAL, enter the phone number you want to call, and you’ll get sent directly to voicemail so you can leave a message.

3. Get Discounts Without Giving Up Personal Information

Discount cards can be great, but you’re essentially selling your personal information to the store in exchange for a few cents off a head of lettuce. How can you avoid this and still get the discount? There are a couple of effective ways. First, companies can often look up your information via your phone number and we recently learned that you can just tell them that your number is 867-5309—a number that’s almost always in the system. Alternatively, you can just say you left your card at home and ask the cashier if they’ll use their own card. If there’s a rewards system in place, they’ll often be happy to do this. Finally, you can always just say you want to sign up for a card, let them scan it, and then say you’ll bring back or mail in the signup form when you’re done. Of course, you won’t actually do that.

2. Don’t Wait on Hold

Calling customer service is not something most people look forward to, and that’s often exacerbated by traversing phone trees and waiting on hold. If you’re just trying to get a human, doing nothing can trick the system into thinking you have a rotary phone(assuming it’s not a voice-based system). If it is, just talk incomprehensibly until the computer gives up on trying to understand you and sends you to an actual person. Or just use GetHuman. If you want to avoid the hold wait, try LucyPhone. In some cases they can even help you avoid navigating through the phone trees, too.

1. Skip Television, DVD/Blu-ray, and YouTube Advertisements

When you’re watching TV, DVD movies, or content online, ads can be annoying, but you can skip them all! Obviously the advent of the DVR made this especially possibly, even when watching live-ish television, but there are easier ways. If you have a TiVO, you canenable a 30-second skip button to make passing through ads especially easy. If you’re using Windows Media Center, you can set it up to skip ads all together. Several other DVRs and HTPC softwares include ad-skipping options as well. For your disc-based content, there is, of course, the stop stop play trailer- and ad-skipping trick. Finally, if you’re on YouTube, just reload the page to skip the ad.

Got any other great real-world Easter eggs or cheat codes? Share ‘em in the comments!

Bonus: Mr. Potter…

Is Austerity Doomed To Fail?

Pater Tenebrarum — Thu, 26 May 2011 00:42:46 PDT

In an attempt to make the handful of US politicians who exhibit a sliver of fiscal responsibility feel bad, Paul Krugman attacks plans to cut the US budget deficit by alleging that \'austerity has obviously failed\' in Europe. As always, Krugman cherry-picks whatever data seem to support his assertions, while conveniently leaving out everything that flatly contradicts them. Typical for a bad economist, he looks only at the short term (what happened Ãn the span of just one year) and fails to look even a single second beyond it. However, there is neither any compelling theoretical, nor any compelling empirical evidence that Krugman is right. The exact opposite is in fact true. The three European nations that have implemented the by far harshest austerity measures of the entire post 2008 bust period, while keeping their currency pegs to the euro intact - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - are on track to report between 4% and 5.8% GDP growth this year. Even the worst fiscal offend er, Greece, seems to have reached the trough of its economic downturn in qu.4 of 2010. According to Krugman, none of this should be possible (not surprisingly, he carefully neglects to mention the success of austerity in the Baltic nations). According to Krugman, it should be serial deficit spenders like Japan whose economy should be going gangbusters. There is little doubt that the euro area\'s sovereign debt crisis is serious and could easily get much worse. Creditors should prepare for having to take some losses before all is said and done. Risk remains very high. But this is the fault of running a fractionally reserved banking system in a common currency area with countries exhibiting grossly disparate fundamental economic backdrops. The size of the bust and the problems that have been created by bailing out insolvent banks provide exactly zero proof for Krugman\'s contention that spending even more money would be any better than pursuing austerity.

Senators Reveal That Feds Have Secretly Reinterpreted The PATRIOT Act

Mike Masnick — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:20:00 PDT

We had mentioned, briefly, the amendment that Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall had tried to push for with relation to the renewal of controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act, however didn't spend much time discussing it. The details are important -- even if we can't know what most of them are. Basically, what becomes clear is that both Senators -- who are on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- are aware of the fact that the feds have interpreted the PATRIOT Act provisions much more broadly than the wording suggests, but they've kept this interpretation secret. In other words, though the law says one thing, the federal government has announced internally that it's "interpreting it" an entirely different way, but it's kept that interpretation secret. The speculation is that these provisions are being massively abused for widespread warrantless wiretapping.

