Hacker's lounge

Thursday, January 6, 2011

about internet marketing

We all know the Facebook story or at least saw the movie. A site for college kids to publish their pictures became an Internet phenomenon. But while grandma may now be posting what she ate for breakfast, the real revolution Facebook has created is for advertisers. Brands are salivating at the prospect of reaching the 500 million users who collectively spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.

In 2011 and beyond, Facebook will become one of the most important marketing channels in the world. Already, Facebook is on track to generate more than $2 billion in ad revenues in 2010, far surpassing earlier estimates of around $1 billion, and will likely skyrocket past that figure in 2011, as more marketers shift budgets from TV, radio, and print to the social realm. Proctor & Gamble got a head start on this move by recently announcing it would transfer the majority of its daytime TV advertising budget to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

And, it’s not just Facebook that’s having an impact on marketing. In fact, all social media – from Twitter and blogs, to forums and YouTube – is having a profound impact on how consumers interact, find products, get deals, shop, and get information. For marketers, that means social is no longer just a channel, but an integral part of a strategic marketing plan. Social media now impacts all of a brand’s marketing campaigns, with free viral “sharing” beginning to surpass paid marketing channels like search engine marketing, display, and print advertising at driving large audiences to campaign pages and brand websites.

To be sure, brands are already spending on social media marketing-– but 2011 will likely see a huge surge in investment into social as Facebook, Twitter, and all things social become increasingly measurable and ROI-focused. The investment in online advertising iw predicted to set a new record in 2011, growing 14 percent to $51.9 billion, up from $45.6 billion in 2010, according to Borell Associates. Two of the fastest-growing segments of online advertising are the local sector and social media.

So what will the social media marketing landscape look like in 2011? Here are four predictions based on our work with hundreds of top brands to measure, track, analyze their social media marketing programs.

Social media will kill the TV star – Okay, “kill” may be a stretch but did you know that more people play Farmville than watch daytime TV? A recent study by Deutsche Bank found that 7.5 million people tune into Oprah every day, whereas 43 million people play a Zynga game each day. In contrast to advertising on TV, targeted social media campaigns offer brands the ability to deliver relevant messages with precision to specific, highly engaged audiences –0 and present them with compelling offers and instantly-redeemable coupons.
In contrast to the “lean back” experience offered in front of the TV, social media brings brands and consumers closer together than ever before. TV watchers may see a brand flash before them on the screen, but game players may see an offer from your brand within a game they are playing, and be offered free game credits for taking a survey, referring a friend, or making an immediate in-game purchase of one of your products.

The Groupon effect is here to stay — Consumers today have a “deal mentality”. With the rise of daily deal sites like Groupon, flash sales sites like Gilt, and myriad coupon sites, consumers don’t want to buy a product unless they feel they’ve gotten a great deal on it. What’s more, customers now expect recognition and rewards for spreading the word about deals, discounts, and exclusive opportunities. They don’t just want a good deal, they want an even better deal for promoting deals to others!
Most brands now use Twitter and Facebook to publicize deals, and an increasing number are experimenting with Groupon and other deal sites, but future sales belong to marketers who not only publicize their promotions, but reward sharing in real-time so buyers have a strong incentive to spread the word and extend the reach of every campaign.

Mobile is social According to Facebook, there are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices, and these mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users. With the emergence of location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook Places, the integration of social and mobile is growing ever stronger.
Today, not only are we constantly connected via our mobile devices, but as our friends discover content, deals, and discounts, they share them with us – spreading brand campaigns directly from phone-to-phone. People are beginning to expect that relevant content, including advertising, will reach them via the friends or contacts they trust. Some of the fastest-growing segments of mobile marketing include mobile coupons that customers can use by presenting a barcode on their phones to scanned at checkout; iPhone apps that allow price comparison, product searches, and immediate transactions; and Foursquare-type services that allow businesses to reward frequent store visitors with discounts and promotions. The best mobile marketing promotions and content are those that can be shared.

Sharing is the new search — While Google will continue to prosper in 2011, the role of “sharing” in how people discover information, deals, and products is changing how we search and what we search for. News finds us. Fun, entertaining content finds us. Deals and discounts find us.
In fact, from our own research across Meteor Solutions’ customers, we found that influencers –- those who share your campaigns across their social graph –- can directly influence 40 to 60 percent of all visits to an advertising campaign page. More and more, people will get product information through the social graph –- instead of directly from a brand advertiser. Search will remain the most efficient way for people to find something specific, but sharing will become the most efficient way for relevant, useful, and entertaining content to find us.

Marketers need to create campaigns that go beyond interrupting consumers with advertising, and create content that’s highly useful and easily shareable –- such as contests, deals, promotions, inside information, and product reviews. The social graph is creating effective ways for marketers to reach audiences at scale.

