What's wrong with movie theaters
A friend shared via Facebook this brief Roger Ebert essay on why revenues were down so much in 2011 for movie theaters. Another great example of an industry stuck in its ways that is struggling to adapt to today's world. Read here
Spam for blogs
I've had my blog now for over six months, and one ofthe things that has surprised me the most is the spam you get via the comments section. Here's a sample of a message I got recently:
"I simply want to tell you that I'm beginner to blogging and site-building and honestly enjoyed you're web page. Probably I’m likely to bookmark your site . You actually have beneficial stories. With thanks for sharing your blog."
You see a message like this and you think, "wow, some guy that is clearly not American has been reading my blog and enjoying what I write. Nice!". Then you google that message and realize he did the same on a million other sites, likely to boost the visibility of the sketchy site he runs. The other popular spam I get a lot is trying to sell pharmaceuticals.
As is true with all spam, the only reason people keep spamming is because a very small percentage of people actually fall for it and buy something (or fall victim by giving their credit card). It sometimes amazes me that people can be so gullable, but I guess I tend to underestimate the stupidity of many people.
An interview with a casino CEO
"There are three ways to get fired from a casino: theft, sexual harassment, and running an experiment without a control group" says Gary Loveman, the CEO of Ceasars. Gary used to work for the Fed Reserve and as an economics professor at Harvard Business School, yet today runs one of the largest casino companies in the country. At the heart of the discussion is what casinos do to entice new customers to increase business and also how do they retain those customers. As a business, they are constantly analyzing data on customer usage and demographics and conducting experiments to see what works and what doesn't. They are thus able to know what customers to offer free dinner, VIP night club passes, or hotel rooms to. As an example, customers using their "loyalty cards" in the casino give real time data that the casino is able to use to adjust the customer experience on the fly. On average, casinos pay out 90% of what is earned. If a customer earns more than that, the casino loses money. If a customer earns less, they get annoyed and don't want to come back. So, if a customer is at the casino and is losing money on a slot, Caesars is able to recognize this, notify someone on the floor, and have an employee go up and offer that customer something to improve their experience (free dinner?) and increase the chance of them coming back.
I'm not a big fan of casinos or gambling in general, but I must say I'm quite impressed at how this data is being used. It's also a little scary when you start pondering how much data companies have on everyone today, and the ways the smart ones can start taking advantage of it. Big money is on the line for those companies that do this well.
Listen here (starts about 2 minutes in and runs for 20 minutes or so)
Cold, hard realities
"Without the distortion of a credit bubble, it is clear that far too many Americans don't know how to do anything that the world is willing to pay them a living wage for. No economic theory offers them easy salvation." Adam Davidson, the creator of one of my favorite podcasts, NPR's Planet Money, is pretty blunt in his assessment of the US economy and I couldn't agree more. Read the full article here: NY times link. If you haven't checked out Planet Money, you should do so. They consistently have stories about things that impact your day-to-day life that you've either never thought about or have no idea how/why they work as they do. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/
Lazy Man's Summary of Adam's article: No politician is able to create jobs even though they all insist that they can. "Business-friendly" states such as Texas steal jobs from other states but create very few net jobs for the country. Subsidizing green industries does nothing other than shift jobs from one industry (oil) to another (such as solar). Stimulus funds do little unless they are enormously huge (and then they still need to be paid for). Cutting taxes and regulations may or may not have a long term benefit, but in the short term they simply result in laying off many government workers and not growing the economy (ask Britain). The best solution: those without jobs need to learn new skills and move to where the jobs are in the country (Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming).