You know what an NBA uniform looks like. You know what the Mavs colors are for today and the past.  We want some new ideas that stay true to our logo and at least close to our current color schemes. Show us what you got !

How do you participate ? You post your ideas/pictures/graphics/videos/photos directly on this blog.  Yes we want every one to see them.  Steve Jobs said “everything is a remix” . Uniforms probably more so than even technology. So we want every post to inspire other ideas and posts.

Who will own your design ? The minute you post it, the Mavs will.  If you think its horrible that the Mavs own your design. Do not post. If you think its cool that the Mavs could possibly use your design and you will have eternal bragging rights , then post away. If we really like your design and you , I may even throw in some tickets.  If we don’t use your design, it will still be here on this site for now and ever more for you to glance longingly at.  If your design is close , if not identical to other designs and we pick one of the other designs, for whatever reason, then thats just the way it goes.

If we don’t choose any of the designs,including yours.then we don’t choose any of the designs. That is life in the big city. Move on.

This is your chance to get bragging rights and put your signature design on the Dallas Mavs and the NBA.

This opportunity will last till the last day in May.

Let’s see what you got

“My daughter will only use a touch screen.” ” My son doesn’t know the difference between the tv and his itouch. He just wants video where and when he wants it.” “My child is addicted to netflix” “My child is…. fill in the blank with a reason why we all should believe the future is what an infant/pre-teen/tween is experiencing and enjoys.

I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

Think about your own childhood . Do you still use ANY of the same devices ? Still have that casette player ? Still burning those CDs ? That walkman that wowed your parents, still wowing anyone? You still carrying your boom box on your shoulder like Radio Raheem ?

Of course not.

If you think that the tech your young kids are using today are any reflection on what will be used in the future, even in the near future, you are mistaken.  It’s also short changing the intellect of every kid 18 and under. You don’t think they can come up with something better ?

That’s not to say that watching our kids use technology that didn’t exist when we were  kids isn’t adorable. It is.  And of course each of our kids is smarter and more aware of the future than any other kid in the world.   Obviously.

THe reality is that we do not live in the world we were born into. Things change.

You must save the cord blood from your child’s birth.

At the Dallas Mavericks we have been diving into any and all advances in medical science that can give us a competitive edge. (The new advanced metrics that will impact the game). I’m not talking performance enhancing drugs, I’m talking proactive analysis and advanced recovery methodologies.  One that is obvious is the use of Stem Cells.

I’m not going to go into the science or offer any insights into what we are doing,  but what I will tell soon to be and future parents is that your doctors and your children will thank you in 20 years when they are relieved to find out that they can utilize the latest in medical technologies because mom and/or dad had the foresight to save their cord blood

Let me clear here. This is not a cure all. The use of cord blood cells in regenerative applications is still in its infancy (See the joke I made there . But what I do know that is medical science is advancing rapidly. What will be available to your newborn child in 20 years will be vastly different than what is available today. By banking the cord blood in a private cord bank, while relatively expensive (Do your homework PLEASE before making a decision which bank to use), you will have given your child a unique option that could lead to the latest recovery techniques being available to him or her.

You want to know what the next big thing is ? It’s personalized medicine. This is one baby step towards the future for your family

And let me be crystal clear again, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Not everyone agrees with me. It’s not cheap. It’s not a cure all. It’s an option. One that I have used with my children. But you have to make your own decisions

Why did the market head lower so quickly ?  This is from Paste Magazine

“The events last Tuesday were likely caused by the news-reacting algorithms that are designed to electronically read and interpret machine-readable news,” said in an emailed response by Irene Aldridge, a hedge fund consultant on algorithms and author of High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems. “Most of the web content is machine-readable, so lots of algos are built on reading and reacting to news such as the Twitter hack… Clearly in the Twitter case, trading machines did not ascertain credibility of the tweet,”

So how does the future of HFT look in light of Tuesday’s AP hack tweet incident?

Aldridge said in terms of the technology, “going forward, many algorithm designers will take into account the Tuesday situation, and will build ever more sophisticated approaches.”

There is no question that there is an ongoing arms race between algorithm designers, as well as a technology race to improve Language Processing and Translation abilities (disclosure, im an investor in Linguasys ).  Billions of dollars are being invested to make trading without humans faster, cheaper, smarter. The problem is that no matter how smart you make machines, they will never be smart enough in our lifetime to detect all levels of deceit and fraud. Particularly online.

No one has any idea, other than the traders using the algorithms, which twitter accounts the algorithms follow and read. The same with websites. Which do they track and read ?  If its worth it for someone to hack the @AP twitter feed in order to attempt to destabilize the markets why wouldn’t the same people or others with similar goals set up thousands of twitter accounts that for some extended period are a solid source of news and information, attempting to build  a following that include algorithms reading their feed , knowing that at somepoint they will tweet market moving fake information ? (Note, you dont have to actually follow an account to get access to their feeds, there are services that provide the twitter hose to financial companies)

It costs absolutely nothing to try to make this happen.  If you follow the writings of Nanex, you know that mini flash crashes happen in individual stocks all the time. That there are algorithms fighting algorithms all the time.  Its to the point where it sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie and it is.

Our markets are at risk.  I can’t quantify how big a risk there is, but I can tell you this, as long as there are algorithmically driven trades that happen in thousandths of a second, we can not eliminate that risk.  As long as that risk exists, there is a significant opportunity for hackers , terrorists (yes terrorists) and crooks to negatively impact our market to the tune of billions of dollars and possibly . This is the rise of the software controlled market. 

There is no such thing as bug free software.  If you are an investor, learn how to hedge.

Way back in the 1990s Audionet/Broadcast.com was always having to invent new ways of streaming audio/video , presenting them to consumers and generating new revenue opportunities.  You know those pop up windows that Netflix has used for years ? We created those. Called them “Guaranteed Click Throughs” because we guaranteed that when a user clicked on them they would take you right to your website.  We sold them for 25cents EACH. That is how valuable traffic was back then.  Sure wish I patented them so I could prevent anyone else from ever using them !

There were some other things we were working on that I put together notes on. My lawyers wanted me to go through the entire process of patenting them. I just wanted to compete. So the patent applications never got past my note taking.  But in the interest of helping anyone who may ever face a patent troll on these topics, these are my notes.  (And FWIW, I’m not saying these would definitely have gotten patents, and the in depth tech information is not in here. These were just notes to start a process that was never completed)

#1 A Network of Multicast Networks

Invention Disclosure Form

Abstract (2-4 sentences): MultiNetworkMulticast Network – A commercial network of multicast enabled networks. The composite of multiple Multcast enabled networks that terminates at a single point that enables digital content to be distributed in a one to many fashion across multiple networks from a single initiation point.                                                 This enables providers of digital content to enable broadcast of those bits to an unlimited number of networks and hence, endpoints on that network of the content while only needing to enable a single source                                             

Conception date (describe any available written evidence of conception):                           

                        Oct 1996                                                                                                                    

List all contributors to the project from which the invention arose:                                     

                                    Mark Cuban, Kevin Smith                                                                                                     

Has the invention been disclosed, or is it likely to be disclosed in the near future, to people or parties outside of the company?  For example, has the invention been described, demonstrated or made available (i) to a vendor or customer; (ii) at a beta site; (iii) at a technical conference or trade show; (iv) or in a printed publication?  If so, provide the date and a description of each such disclosure and state whether the disclosure was subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA):                                                

            Yes, the network is in use, and has been disclosed since Dec 1996                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Identify each company project or product that utilizes or may utilize the invention.  Also list the current status of each such project or product, including any known or anticipated release, sales, shipping, beta testing, demonstration or public disclosure dates:                                          All streaming media and media distribution products used by the company benefits from this invention. The company has been working with commercial networks since 1996 to aggregate them into a single network. We have been building the network internally to link those networks, and have been testing the integration of application software to distribute those bits across multiple multicast enabled networks since January 1997.

We are currently actively working with Internet Service Providers and Network Backbone providers to integrate them into the process. Once integrated, the invention will allow us to distribute digital content in real time to a potentially unlimited size audience                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Identify and describe any prior references that are relevant to the invention (e.g., known products, patents, publications, etc.):      There exists a non profit network known as the Mbone. The mbone is a loosley coupled network of networks which can be joined or left at anypoint, without initiation or notice of departure. However, because it is not controlled or owned by any organization, there is no consistency for distribution on the network. There is no single point from which a content provider can go, link to  or integrate in order to assure the delivery of their digital content to all endpoints. We looked at this configuration and enhanced it by  creating defined links and destinations, creating the network of networks so that a content provider knows exactly what destination network endpoints are available, and the capabilities of those links                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

State the problem that motivated or required the solution provided by your invention and briefly describe how your invention solves this problem:                                    In distributing digital content on the internet today, there is a huge problem of scale. Digital content is transmitted by sending a continuous stream of bits from an origination point, directly to a destination point in a 1 to 1 fashion. The problem is that number of destination points is limited by the amount of bandwidth available to the provider. So , to deliver 1gb of digital content to 100,000 users would require 100000000000000 bits of bandwidth !

The multicast protocol enables those same 1gb of content to be broadcast in a one to many fashion. However in order to receive those bits, users must be on a network that has been multicast enabled, and all the multicast networks that the desired audience exist on, must be linked to a common network. If the multicast enabled networks are not linked, then the content provider must originate content on each multicast enabled network seperately.                                                                                                                                        By creating our network of networks, we enabled content providers to broadcast content one time to multiple multicast enabled networks,. As a result, in the above example, only 1gb of bandwidth would be needed to reach those 100k users.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Describe how others have tried to solve the same or similar types of problems, and describe how your invention differs from those solutions:               Others have tried to create organizations that encouraged people to work together to try to solve this problem, but it has not happened until we did it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Strategic Importance: Briefly state why this invention is strategically valuable to the company.  In other words, explain (i) how it would benefit the company to be able to prevent one of our competitors from using this technology; or (ii) why the company would care if one of our competitors could prevent us from using this technology:                                                                             The company has spent considerable dollars and resources to enable this invention and offer the benefit to our customers.  We have contractually tried to protect ourselves. However, if a company were to copy our efforts, they could offer the same level of savings to digital content providers thereby injuring our profit potential and market position.

#2 Personalization System – 1998 – This was a system we had designed and had implemented a simple version of, with the below enhancements in progress

The goal of this system is to find out as much as we possibly can about our users by asking them questions, track  exactly what they listen or watch and for how long, to allow them to create a My.Yahoo.Com  that lists their favorite content, with reminders for scheduled programs/events and recommendations for comparable content along with community items such as related newsgroups, chats, and the like

It starts with a user going to to a  webpage where they provide us demographics information, and then choose the categories of content they like. They also pick their favorite teams, artists, companies they follow  and schedules.

From there a custom Player SMIL file is created so that the user can have their personalization features presented to them inside the player. It will look like My.Yahoo, only in the player. A comparable HTML page will be created as well. So they can interact in either way

In addition to listings , there will be a calendar feature that can be local on the harddrive, or on a webpage , but it is personalized with games , shows, events based on the items chosen and reminders requested.  The user should also be able to go to a master calendar and drag and drop to the personal calendar

There also needs to be a personalized ticker with hot text ads, prices of selected stocks, and alarms or reminders of events chosen.

There shouldbe a search feature in the player, that allows the user to search Broadcast.com  for other items , whether live or on demand

There must then of course be personalized advertising. Based upon the demographics information provided and upon the content, audio and video that the user accesses. This of course means that we will need to keep multiple master databases of users,  their unique id, the unique ID assigned by the mediaplayer,. This will allow us to say that sample user, who has these characteristics, is now about to watch  this music video, so deliver this specified gateway ad , and during the content, deliver these following types of ads. The ads will be defined based upon category like zones. There needs to be an unlimited number of these categories for us to sell.

There must be a means of commerce. Commerce entails two levels, one is to buy  impulse merchandise associated with the content. So it could be a trip to Dallas when listening to the zone if the user is from out of town, or a free coupon to a restaurant if the user is in town, and of course if the user is listening to a CD from the jukebox, they must be able to buy the CD.  There must also be the option, in certain instances to save the audio or video to disk for a fee. This requires us to define the content as an object with characteristics that enabled depending on the geography (some content may only be available to local residents), or on whether we have the download rights,  or whether we have it available for sale as a product.

 The goal is to offer personalization, track, suggest and sell.

We will sell products, ads, gateway ads, in content ads, and who knows what other types of digital opportunities that arise.

#3 Self Service Hosting 1998 – Broadcast.com Personal Broadcast Network

The goal is to allow a person to come to simplenet (Broadcast.com’s hosting subsidiary) and select a hosting option that allows them to offer ondemand or live streaming content. To make a choice as to the size audience they would like to reach, and to have options as to how they would like to be promoted.

The system must also have a calendar component so that content can be included in a schedule if live, or as part of a search engine of on demand.  The content must also have the option of being private and having a password assigned that the user can hand out to whoever they want, and that will secure the stream.

The system must accommodate what happens on the backend server as well and of course the whole thing must happen WITHOUT any hands on intervation. Each service/offering must be handsfree, completely selfservice so that it can scale. The only exception is for encoded of sent items, which will be charged on a per hour basis for handling.

1. User Gets a Welcome to the Broadcast.com Personal Broadcast Network
2. Please download Your Personal Broadcast Station. This is our custom  version of the real and netshow encoders combined in a single package. When you run it, it asks the following questions.

 Do you want to broadcast in Audio or Video ?

1. Live -

Ask them for a description of the show. Different questions for audio and video. Video, is it from a camera, VCR, is it music, talk only, news, lots of motion, little motion, sports, whatever we can think of . This helps us determine what kind of quality and encoder settings to suggest, and what speed PC is necessary to encode  The assumption is that all feeds will be delivered via a dialup internet connection

1. The user is asked if this is the PC that will deliver the live feed
   1. If yes, a tracert is done and the network they are using is determined. It is compared to a list of good and bad networks and an interpretation is made of the likelihood of good connections. ie, if its AOL, or if tracert is over 250ms, then a warning is issued.
   2. The software then  reads the hardware config, the cpu config, who the ISP is from the Wininet, and the speed of the connection and reads their modem configuration, and then sends it to us or allows them to upload the file it creates to us

A, If its video, what kind of video card they are using to capture (To determine compatibility of encoders)

1. If they don’t know, or don’t have a compatible card, they are offered a list of cards that we will sell them, with an option to have a local reseller install for an additional $99.95. In addition, they are offered a complete PC setup with all the required pieces ready to go for $2495 for video.

2. They are asked what the video source is , camera, vcr,

3. They are asked what kind of computer and configurationit is to make sure it has enough horse power to encode live video

B. If its audio, same kind of questions as above. Ask them if they will be using the mic that came with their computer. Ask them if they will be mixing multiple sources. Ask them if this is talk, news, sports,  music, what level of quality they want.

C. Give them the option of buying multiple radio station setups. From software to program a music station, software only, or computer included, to devices to do remotes, devices to take phone calls, etc.

D.Promotional  Options

1. Be listed in the Broadcast.com Personal Broadcast Network Schedule – $5 per month
2. Have a featured time that appears in the whats on now homepage of the Personal Broadcast Network . Only one per scheduled time. Each time has a specific price, and once its taken, its gone. So Monday, 5pm is , lets say $60, Tuesday 2am is $5

Be listed in the Main Broadcast.com Live Events Listing  $ 100 per month

4       Buy Banners on Broadcast.com

General Rotation $ 30 CPM, minimum of $100

Specific Location $50 CPM, minimum of $100

1. Select the pricing option

On demand – Per Month $ 29.95 for 14.4, 59.95 for 28.8. , for up to 4 hours of content. Up to 50 simultaneous users. 25% discount if they run our gateway ads prior and use our SMIL template

Live – 24×7

28.8 audio or video 19.95 up to 10 simul users, if they run gw

ads, 29.95 if not.

288 audio or video, 99.95 up to 25 simul users, 149 up to 50

if they run our gateway ads. Without gateway ads, $149 and                                                               $199.

Option to save and make available as archive is priced same as o                                                          on demand.

Final option (Till we think of more things), is the reporting option Its another $10 for monthly reports, $30 for weeklyreports.

On the backend, once a user completes the information and their credit card is approved, the backend software checks our server farm to find the next available server.This server has its config file modified to create a user block (this is already setup to work in real, not sure about netshow), and assign a password for the user, and an IP range based upon the tracert done from the software. This range (since its dialup its not a specific ip) limits the box the feed can come from . From there the user is emailed a server config file, along with an instruction manual on how to start the encoder and what directory to put the server config file. Then away they go !

If its on demand, and they send encoded file, same thing happens. They encod the file and the destination is  our server. One difference is that we will set a disk quota basedupon the number of hours and bit rate purchased. So if the user bought up to 4 hours of encoded 28.8 video, they get 25kbsx60x4 or 6mbs of disk storage.

The user is then sent complete instructions on how to link to the file. Or we can just license the RealNetworks publisher which has this built in.

On the other side, the Mavs are a business. I want to make a profit. But unlike every other business, making the most money possible is not a driving motivation. I try to recognize that Mav’s fans aren’t only about wins and losses. I have to realize that many, if not most Mavs fans don’t call talk radio shows. They don’t tweet about what went right or wrong during each game. In fact, while they want the Mavs to win, they are Mavs fans, win or lose. In fact, I was one of those fans before I bought the Mavs. We had a horrible team the entire run of my owning season tickets. It didn’t matter. I was a fan first.

But to some Mavs fans the Mavs are more than just a game. They are a release. They are a connection to other family members. They are an escape from the realities of a very difficult life. There are fans who love the Mavs because it makes their lives better.

THere are not many businesses that can begin to have that kind of impact on their customers/fans.

It is this connection that also drives me to make sure that every Mavs game is about far more than basketball. I want to make sure that every time any fan walks into the American Airlines Center they know that they will feel special. They will have a special experience. They will have an emotional connection. They will feel an energy and excitement they can not get anywhere else. They will be able to see a look of joy in their family members. They will know that we respect the financial, emotional and time investment they have made in our Mavs. In a years time they won’t remember the score, or even a single play from the game, but they will remember who they were with and how they felt during the game.

It is a special trust that is incumbent on me and all Mavs employees to live up to. It is expensive to deliver on this goal. But it is worth every penny. No matter what it costs. I’m proud of the fact that the Mavs spend, by all accounts, more than any other team in any sport around the world on in game entertainment and experience. While other teams worry about wi-fi and apps, we worry about creating an experience that is unique to Mavs games.

I wanted to share a very small sampling of emails that have come in over the last few weeks. There were many more. A special thanks to all Mavs employees who know just how important what we do is to our community.

Dear Mark,
A friend of mine gave me your email. I have a friend who has a 15 year old boy with an inoperable brain tumor. He left MD Anderson today after the doctors telling him there was nothing else they could do for him. We are from OK and they are on their way home tonight. They are attending the game tonight. I called the head office and was able to get him in the “high five line”! He’s making his bucket list on the drive home and the first item on the list is meeting ****** Is there anyway you could make this kid have a great evening after this horrible day? He’s a great kid with a very positive attitude and has just been handed his death sentence. Thank you so much for your time in reading this!!

Mark,
I received an invitation to select someone to present a game ball at one of the Mavericks home games. I can’t tell you how thrilled and what a blessing it has been to extend this opportunity to patients. I wanted to share one of my experiences.

There is a patient that is a single mother of 2 young children that does not have a good prognosis. We thought this would be an exciting opportunity for her and her kids. When I sat down to talk with her about, the look of joy that came over her face, as she was sitting in our infusion room receiving her chemotherapy treatment, cannot be described. I want to thank you for giving us this opportunity. The generosity of the Mavericks organization is second to none. The generosity spills over and blesses others, like me, who got to see the joy as I talked to her about what she would be doing.

Thank you so much to the Mavericks organization for not just providing us with entertainment and team to route for, but for making a difference in our community.

Mr. Cuban,
I would like to commend your staff at the Mavs. My coworker Robin was hesitant to even contact your staff. She wanted to something special for her brother. Besides her brother being special needs he has been diagnosed with cancer. He is not a child physically but he just does not understand what is happening to him but he loves Basketball. So as a Mavs fan myself I would like to bring to your attention the special thing your staff is doing to make a light at the end of the tunnel for this special man. It is a great thing to witness that the Mavs go above and beyond as small as it may seem to the Mavs it is huge to this gentleman.

Hello Mark,
Just wanted to THANK YOU for an awesome overall experience we had at the MAVS game Friday night. I was lucky enough to receive two tickets from a friend who had to go out of town at the last minutes, and was able to take my 12 year old daughter to her first MAVS game. I watch every MAVS game on TV, and she’ll watch about half of them, but 12 year olds have a lot more distractions to deal with. The entire vibe of the building was just electric, and you don’t get that feel on TV. When I asked her what the favorite part of the night was, she listed the MAVS dancers, the Maniac dancers cracked her up, the drum line, and of course the game itself! You are a guy who puts is information out there, and I’m sure you get more complaints and questions, but I just wanted to make sure to let you know what a great time we had! Her one time being there has her looking at the schedule for all the next games on TV!! She is now an MFFL!!!

Hi Mr. Cuban. I am *****s mom. She is one of the Maverick’s ballkids. This is her second year in the program. I just wanted to say thank you for creating this wonderful environment for my child to learn and grow. The program has given her SO much confidence. She has loved the Mavericks for as long as I can remember. You may be the only one more passionate about the team than her, seriously. We make her watch the games in her own area of the house if she isn’t at the game. You have made the NBA exciting and you have created the Mavs to be a beloved team. The excitement and love you show for this team teaches everyone what true passion can create. Those are the things that my daughter learns from you.

Mark
The picture I’ve sent you is of my 13 year old brother ******! He is on the Wheelchair Junior Mavs team in Dallas. He is wheel chair bound due to a spinal defect. However hes one of the most lively kids I know his age. He lives and dies for basketball and more importantly he lives and dies for the Mavs This past week you guys had a meet the Mavs night and he spent sooooo much time talking about how excited he was. He loves all of you guys, and he watches EVERY SINGLE GAME! Hes been to american airlines once for a game and wouldnt stop talking about it for weeks on end afterwards

Mark,
I am a dear friend of **. He actually taught me how to make my
first free throw playing in the alley when I was 6.

You all may know him from MAVS games, as he was a huge fan and became
famous during one half time performance as seen in the YOUTUBE video here

Sadly, he died tragically on Thursday morning while flying as a passenger
in a fighter jet outside of dallas.

I am working on a video montage for his funeral, which will be held at
**** Church at 10 am on Tuesday.
I would love to have the original video sent over if anyone in the
organization has it, to include in his slideshow.

Dear Mark
My mother is the biggest Mavericks fan you will ever meet. She literally never misses a game screaming and cheering in the middle of the living room the entire time. Recently, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Through it all, she has still managed to watch almost every game. Last week, she had a double mastectomy. We are thrilled to say that all of the cancer was removed and no chemo or radiation are needed. My mom and dad have been through so much over the last 2 months. This has been the hardest thing they have handled in 37 years of marriage. They fought it and beat it together every step of the way. I am so proud of their love for each other, and they deserve a night out together when she is back on her feet. I would love to be able ************** to a Mavs game. I figured it was worth a shot to email you. I appreciate you taking the time to read my email. I know you are having a rough season, but we all love you as an owner. Hang in there. The MAVS will be back in no time.