Social media is no longer just a way for consumers to waste a few minutes looking at funny cat photos. Today, Facebook and other social channels are becoming the way people interact with the larger world around them –- and brand marketers are going to make sure they’re not too late to the party.

Ben Straley is the CEO of Meteor Solutions, a company offering website tracking and content sharing tools to advertisers and publishers. He’s also the lead instructor for the University of Washington Certificate Program for Advanced Interactive Marketing. He can be reached at ben@meteorsolutions.com or @meteorsolutions.

Next Story: Winklevoss twins on Facebook lawsuit: It’s not about the money Previous Story: RunKeeper sprints to the top of the charts with fitness free promotion

MMA to Create Mobile Privacy Guidelines

Greg Stuart, Global CEO of the MMA, said the group recognizes the importance of consumer privacy. "In order for marketers and publishers to responsibly and sustainably engage consumers through and with the mobile channel, we need to continuously update how we address the collection, management and use of personal data or related consumer information," he explained earlier this month.

To create the new guidelines, the MMA is asking members of the mobile community, including carriers, marketers, agencies, media companies and media technologies, to join its Privacy Committee. The issue will also be addressed at its upcoming Consumer Best Practices Meeting, January 25-26 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Compared with the $25 billion online ad industry, the mobile marketing industry is still in its infancy. It won't reach $1 billion until 2012, reported AdWeek, citing data from eMarketer. "If we'd seen how fast mobile Internet and apps were going to grow, maybe we would have stepped in sooner," Stuart told AdWeek.

[Author's Note: if they had seen how fast it would grow? Were they not watching?]

There's no timeline for the completion of the new policy, Stuart said. "It's more important that we get it done right. This release was a call to arms."

A Need to Address Mobile Privacy Concerns

This issue was recently in the forefront of people's minds, thanks to a Wall St. Journal series called "What They Know," that highlighted the growing lack of privacy in today's digital world. One piece in particular ("Your Apps are Watching You") dealt with mobile privacy.

The Journal found that, after an examination of 101 popular smartphone applications on iPhone and Android devices, 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without the user's awareness or consent. 47 also transmitted location and 5 sent age, gender and other personal details.

Counterpoint: Tracking is GOOD

The somewhat overly paranoid reporting from The WSJ was met with some backlash online, especially from the tech blogging community. In a post entitled "Hello, My Name is: 9649e796e8b23900dc9629a18f2d47306430e62f," BGR blogger Andrew Munchbach made a convincing argument that mobile tracking isn't really all that bad. (The headline referred to his UDID, the unique device identifier that's used to build an online profile of a device, and therefore, the user).

"I’m not all that concerned with third parties, even advertisers, knowing the age, gender, UDID, and/or the general (or even specific) location of my device’s end-user (that’s me)," Munchbach wrote. "So Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, knows that the dude using my mobile device is, um, a dude, was stuck on level 5-13 for six straight hours, and was in Newport, RI when this all occurred. So the game looked through my address book to see if there were contacts that were also playing Angry Birds with whom I could connect. I kind of like these features," he said.

He also said that even when that data is passed to an analytics company, it's used - anonymously - to provide useful usage statistics and intelligence. "Rovio can use this information to improve its product, which would seem like a benefit to me, the player. Heck, Flurry may even go one step further and use this information in its own reporting and assessment of the mobile industry or publish a report about it...still doesn’t trouble me all that much. Why should it? It’s an age, gender, and ever-changing location that is linked to a number that represents a mobile device."

...But Some Want to Opt-Out & Today You Can't

While in Munchbach's case, the tracking is seen in a positive light, there are some who would prefer the option to opt-out, as you can in most of today's modern desktop-based Web browsers, through the use of built-in tools like privacy/"incognito" modes, browser add-ons and extensions and even alternative search portals that promise no tracking.

WSJ polled its readers on the matter, and a majority (67.7%), said they want apps to tell them every time they collect and send info about their mobile device. Clearly, these voters were worked about about the idea, having just read the article. Apps that constantly nagged you if and when they could share information would be worse than Windows Vista's User Account Control security feature which seemed to ask you every single time you tried to make the simplest change on your PC.

Still, the mobile world, as of yet, does not have any such opt-out options. It's all or nothing - use the app, or don't. But if you do, you're agreeing to certain conditions. The MMA's influence may help to create new scenarios here that will better serve mobile users, not just with regard to apps, but for all sorts of mobile ads, including SMS text messages, in-app banner advertising and ads on the mobile Web itself.

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Latest news. For the latest news, check the homepage, or our Atom feed. Archives by year. 1998 � 1999 � 2000 � 2001 � 2002 � 2003 ... News Archive - 2010. Here are the most important news items we have published in 2010 on PHP.net. ...

