Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn = HUGE BUBBLE

Lately we have seen some IPO's from social media sites that have overwhelmed investors and people in general. How can a website be worth any money? A website is virtual and isn't necessarily a physical asset. Well, a website is a tangible asset. We can neither touch it or feel it. 

There are some signs that bubble 2.0 is here: the huge valuations for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,Zynga and Groupon; a wealth of over-funded me-too startups,; and a wave of summer web IPOs. But there are also some strong indicators that it’s a bit different this time around: the frenzy is concentrated on social media rather than Internet companies across the board, and investors aren’t spending the same amount of capital as they did in bubble 1.0, since the costs of building web startups is rock bottom now as compared to the late 90’s.

But some kind of bubble seems to be brewing, and entrepreneurs, investors, and startups need to get ready, tread carefully and, most importantly, learn from the lessons of the previous bubble and bust cycle. To help with that, we sat down with five entrepreneurs and investors who received their fair share of arrows in the back in the first crash. Shutterfly CEO Jeffrey Housenbold, says at one point during the bust he had to lay off 400 people from a previous company, including the best man at his wedding. But all survived, and thrived, and investors like Vivek Mehra, a General Partner with August Capital, managed to usher in one of the most successful IPOs in the history of the Nasdaq via Cobalt Networks and then sold the company to Sun a year later (no wonder that he landed a Partner gig with his lead investor).

Where Have America's Jobs Gone?

There are many reasons U.S. companies give for their lack of robust hiring—from weak consumer spending to uncertainty over the direction of government policies on debt and spending.

But a closer look at hiring provides a more nuanced picture. Some industries have significantly boosted employment over the past year while others continue to shed workers. To be sure, even those adding jobs are hiring far fewer than would be needed to put America's 14.1 million unemployed back to work.

Manufacturing has been adding jobs since the start of 2010 due in large part to the sharp rebound in automobile production at General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC that has filtered to suppliers. On the flip side, just about anything to do with housing, from furniture makers to hardware stores, remains depressed. Homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc., of Horsham, Pa., plans to bring its total employment to 3,300 by Oct. 31. But that is less than half of its peak of about 7,000 in 2005.

"It's very incremental and deliberate re-hiring," said Jon Downs, senior vice president of human resources for Toll. "We aren't in a wholesale hiring mode."

Over the past year, private employers have added 1.7 million jobs, but the net result of 659,000 cuts in government jobs—about a half of them temporary Census workers—mean total U.S. payrolls were up by only 1 million in that span. That leaves the country with 7 million fewer jobs than when the recession started in late 2007.

Here's what it looks like on the ground in some industries that are among the biggest job gainers and losers over the past year:

Restaurants and bars

More than 9.3 million Americans work in restaurants, about one in every 10 employed, and the industry has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak hiring environment. Food service has added nearly 216,000 jobs since December 2009, when the industry's employment bottomed out in the recession. The 2.1% job growth that restaurants have experienced in the year ending June from a year ago is more than twice the nation's 0.9% job growth rate.

The job growth is expected to continue: Industry estimates suggest the sector will add 1.3 million jobs in the next decade.

Fabricated Metal

Companies that cut and shape metal for cars, airplanes and other products generally have had a rebound in jobs and orders over the past year. Robert Akers, chief operating officer of the National Tooling and Machining Association, said orders have been particularly good from aerospace and medical equipment makers. Employment is up 77,800, or six percent compared to a year ago, according to the Labor Department. Some metal-fabrication companies also are scrambling to replace baby boomers who retired during the recession. In a recent survey of association members, about 45% said their order backlogs had increased since this year's first quarter, while 20% were down

Many startups are on a hiring tear as they receive large infusions of venture capital in the latest tech boom. Foursquare, which raised $50 million in June and makes a wireless application for smartphones, said it would add 25 employees this year to its 75, mostly software engineers.

Google+ is being changed this week based on user feedback

It’s been a couple of weeks since Google+ launched, and with the exception of China already blocking its use, people do seem to like it. That’s good news for Google after the failures of Buzz and Wave, and bad news for Facebook who now has a serious competitor in the social network space.

You may think Google could sit back and watch the Google+ network grow, but that would be a mistake. The search company has realized it can’t just watch what happens, it needs to respond to users quickly in order to keep them happy and the network growing. While the general view of Google+ is a positive one, there’s also a lot of criticism and user feedback of which Google is about to tackle.

Today, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social at Google used his Google+ account to post a message confirming there’s “lots of criticism for Google+.” Not only that, but before the end of the week we should start seeing changes to address those criticisms.

Although there isn’t a list of what the most criticized features are (or lack thereof), the responses to Gundotra’s post are very telling. Here’s the ones we managed to extract from the 200+ comments he has received so far, most of which have had multiple +1 upvotes:

• Ability to modify circles a post is shared with after posting it
• Reading sparks and +1 comments in the Android app
• Lifting of the 5000 circle cap (really?)
• The ability to overlap circles
• Option of a circle that doesn’t show up in your stream
• Menu follows you down the stream as you scroll
• Easy private messaging option including to person who starts a thread
• Google+ app for other platforms (WP7)
• Blocking working 100% of the time
• Easy way to merge circles
• Sharing and refresh updates in the Android app
• Link to hide all comments again after you’ve clicked to show all
• Better integration of Google Chat with Google+
• Fix issues with instant upload for photos
• Ability to share with all circles, but with an “except” option
• Ability to share Google Docs and Calendar with circles
• Revamp Google Reader to make sharing easier
• File-sharing integration
• Nested comments
• Addition of hashtags to aid searching

As you can see, most of the requests are for more control and more integration with other Google services. There also seems to be a big push for the Android app to be improved quickly.

We know any bugs will be the first thing to be fixed, but also for the control of circles (privacy, merging) and better stream access and controls to be targeted first. I’m sure there’s also a lot of feedback regarding the invite system and how overwhelmed it became.

The other question to ask is whether there’s anything missing from that list? If you are a regular Google+ user or just starting out, checkout our best tips, tricks, and add-ons post and see if it helps you get past, or reveal new criticisms you can feedback to Google.

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/google-is-being-tweaked-this-week-based-on-user-feedback-20110711/

Just-vote-no Republicans

A debt crisis is a terrible thing to waste in a presidential election season, and Democrats and Republicans alike are responding on cue.
The late-breaking news Saturday night that talks toward a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan had been scrapped was a devastating blow to the many who had begun to hope that a big bipartisan solution was possible.


House Speaker John Boehner issued a statement saying that the $4 trillion deal that he and President Obama had favored was off the table: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in the statement. “I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”


While the Biden proposal is half the deal Boehner, Obama and others had hoped for, it is still something more than anyone could have expected even a few months ago. And that perspective is worth considering as both Republicans and Democrats threaten to walk away from any agreement that would lead to raising the debt ceiling.


No plan will please all, obviously. And the meeting among top leaders scheduled for Sunday will be a test of wills, but also of courage and of compromise. Few honest brokers think that we can prevent a financial catastrophe without both cuts and revenue increases, but there are surely ways to get there from here without necessarily punishing the poor or the wealthy.


Where there are wills, there are ways.


Meanwhile, not raising the debt ceiling is fraught with peril. Even prolonging raising the ceiling is potentially hazardous before a default happens, as investors take preventive actions that could distort the money markets.


Republicans have made enormous advances toward government reforms that were viewed as unachievable a year ago. Voting no may have become the aphrodisiac of small-government conservatives, but it is not necessarily an act of bravery or wisdom.

Current status of the global economy (Explained in simpler terms and 3R's)

Have you wondered why the U.S. is so fucking poor right now? Well, let me tell you why. China is raping our asses because we basically told them to.

Regulation. Regulation in the United States has been getting tougher ever since litigation became the primary way of doing business in America. Don't get me wrong, a litigation society can thrive IF EVERYONE ELSE DOES THE SAME. The rest of the world doesn't need to follow American laws, they could, but who would want to save a tree when you can burn that tree and sell it to John Jackson for $203,000 (Average price of a home)? We will have a perfect economy when we decide to either eliminate those restrictive laws, or make the rest of the world have them.

Republicans. Ever since President Obama won the 2008 elections conservatives have made their life goal to make him fail. How do you make someone this powerful fail? Well, by FILIBUSTERING every single positive law he wants.

Russia. Yeah, Russia is involved in here too. Fuck its late.

First post EVER

Fuck Yeah. Today is June 29 2011 and this is my first post.