MFFL,

These experiences are not unique to the Mavs. I’m sure all college and pro teams have similar commitments to community. But sometimes it helps to remind everyone of the role sports play in our lives and that its not just about wins and losses or TV contracts. No city has ever thrown a parade for a local company that has had a great quarter or year. Sports are a special part of our lives and that will not ever change

College is where you find out about yourself. It’s where you learn how to learn. It’s where you get exposure to new ideas. For those of us who are into business you learn the languages of business, accounting, finance, marketing and sales in college.

The question is not whether or not you should go to school, the question for the class of 2014 is what is your college plan and what is the likelihood that your college or university you attend will still be in business by the time you want to graduate.

Still in business ? Yep. When I look at the university and college systems around the country I see the newspaper industry.

The newspaper industry was once deemed indestructible. Then this thing called the internet came along and took away their classified business. The problem wasn’t really that their classifieds disappeared. It was more that they had accumulated a ton of debt and had over invested in physical plant and assets that could not adapt to the new digital world.

When revenue fell the debt was still there, as were all the big buildings they had purchased, all those presses they had bought and the acquisitions they had made declined in value, but the debt accumulated to pay for them never went away.

They were stuck with no easy way out.

The exact same thing is happening to our 4 year schools. You can’t go to a big state university and not see construction. Why ?

Why in the world are schools building new buildings ? What is required in a business school classroom that is any different from the classroom for psychology or sociology or english or any other number of classes ? A new library, seriously ? What is worse is that schools are taking on debt to pay for this new construction.

Think about this from a business perspective. Schools are seeing state and federal funding decline, as it should. Why should taxpayers be paying for another building ?

They are seeing their primary revenue source, tuition, once a number that was never really questioned, becoming a value decision by prospective students. As they should.

Unless your parents are wealthy or you quality for a full ride or something close, the days of picking a school because that is the school you always wanted to go to are gone.

The class of 2014 and beyond now has to prepare a college value plan. What classes are you going to take online that enables you to get the most credits for the least cost. What classes are you going to take at a local, low-cost school so you can get additional credits at the lowest cost.

Then, with your freshman and sophomore classes out-of-the-way, you can start to figure out which school you would like to transfer to , or two years from now, which online classes you can take that challenge you and prepare you for the areas you want to focus on. If you have the personal discipline you may be able to avoid ever having to step on a campus and graduating with a good degree and miracle of miracles, no debt.

For the smart student who cares about getting their money’s worth from college, the days of one school for four years are over. The days of taking on big debt (to the tune of 1 TRILLION DOLLARS as I write this ) are gone. Going to a 4 year school is supposed to be the foundation from which you create a future, not the transaction that crushes everything you had hoped to do because you have more debt than you could possibly pay off in 10 years. It makes no sense.

Which in turn means that 4 year schools that refuse to LOWER their tuition are going to see their enrollment numbers decline. It just doesn’t make sense to pay top dollar for Introduction to Accounting , psychology 101, etc.

Of course the big schools are going to argue this all day long. They want and need your money. They want to tell you how beautiful their campus is. The social aspects of going away to college. The amazing professors they have. The opportunities they create. The access to alumni and sports. All were great arguments in 2001 when tuitions were still somewhat reasonable. They no longer hold water.

So back to the economics of 4 year schools. Before you go to college, or send your child to a 4 year school you better check their balance sheet. How much debt does the school have ? How many administrators making more than 200k do they have ? How much are they spending on building new buildings. None of which add value to your child’s education, but enrollment declines will force schools to increase their tuition and nail you with other costs. They just create a debtor university that risks going out of business.

There will be colleges and universities that fail , declare bankruptcy or have to re-capitalize much like the newspaper industry has and long before the class of 2018 graduates.

The smart high school grad no longer just picks a school, borrows money and wings it. Your future depends on your ability to assemble an educational plan that gets you on your path of knowledge and discovery without putting you at risk of attending a school that is doomed to fail , and/or saddling you with a debt heavy balance sheet that prevents you from taking the chances, searching for the opportunities or just being a fuck up for a while. We each take our own path, but nothing shortcuts the dreams of a 22-year-old more than owing a shitload of money.

Now is the time to figure it out and avoid the mess schools are creating for themselves and for those who take the old school way to college graduation.

The Number.I recommend that anyone with an interest in the market jump at the chance to buy it.

In 1990, I sold my company, MicroSolutions which specialized in what at the time was the relatively new business of helping companies network their computer equipment to CompuServe. After taxes, I walked away with about $2 million. That was going to be my nest egg, and my goal was to protect it at all costs, and grow it wisely.

I set about interviewing stockbrokers and settled upon a broker from Goldman Sachs, Raleigh Ralls. Raleigh was in his late 20s, and relatively new to Goldman. But we hit it off very well and I trusted him. As we planned my financial future, I made it clear that I wanted my nest egg to be invested not like I was 30 years old, but as if I were 60 years old. I was a widows and orphans investor.

Over the next year I stuck to my plan. I trusted Raleigh, and he put me in bonds, dividend-paying utilities and blue chips, just as I asked.

During that year, Raleigh began asking me a lot of questions about technology. Because of my experience at MicroSolutions, I knew the products and companies that were hot. Synoptics, Wellfleet, NetWorth, Lotus, Novell and others. I knew which had products that worked, didn’t work, were selling or not. How these companies were marketed, and whether or not they were or would be successful.

I couldn’t believe that I would have an advantage in the market. After all, I had read A Random Walk Down Wall Street in college. I truly thought that the markets were efficient, that any available knowledge about a company was already reflected in its stock price. Yet I saw Raleigh using the information I gave him to make money for his clients. He finally broke me down to start using this information to my advantage to make some money in the market. Finally after more than a year, I relented. I was ready to trade.

Notice I didn’t use the word invest. I wasn’t an investor. I just wanted to make money. The reason I was ready to try was that it was patently obvious that the market wasn’t efficient. Someone like me with industry knowledge had an advantage. My knowledge could be used profitably. As we got ready to start, I asked Raleigh if he had any words of wisdom that I should remember. His response was simple. “Get Long, Get Loud”.

Get Long, Get Loud. As we started buying and selling technology stocks, most of which were in the local area networking field that I had specialized in at MicroSolutions, Raleigh put me on the phone with analysts, money managers, individual investors, reporters, anyone with money or influence who wanted to talk technology and stocks.

We talked about token ring topologies that didn’t work on 10BaseT. We talked about what companies were stuffing channels – selling more equipment to their distributors than the distributors really needed to meet the retail demand. We talked about who was winning, and who was losing. We talked about things that really amounted to the things you would hear if you attended any industry trade show panel. Yet after hanging up the phone with these people, I would watch stocks move up and down. Of course as the stocks moved, the number of people wanting to talk to me grew.

I remember buying stock in a Canadian company called Gandalf Technologies in the early 90s. Gandalf made Ethernet
bridges that allowed businesses and homes to connect to the Internet and each other via high-speed digital phone lines
called ISDN.

I had bought one for my house and liked the product, and I’d talked to other people who’d used it. They had
decent results, nothing spectacular, but good enough. I had no idea Gandalf was even a public company until a
friend of Raleigh’s asked me about it. What did I think about Gandalf Technologies? It was trading at the time at
about a buck a share. It was a decent company, I said. It had competition, but the market was new and they had as
much chance as anyone to succeed. Sure, I’ll buy some, and I would be happy to answer any questions about the
technology. The market size, the competition, the growth rates. Whatever I knew, I would tell.

I bought the stock, I answered the questions, and I watched Gandalf climb from a dollar to about $20 a share over
the next months.

At a dollar, I could make an argument that Gandalf could be attractive. Its market was growing, and compared
to the competition, it was reasonably valued on a price-sales or price-earnings basis. But at $20, the company’s
market value was close to $1 billion – which in those days was real money. The situation was crazy. People were
buying the stock because other people were buying the stock.

To add to the volume, a mid-sized investment bank that specialized in technology companies came out with a buy
rating on Gandalf. They reiterated all the marketing mishmash that was fun to talk about when the stock was a
dollar. The ISDN market was exploding. The product was good. Gandalf was adding distributors. If they
only maintained X percentage of the market, they would grow to some big number. Their competitors were trading at
huge market caps, so this company looks cheap. Et cetera, et cetera.

The bank made up forecasts formulating revenue numbers at monstrous growth rates that at some point in the future
led to profits. Unfortunately, the bank couldn’t attract enough new money to the stock to sustain its
price. It didn’t have enough brokers to shout out the marketing spiel to entice enough new buyers to pay the old
buyers. The hope among the “sophisticated buyers” was that one bank picking up coverage would lead to others doing the
same. It didn’t happen. No other big investment banks published reports on the stock. The volume turned
down.

So I did the only smart thing. I sold my stock, and I shorted it to boot. Then I told the same people who asked me
why I was buying the stock that I had shorted the stock. Over the next months, the stock sank into oblivion. In
1997, Gandalf filed for bankruptcy. Its shares were canceled – wiped out – a few months later. I wish I
could take credit for the stock going up, and going down. I can’t. If the company had performed well, who knows
what the stock would have done?

But the entire experience taught me quite a bit about how the market works. For years on end a company’s price
can have less to do with a company’s real prospects than with the excitement it and its supporters are able to generate
among investors. That lesson was reinforced as I saw the Gandalf experience repeated with many different stocks
over the next 10 years. Brokers and bankers market and sell stocks. Unless demand can be manufactured, the
stock will decline.

In July of 1998, my partner Todd Wagner and I took our company, Broadcast.com, public with Morgan Stanley.
Broadcast.com used audio and video streaming to enable companies to communicate live with customers, employees,
vendors, anyone with a PC. We founded Broadcast.com in 1995, and we were well on our way to being profitable. Still, we
never thought we would go public so quickly. But this was the Internet Era, and the demand for Internet stocks was
starting to explode. So publicly traded we would become and Morgan Stanley would shepherd us.

Part of the process of taking a new company public is something called a road show. The road show is just
that. A company getting ready to sell shares visits the big mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds – anyone who
can buy millions of dollars of stock in a single order. It’s a sales tour. 7 days, 63 presentations.
We often discussed turning up the volume on the stock. It was the ultimate “Get Loud.” Call it
Stockapalooza.

Prior to the road show, we put together an amazing presentation. We hired consultants to help us. We
practiced and practiced. We argued about what we should and shouldn’t say. We had Morgan Stanley and others
ask us every possible question they could think of so we wouldn’t look stupid when we sat in front of these savvy
investors.

Savvy investors? I was shocked. Of the 63 companies and 400-plus participants we visited, I would be
exaggerating if I said we got 10 good questions about our business and how it worked. The vast majority of people
in the meetings had no clue who we were or what we did. They just knew that there were a lot of people talking
about the company and they should be there.

The lack of knowledge at the meetings got to be such a joke between Todd and I that we used to purposely mess up to
see if anyone noticed. Or we would have pet lines that we would make up to crack each other up. Did we ruin
our chance for the IPO? Was our product so complicated that no one got it and as a result no one bought the
stock? Hell no. They might not have had a clue, but that didn’t stop them from buying the stock. We batted
1.000. Every single investor we talked to placed the maximum order allowable for the stock.