In an interview with Wired, Wyden makes the point clear:

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says."

He notes that he has no problem with keeping the techniques the feds use secret, but the interpretation should be public, and that's what their amendment is about.

And it's not just the public that's having the wool pulled over their eyes. Wyden and Udall are pointing out that the very members of Congress, who are voting to extend these provisions, do not know how the feds are interpreting them:

As members of the Senate Intelligence Committee we have been provided with the executive branch's classified interpretation of those provisions and can tell you that we believe there is a significant discrepancy between what most people - including many Members of Congress - think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and what government officials secretly believe the Patriot Act allows them to do.

Legal scholars, law professors, advocacy groups, and the Congressional Research Service have all written interpretations of the Patriot Act and Americans can read any of these interpretations and decide whether they support or agree with them. But by far the most important interpretation of what the law means is the official interpretation used by the U.S. government and this interpretation is - stunningly -classified.

What does this mean? It means that Congress and the public are prevented from having an informed, open debate on the Patriot Act because the official meaning of the law itself is secret. Most members of Congress have not even seen the secret legal interpretations that the executive branch is currently relying on and do not have any staff who are cleared to read them. Even if these members come down to the Intelligence Committee and read these interpretations themselves, they cannot openly debate them on the floor without violating classification rules.

In the understatement of the year, Wyden and Udall state "this is not acceptable." I think it goes beyond unacceptable. It's downright scary. That Congress is about to rubberstamp the extension of the law when they think it says one thing, while the feds pretend it says something entirely different, is a travesty.

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San Francisco’s real multi-billion-dollar war. Hint, it’s not Amazon vs Google. Why isn’t Techcrunch covering it?

Robert Scoble — Tue, 17 May 2011 06:24:37 PDT

If you read other tech blogs this morning you might get an idea that the next multi-billion-dollar war is over Google vs. Amazon.

Now that’s an interesting battle, but I believe it’s small potatoes compared to the real war that Marc Benioff started more than a decade ago: over how we all work.

See, Salesforce was the first to see weakness in Microsoft’s “install software everywhere” model and exploited that weakness to build a great San Francisco company.

But what did Salesforce do? It showed a raft of companies how to compete with Microsoft. Now it’s a full-blown movement that insiders are paying big attention to. Box.net has five million customers and is doubling every 14 months. Yammer won Techcrunch 50 and has hundreds of workers who are toiling to take enterprises away from Microsoft Sharepoint. Jive, SocialCast, SocialText, et al are on fire, too.

Come deeper into Silicon Valley and you’ll find one company that’s hiring all sorts of ex-Microsofties (I met one of Microsoft’s smartest strategists working there) among others and who today announced a new cloud app store for businesses: VMware. Don’t miss this company and what it’s doing.

GigaOm is right. VMware is the new Silicon Valley company to watch.

But don’t look at these companies one-by-one. It’s clear there’s a new movement and it’s radically changing how we work. Add in Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets, Sococo’s new virtual office, Twilio’s new phone APIs, amongst many other examples and you see this is the real San Francisco multi-billion-dollar war that hasn’t gotten good coverage in the tech press.

Why isn’t the tech press covering this San Francisco tech story?

Oh, sure, it’s Enterprise. Mike Arrington told me once he gets bored with enterprise companies. It’s not as sexy as anything Apple or Google are doing. Partly because VMware’s PR team isn’t interested in waking up the bears (Microsoft and other enterprise-focused companies) by shooting off Jason Calacanis style missives or playing PR games the way Facebook got caught doing last week. Nah, they are understated. They underpromise and don’t try to hype things up too much. That doesn’t fit how the current tech press can get onto the cover of Techmeme or Hacker News.

But don’t miss this battle. It’s way bigger than the battle over tablets or consumer app stores and will shift billions in revenue from Redmond to San Francisco.

Here I visit VMware to find out why they are buying startups like Sliderocket and Mozy, plus I get a look at their new single-sign-on cloud service management tool, Horizon, in a talk with Noah Wasmer, director of product management, advanced development. That announcement is covered more over on Building43.

15 of the Dumbest Laws Still On The Books

bspcn — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:14:50 PST

Written by brainz.org

Dumb laws: not the merely annoying or restrictive, but the truly stupid, have long been fodder for late-night comedians, bored people on the Internet and compulsive trivia-seekers. Most are apocryphal or no longer on the books; some, though, do persist, producing great snickering sounds from those needing distraction. Here’s a look at 15 of the verifiable ones from across this great land, on all levels: state, city and county.

1. West Virginia: Roadkill may be taken home for supper.

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Yes, it’s true. If you’re having trouble scraping up enough food to keep your family warm and healthy — and, in these hard times, who isn’t? — you’re legally permitted to scrape up any unfortunate animals from the road to turn into a tasty stew, fricassee or whatever you like. The law’s intentions are solid: the Department of Transportation can’t afford to regularly clean every single one, so this kind of ad hoc road maintenance not only helps keep the roads clean, but lowers the cost of maintenance as well.

2. Pinal County, Arizona: No outdoor dancing

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Libertarian and anti-government cranks everywhere got a new hobbyhorse to ride over the San Tan Flat, an all-purpose restaurant with a large outdoor area in Pinal County, Arizona. For obscure reasons of their own, county officials decided to harp on a law from 1962 prohibiting outdoor dance halls, bowling alleys, penny arcades and so forth. With outdoor dancing very much part of the restaurant’s appeal, the owners were none too amused at being fined $700 every day for the silly violation. After national attention — Drew Carey did a segment about the problem for libertarian website Reason and George Will got a column out of it — the restaurant won in court. The law’s still on the books, ready to ruin any small business owner’s life whenever Pinal County feels like it.

3. Washington: Report your crimes ahead of time.

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A strangely despairing law on the Washington books instructs prospective criminals to have the basic courtesy to, when they arrive at city limits, “telephone the chief of police" and inform him or her of what’s about to happen. The idea was to cut down on a spiraling crime rate. Needless to say, no potential criminal was ever dumb enough to actually do it.

4. Utah: No hunting whales

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Not that there are any whales to hunt in Utah to begin with… It’s not clear why this law exists. It did, however, provide the capstone for one Richard Smith of Cornwall, who resolved to set out across America in July 2005 to systematically break as many arcane and downright silly laws as he could. In Utah, he planned to rent a boat and attempt, at least, to hunt a whale. Sadly, unlike, say the expeditions of Sir Richard Burton or Sir Edmund Hilary, history doesn’t record what became of this intrepid Brit.

5. Austin, Texas: You may not carry wire cutters in your back pocket.

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Austin, Texas is a city with a large university population and plenty of computer money floating around, with a lively downtown area. It’s the 15th-biggest city in America. Despite that, it has a lawdating back to the frontier days, when fence cutting and cattle stealing was a big deal. For that reason, don’t carry wire cutters in your pocket, though admittedly the situation is unlikely to come up; it’s a real city, not a rural area. The law is unlikely to cause any real hindrance.

6. Tennessee: You may not bring a skunk with you into the state.

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This one sounds stupid, but it actually makes sense. Rabies are a problem in Tennessee, and skunks are big carriers of rabies, so it’s not a terribly random law (aside from the vexing question of what kind of person wants to adopt a skunk in the first place; zoos and scientists are, of course, exempt). Mostly the law attracts attention because skunks are funny. Fair enough.

7. North Carolina: No costume meetings

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There is, of course, a perfectly good reason that North Carolina has stipulated that "no person or persons at least 16 years of age shall while wearing a mask, hood or device whereby the person, face or voice is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, hold any manner of meeting." The image raises to mind the law’s intended purpose: to prevent the KKK from gathering together and doing their nefarious thing. The problem here is that the law’s language doesn’t explicitly say the KKK is prohibited from gathering, which all things considered would seem to be the simplest way to go about it; instead, it inadvertently bans Halloween parties. Which is silly.