On July 18, 1998, Broadcast.com went public as BCST, priced at 18 dollars a share. It closed at $62.75, a gain
of almost 250 percent, which at the time was the largest one day rise of a new offering in the history of the stock
market. The same mutual fund managers who were completely clueless about our company placed multimillion orders
for our stock. Multimillion dollar orders using YOUR MONEY.

If the value of a stock is what people will pay for it, then Broadcast.com was fairly valued. We were able to
work with Morgan Stanley to create volume around the stock. Volume creates demand. Stocks don’t go up
because companies do well or do poorly. Stocks go up and down depending on supply and demand. If a stock is
marketed well enough to create more demand from buyers than there are sellers, the stock will go up. What about
fundamentals? Fundamentals is a word invented by sellers to find buyers.

Price-earnings ratios, price-sales, the present value of future cash flows, pick one. Fundamentals are merely
metrics created to help stockbrokers sell stocks, and to give buyers reassurance when buying stocks. Even how
profits are calculated is manipulated to give confidence to buyers.

I get asked every day to invest in private companies. I always ask the same couple questions. How soon till I
get my money back, and how much cash can I make from the investment? I never ask what the PE ratio will be, what
the Price to Sales ratio will be. Most private investors are the same way. Heck, in Junior Achievement we were
taught to return money to our investors. For some reason, as Alex points out in The Number, buyers of stocks have
lost sight of the value of companies paying them cash for their investment. In today’s markets, cash isn’t earned
by holding a company and collecting dividends. It’s earned by convincing someone to buy your stock from you.

If you really think of it, when a stock doesn’t pay dividends, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between
a share of stock and a baseball card.

If you put your Mickey Mantle rookie card on your desk, and a share of your favorite non-dividend paying stock next
to it, and let it sit there for 20 years. After 20 years you would still just have two pieces of paper sitting on
your desk.

The difference in value would come from how well they were marketed. If there were millions of stockbrokers
selling baseball cards, if there were financial television channels dedicated to covering the value of baseball cards
with a ticker of baseball card prices streaming at the bottom, if the fund industry spent billions to tell you to buy
and hold baseball cards, I am willing to bet we would talk about the fundamentals of baseball cards instead of
stocks.

I know that sounds crazy, but the stock market has gone from a place where investors actually own part of a company
and have a say in their management, to a market designed to enrich insiders by allowing them to sell shares they buy
cheaply through options. Companies continuously issue new shares to their managers without asking their existing
shareholders. Those managers then leak that stock to the market a little at a time. It’s unlimited dilution
of existing shareholders’ stakes, death by a thousand dilutive cuts. If that isn’t a scam, I don’t know what
is. Individual shareholders have nothing but the chance to sell it to the next sucker. A mutual fund buys
one million shares of a company with your and your coworkers’ money. You own 1 percent of the company. Six
weeks later you own less, and all that money went to insiders, not to the company. And no one asked your
permission, and you didn’t know you got diluted or by how much till 90 days after the fact if that soon.

When Broadcast.com went public, we raised a lot of money that certainly helped us grow as a company. But once
you get past the raising capital part of the market, the stock market becomes not only inefficient, but as close to a
Ponzi scheme as you can get.

As a public company, we got calls every day from people who owned Broadcast.com stock or had bought it for their
funds. They didn’t call because they were confused during our road show, were too embarrassed to ask questions and
wanted to get more information. They called because they wanted to know if the “fundamentals” – the marketing
points – they had heard before were improving. And the most important fundamental was “The Number,” our quarterly
earnings (or in our case, a loss). Once we went public, Morgan Stanley published a report on our company, as did
several other firms. They all projected our quarterly sales and earnings. Would we beat The Number?

Of course, by law, we were not allowed to say anything. That didn’t stop people from asking. They needed
us to beat the forecast. They knew if we beat The Number the volume on the stock would go up. Brokers would
tell their clients about it. The Wall Street Journal would write about it. CNBC would shout the good news
to day traders and investment banks that watched their network all day long. All the volume would drive up the
stock price.

Unfortunately, patience is not a virtue on Wall Street. Every day, portfolios are valued by at closing
price. If the value of your fund isn’t keeping up with the indexes or your competition, the new money coming in
the market won’t come to you. It just wasn’t feasible for these investors to wait till the number was reported by
companies each quarter. The volume had to be on the stocks in you fund. To keep the volume about a stock up, and
the demand for the stock increasing, you needed to have good news to tell.

Volume, The Number, whisper numbers, insiders granting themselves millions and millions of options – these are the games that Wall Street plays to keep on enriching themselves at the expense of the public. I know this. I have tried to tell people to be careful before they turned over their life savings and their financial future to someone whose first job is to keep their job, not make you money.

Till I read The Number by Alex Berenson, I never had a book that explained how the market truly worked that I could tell my friends, family and acquaintances to read. I never had a book that would truly warn them that the market was not as fair and honest as mutual fund and brokerage commercials made them out to be. I may be a cynic when it comes to the stock market, but I am an informed cynic, and that has helped me make some very, very profitable decisions in the market.

If you are considering investing in the market, any part of it, or if you are considering giving your hard earned
money over to someone else to manage, please, please read The Number first.

Mark Cuban, Dallas, Texas, January 2004

First, I’m not recommending to any of my companies that we leave facebook. I am recommending that we de-emphasize pushing consumers or partners to like us on FB and focus on building up our followings across all existing social media platforms and to evaluate those that we feel can grow a material following. In the past we put FB first, twitter second. FB has been moved to the bottom of a longer list.

At the core of the issues I have with FB is how FB thinks about itself .

This is from their page on Newsfeed, Engagement and Promoted Posts : ”In this way, we can keep news feed an engaging service where people come to get the information that is most interesting to them.” FB believes that their news feed is an engaging information source.    They seem to really, really want to make sure that you get the information that is most engaging to you. I honestly didn’t know this.

This has to be a good thing, right ? What could possibly be wrong with wanting to improve engagement ? What could possibly be wrong with optimizing their news and information feeds ? IMHO, everything.  Defining engagement by clicks, likes, shares, unlikes and reporting works for Google’s search engine, I don’t believe it works for a social network.