8. New Jersey: You may not pump your own gas

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Life is hard in New Jersey, the nation’s butt of all jokes about filthy chemical waste and government corruption. One bright spot, perhaps: since 1949, it’s been impossible to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Instead, someone will come and pump it for you. The only other state with this law is Oregon. Five years ago, then governor John Corzine experimented with letting people pump their own gas on the New Jersey Turnpike, but no dice: the good people of New Jersey do not want to get out of their car or get gas on their clothing, even if it’ll save them five cents a gallon. Because after all, finding gainful employment is hard, and creating an essentially subsidized job position is a big help if you can’t actually get out of the garden state.

9. New Orleans: No cursing the fireman while he’s working.

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It’s unclear what kind of terrible person would actually curse at a fireman risking life and limb while the fireman’s actually working. Apparently, though, this happens, so in New Orleans it’s illegal to curse at a fireman while they’re in the pursuit of their official duties. Off-duty, however, you are free to be totally rude to someone who’s only trying to help, if that’s your kind of thing.

10. Kennesaw, Georgia: You must own a gun

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Since 1982, all heads of household in this small Southern town have been required to own a gun, though there’s no apparent penalty for not complying. The law was passed in response to a gun ban in Morton Grove, Illinois; the citizens here (whose population swelled exponentially since the law’s passage, from 5,000 to 30,000) take the usual kind of Southern pride in asserting their God-given Second Amendment rights in the most uselessly symbolic fashion possible, making sure the always shaky rights of white family men aren’t suppressed. Still, crime hasn’t risen, so no harm done.

11. Seaside, Florida: Every house must have a white picket fence and two-story porch.

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Still, if you want to see legislated creepy conformity at its most innocuous yet annoying, Seaside, Florida has Kennesaw beat. Seaside is a planned community, and if you truly desire to live among people with similar priorities then this is the place to be. Here, every house has to have a white picket fence and two-story porch, and if that gives you the suburban creeps you probably don’t belong in Seaside.

12. Southington, Connecticut: The sale of Silly String is banned.

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In 1996, the good citizens of this small Connecticut town underwent a minor furor when a festival was disrupted by pranksters who silly stringed motorcycle police, marching band members and cheerleaders. Most people would respond to this by just chasing down and beating the ever-living crap out of the perpetrators (or just responding in kind), but Southington spazzed, passing legislation to ban the sale of Silly String in the community and thereby dealing a permanent death-blow to graduation ceremonies everywhere.

13. Boulder, Colorado: No couches on the porch.

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Sometimes stupid laws are the only logical response to stupid people, as with the fun-lovingcollege students of Boulder. The University of Colorado at Boulder is, er, “renowned" as a party school, and its dedicated academic undergraduates enjoy unwinding after major events (such as a college football victory, whose earthshaking importance is understood by most Americans) by burning couches. To discourage such unruly and potentially dangerous pyromaniac moments, no couches are allowed on the porches of Boulder… A sad discouragement for transplanted Southerners who enjoy porch life.

14. Los Angeles, California: No toad licking

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It’s unclear what’s dumber: the ever-inefficient war on drugs, or the kind of person who really wants to lick toad secretions in search of the ultimate high. Yes, if you want to actually take a crap shooton the cane toad and see what happens, that option is sadly legally prohibited in Los Angeles. Stupid people, as ever, lead to stupid laws, and in any case the toads are a nuisance: the poison they excrete can get you high, but it can also kill your dog if you’re not paying close attention.

15. Tennessee: Atheists and preachers may not serve in public office.

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Technically, this law exists: both ends of the religious spectrum are prohibited from serving in public office in Tennessee, which presumably means only mild-mannered believers are allowed to run for office. The law’s doubly dumb: not only does it make no sense, it’s also unconstitutional, meaning it’s unenforceable, meaning it’s pointless. But hey! Symbolic gestures for everybody!

Bonus: Human Patch v1.1

Understanding Online-Video Using SEM Analogies

Nalts — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:58:52 PST

A media buyer recently approached me to see if YouTube “stars” could beat .05 on a cost-per-view basis. It was such an odd question, and one that made me realize we’re still comparing apples to oranges. As I answered the question (yes, but…) I found myself drawing analogies to a more familiar digital medium: search engine marketing (SEM).

Let’s draw from our collective understanding of both Google advertising and “search engine optimization” (SEM), where content providers try to have their websites rank on the first pages of search engines. Then let’s explore how that can help us understand online-video marketing. Finally, let’s pay special attention to “the second click,” which I use to refer to the prospect who chooses not to visit your own content but remains important.

This post is not really about search-engine optimizing video content (see ReelSEO for a wealth on that). It’s about thinking about online-video in the same way we think about an SEM approach. Apologies to traditional advertisers since this post does depend on some basic understandings of digital marketing and search-engine marketing, although I’ve tried to reduce the jargon and assume SEO/SEM is not your sweet spot.

I. Getting “Natural” Views: To get a brand.com or campaign website high search-engine ranking (thus “free” visitors) we have a variety of tools and tricks, but four basic guidelines:

First, we optimize the content to use words that are commonly searched (use customer lingo not our brand speak). We frame our content to answer common natural-language queries like “what’s the cheapest life insurance insurance in Arizona” rather than “Bob’s Inexpensive Term Insurance!!… oh and I serve the globe, but happen to be in Arizona.”
Second, we design the website to ensure that search-engine spiders can find it (treat the spiders as important as customers, which means more text not flasherbation). Video can help us here, but not in lieu of carefully prioritized words. Little things matter: the picture should be tagged “mom with headache” not “lady with green sweater,” something few potential targets are searching unless you’re selling sweaters).
Most importantly, we try to “link bait” in appropriate ways (no “link farms” please), by earning the right to have credible well-trafficked websites link to our website. It gives us credibility, thus higher rank on engines. It can make the difference from being on the cemetery of page 3 to the wild night club of page 1.
Finally, we want that visit to be positive for the “user” since a quick bounce and return to search can suggest failure to search engines. If you trick me, I’ll leave and re-search… and your ranking will slip.

What this means for video:

We need to think about video in this same measured approach. Sure we need to focus on SEO-optimization of our valuable video content on brand sites. Of course we want to avoid churning through various short-term video campaign micro-sites that don’t help in the long run. Absolutely we need to ensure our content is also placed on YouTube and well tagged. But there’s more to it than that.
Ultimately our video has to make a promise it can keep. If the headline and thumbnail is a dupe, it won’t last or travel. If the goal is to entertain and draw curiosity, then the brand must take a back seat. If the goal is to explain the product, then that’s fine… but that content isn’t likely to go viral unless you’re launching the next Apple toy.
A promotional video serves a purpose, but it’s unlikely to be the next Old Spice or Evian babies video. However a video can travel to prospects if it’s valuable to them (funny, informative), and most brands don’t need 4 million teenagers… they’d rather 100 solid prospects. If we want “organic” or free views (not using paid media) then we’ve got to focus on serving a need and not selling our product.
YouTube has loads of ways to promote video content on YouTube, and it’s always cheap… but it’s easier to get people to watch a video on YouTube than dragging them to another website. Off YouTube, we can partner with smaller properties to get “paid views” (the .05 per view reference above), but recognize that “a view isn’t a view.” Once it’s paid, it’s often forced or auto-play, and that can be a data junkee’s “fool’s gold.”

II. Paid Ad Campaigns: On search engines, a good digital marketer will vary creative and try an abundance of headlines, copy and even URLs. More importantly, they’ll create “custom landing pages,” so a search pays off. You’d be a fool to create a search advertisement promising content that doesn’t exist on the landing page. Most SEM veterans will vary campaigns (A-B testing) and do experiments to determine the optimal keywords to purchase, the right creative, and the appropriate content to serve.

What this means to video:

Video serves different purposes in various locations. In video display or pre-roll advertising, its goal might be to drive awareness/recall/attitude/intent for the brand or product. Alternatively it may be designed to produce an action/engagement. In general it’s hard for advertising to do both well in the same campaign. Since most display ads accept the sad reality that click-thru rates are going to stink (low single digits), it may be better to jam the brand name and a simple message into the display ad or preroll… hey at least they’ll get “exposed” to the message. Otherwise the video preroll or display is aimed at a direct response goal (“see our cool education/entertainment,” “we have a sale,” or “check out our new product line.”).
While video can augment either awareness or direct response, I see “yellow flags” when I hear media buyers or PR executives using paid media to get videos or microsites traffic. The root cause? Marketers or agencies have sadly invested precious dollars to produce “viral video,” then become frustrated that the videos didn’t… go… viral. So they’re desperately looking for inexpensive ways to get the videos seen by using paid video ads.
Now we have a “dangling media tactic,” which is often inconsistent from a brand strategy. There’s a covert mission to get the content views to “save face” for the lonely isolated micro-site or unviral videos.
Back to the SEO/video analogy: It’s okay to create written content for search engines in hopes that it will gain high ranking and “free” (organic) views. But we are usually realistic about the timeframe and sheer numbers. However when marketers create video content, they bank on a groundswell of free traffic spawned by YouTube viral and mega-sharing on Facebook. That’s happening less and less.
Solution? The video or video-laced microsite (campaign site) should be serving a specific goal on the awareness-to-loyalty continuum and not an isolated tactic that depends on “going viral” organically. If you’re creating video for “top of the funnel” awareness creation, then a) don’t spend a lot of money since the odds are against you, b) keep the brand/ad message on the down-lo because it will tank the natural views.

III. That Second Click: It’s a mistake to obsess strictly about the search engine (we’re done! We’re on the first page organically and with an ad). Odds are that 80-90% of people will zoom right past them to the third-party choice (the credible blogger, the crowd-sourced rating website, or a publisher). That means we want to get our message and content on the highly trafficked websites our customers will visit after their search… the second click. That’s usually done via PR (desperate and failed pleas to bloggers for product mentions) or advertising (often ignored display advertising).

What this means to video:

Good news. Most video traffic is not to professional content or branded videos. Outside of music videos, the hidden “oil well” of reach includes mostly amateur webstars or “the new establishment” of web-video networks. These guys are surprisingly receptive to subtle brand messages, inexpensive sponsorships and (of course) adjacent ads that are their primary income.
While it’s unethical for a travel destination (hotel/resport) to spiff (pay off) a Conde Nast travel freelancer, it’s okay for them to invite Shaycarl (and Nalts) to visit and show the property to millions of their daily viewers.
It’s not okay to send a free tech product (like that new tablet or HD camer) to TechCrunch or Wired, but you’d be a fool not to deluge iJustine with your latest gadgets (and maybe toss her a check to show it love). It can be cost prohibitive for a marketer with a “recession” budget to hire Justin Bee-iber, but Rhett and Link reach millions and they’re taking a road trip this Friday that I’d sponsor it in a minute if I was a CPG brand (ensuring the comedy/singing duo received loads of free candy and beverages, as well as a decent check to ensure the products get some prominent placement). If I was selling guitars, I’d send a free one to Wheezywaiter and MikeLombardo in a second, and a $1-$10K to mention my website occasionally.

I’m finally beginning to accept why this last “no brainer” step (which I detail in my book, Beyond Viral) is not yet embraced by many brands. For a while I found it downright perplexing and unforgivable that Coke was handing out free product on the streets of NYC, but not sending swag to the top 500 most-viewed YouTube creators (which would provide Coke with more free impressions than it could ever imagine).

But there’s not an easy analog for this type of marketing. Sure Coke does product placement on American Idol, but it’s hard for marketers to translate that to some clown on YouTube even if he gets more views than American Idol. The TV folks are forced to understand product placement and integration because Fox is beating it into them. But it’s hard for a TV junkie to translate that to web video, and trust amateurs. Most importantly, the silo approach of most large brands makes it hard to determine who should run with this: is it PR? Advertising? A sponsorship/events group? Digital?

In truth this type of “second click” thinking applied to video requires people with an odd mix of understanding/experience of marketing, social media, consumer marketing and PR. But those folks are hard to find except in startups (who are less attractive to webstars than Big brands). When they do exist in larger companies, they often lack budget influence.

So this marketplace remains somewhat irrational (some “webstars” fetching obscenely high fees for non-targeted and awkward pitches). Conversely, many brands use PR teams to chase bloggers with smaller audiences and a fundamental reluctance to pitch (because “playing favorites” might erode their credibility as a mini-journalist). And those same brands are often missing some highly influential and valuable willing “spokespeople” with large fan bases and credibility… just because they have no idea that a medium-sized video webstar’s reach is often 100x that of the biggest category blogger.

As Arseneo Hall would say… things that make you go hmmmmm.