People go to Google Search with every intention of leaving it. They want to “engage, click and leave”.  On the exact opposite side of the spectrum, people go to FB with the expectation that it is very likely they will stay on FB for an extended period of time. In fact we spend more than 26 minutes per day on FB. As this study said, FB is an alternative to boredom. FB is far more like TV than it is Google Search

FB is what it is. Its a time waster. That’s not to say we don’t engage, we do. We click, share and comment because it’s mindless and easy.  But for some reason FB doesn’t seem to want to accept that it’s best purpose in life is as a huge time suck platform that we use to keep up with friends, interests and stuff.  I think that they are over thinking what their network is all about .

Being a time suck that people enjoy is a good thing. There is a comfort in turning on the TV and having it work without any thought required. It’s easy. It is the best  5 hour on average per day alternative to boredom.

There is a comfort in going on FB and seeing what pictures pop up from friends or from pages you have liked.  FB is not something you have to rush through. All those pictures and posts are not going anywhere. FB is easy. In particular it’s a great alternative to boredom when you are stuck somewhere and all you have is your phone.  Actually it’s  a life saver. Head down on FB beats the hell out of that awkward feeling that you may have to at least acknowledge and possibly talk to the person next to you. Put another way, IMHO, FB really risks screwing up something that is special in our lives as a time waster by thinking they have to make it more engaging and efficient.

Who really appreciates that some posts rise to the top of their newsfeed because some folks they used to work with and are still friends with shared a baby picture ? Not only do I not like it, I like even less the obligation I feel to like the picture so I don’t seem like some grump.

I dont want to know about where you are in Wizard of Oz (currently navigating Edgerank up my top stories feed). Our FB networks have grown so big and unfriending someone is so much more difficult than it should be, that we just don’t do it. Hence, our news feed is not so pure . The math may be efficient but the result is not.

So how does this relate to brands and sponsored post ?  In a perfect FB world every post enters the friends/like/subscriber’s timeline. If they log in and want to spend the time searching their timeline they see it, if not , not. FB users go on FB looking to kill time. Why not let them ?

From a brands perspective not having to try to fall within the parameters of the algorithm (Edgerank)  allows us to post fun things, tidbits, information, anything knowing that there is at least a chance those who have a connection with us can see it and knowing that we won’t reduce our chances of the algorithm showing our post.

We should know better than an algorithm what those who like us actually like. It may well be that it’s a passive relationship. Maybe they just want to see the scores at the end of every quarter in a Mavs game ? Maybe they want to know what show is playing right now on AXS TV ? No one expects them to like, comment or share any of this. It’s just an information source. And can i just say that its really weird when Mavs end of quarter scores show up out of order.  Thats how smart the algorithm is.

It’s not like pages have carte blanche to assault people with posts.  People know their own tolerance for what they consider to be spam better than any algorithm does.  It is incumbent upon the brand not to abuse the relationship and cause the person to unlike us.  Doesn’t FB realize that is far easier for a user to opt-out of a feed by unliking a brand/person/page that has done a poor job of communication than it is to mess with all the account settings or for them to try to tweak their algorithm all the time to try to guess what people want ?

Again, FB is over complicating a simple issue.  A user can govern his/her newsfeed far better by hitting unlike than an algorithm like EdgeRank ever can.

But this over-complication via algorithm and not knowing why people use their site (feel free to say right here that of course FB knows how people use their site better than I do. ) creates a financial problem for brands. By trying to be an incredibly efficient information delivery source, they confine our ability to organically reach most of our followers to using Sponsored Posts.  THey also significantly increase our costs because if we create a post that doesn’t engage our followers to the level the algorithm expects it to, it can impact our ability to be seen in the future. Talk about pressure.  Put up a post , but be sure that Edgerank doesn’t think it sucks.

Then of course there is the money. As many have written before me, sponsored posts can get expensive. If you post many times a day, that can get incredibly expensive.

So why would brands who cant afford the algorithmic presentation risk or the financial cost want to continue to drive their user interaction by investing in  FB if there are alternatives ?

FB’s has a couple of other serious issues that impact their desire to be a source for “information that is most interesting to them”. Because FB has become such a store of personal information, we have become very protective of our profiles.  I don’t know the percentage of individuals posts on FB that are available to the general public, but it can’t be very high. We show our posts and see the posts only of our extended network.  While that network may get you close to Kevin Bacon, it’s not going to let you use FB as a primary information source .

Why? Because you can’t gain the value of all those posts outside of your network. They are closed off to you. Yes you can search on Bing which actually does a good job of integrating your own social network, but it still doesn’t take you out to the rest of the social world and all the insights and information that it has to offer like Twitter , Tumblr and specialized sites do.  Some  of the best sources of current information are searches on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram (the irony), and of course relevant websites.

If you want to see what every one is saying about the election, you have to go outside of FB. So by default you are not going to use your newsfeed as a primary source of information. It’s more like the township newspaper .  You get the basic local stuff and updates , but it can’t be a comprehensive source.

The same applies to the real time social universe. There could be 120 people talking about a topic that they have not yet liked  or for which there has not been a topic yet created and you would have no way to know the conversation was going on or how to reach the people if you did. This is exactly why Twitter has trending topics that are becoming more and more granular by the day.

So back to sponsored posts and algorithms. I’m not against sponsored posts per se. I’m against sponsored posts being the primary, if not the only way to reach most of the people my companies have built a connection with on FB.

Take away EdgeRank so we all have a fair chance to reach those who like us with Sponsored Posts being a way to improve our odds, great. I’m all for it.  That is like any other medium.

I also think that FB is making a big mistake by trying to play games with their original mission of connecting the world.  FB is a fascinating destination that is an amazing alternative to boredom which excels in its SIMPLICITY.  One of the threats in any business is that you outsmart yourself. FB has to be careful of just that.