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Juan Williams responded to the news that the NPR executive who handled his firing from that network, Ellen Weiss, has resigned. Weiss, who was NPR's senior vice president for news, resigned on Thursday after an independent review that ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

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Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

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Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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surface encounters

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters noblesville
surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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surface encounters rock tops

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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surface encounters

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters rock tops

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters noblesville
surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters michigan
surface encounters michigan

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters
surface encounters macomb

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters macomb
surface encounters macomb

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

surface encounters noblesville
surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

PHP: News Archive - 2011

Juan Williams Reacts On Fox News To NPR Executive Ellen Weiss ...

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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Help Making Money

Now that it’s 2011 and we’re back in the swing of things, a lot of startups are already undoubtedly laying out their launch plans for the year. And while anytime seems like a good time around these parts, a lot of startups pencil in the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas as a good potential launching point. Why? Because it’s early in the year (early March), with a ton of people and hype, and a few of the most successful launches in recent years took place there.

You can always tell the most successful launches because the press the following year will say, “who is going to be this year’s ______ of SXSW?” The two most obvious companies that fit that bill are Twitter and Foursquare. (Well technically Twitter didn’t launch at SXSW, but that was definitely their coming out party in 2007.) And coincidentally, two founders of those two companies have taken to Quora today to both answer the question: What is the process involved in launching a startup at SXSW?

Yes, I get to write about Twitter, Foursquare, and Quora in the same post.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams notes that Twitter launched prior to SXSW “to a whimper”. He says that the company made a decision to target SXSW for some publicity in 2007 simply because it seemed like a lot of the then “thousands” of Twitter early-adopters were heading there. He specifically credits two things they did there with helping the explosion of interest.

First, they set up a tweet visualization screens and negotiated with the conference to put them in the main hallways in the Austin Convention Center. “This is something they’d never done before, but we didn’t want a booth on the trade show floor, because we knew hallways is where the action was. We paid $11K for this and set up the TVs ourselves. (This was about the only money Twitter’s *ever* spent on marketing.),” Williams notes.

The second thing they did was to create a SXSW-specific feature that allowed people to join Twitter simply by texting “join sxsw” to their 40404 SMS shortcode. When people did that, they would show up on the screens around the conference. And you’d be following the half-dozen Twitter “ambassadors” that were other users at the conference (consider that the first SUL).

Williams notes, however, that it didn’t seem like a ton of people signed up for the service that way.

“I don’t know what was the most important factor, but networks are all about critical mass, so doubling down on the momentum seemed like a good idea. And something clicked,” he concludes.

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley offers a different take. His big launch was two years later, at SXSW 2009, and the conference was already much larger at that point. His two main keys to a big SXSW launch are to “hustle” and to do everything in your power to get viral word-of-mouth buzz just before the conference. “Start telling friends and stranger to try out your app,” Crowley writes, saying that they spent $0 on marketing that year.

As for hustling, Crowley says that “we started in January and flipped the switch on 4SQ the Thursday before SXSW. Me & Naveen [his co-founder] were both coding in the airport, on the tarmac, on the runway.”

Crowley also says that you should take advantage of Twitter early on for both feedback and support. “Try to answer as many support + feature requests tweets you can. Get people to spread the love,” he writes.

He also suggests using a service like GetSatisfaction to gather a collection of “superusers” to help out with troubleshooting and bugs.

Finally, he says that it’s probably wise to have someone not at SXSW watching the ship during the actual conference. “It’ll help while you’re doing your thing in Austin,” he says.

But Crowley’s most interesting tidbit comes in a comment below his answer:

don’t focus on the press / media / bloggers.

Focus on making something you think is awesome. Focus on making something you think other people will also think is awesome. The rest will prob just happen.

In an answer below that, Kevin Marks leaves another crucial point:

FIrst of all, be sure that your startup makes sense for SXSW – both Twitter and Foursquare (and indeed Dodgeball) were highly suitable for thousands of geeks crammed into a smallish downtown with intermittent net connectivity and a desire to co-ordinate with each other.

If your startup is an Enterprise Sales tool, you might be better off launching somewhere else.

Consider this the official countdown kickoff to the “who will be this year’s ______ at SXSW” stories.

Students at Harvard Business School help step up its start-up game with a $50K MVP Fund

Is Harvard Business School giving Stanford and Wharton a run for its money? It seems that yes, the prestigious business school is finally driving its own tech-focused, start-up movement. Harvard’s existing entrepreneurship center, the HBS Rock Center will be complemented by the Harvard Innovation Lab, opening in fall 2011.

And who’s driving the movement? The students are, reports BostInnovation writer Cheryl Morris. The school recently announced its $50,000 “Minimum Viable Product Fund” (MVP Fund), which was initiated by a very dear friend of mine, Dan Rumennik, HBS ’12. The fund’s name plays on the lean startup methodology that emphasizes working on customer development in tandem with product development. As reported by Morris, the HBS Rock Center contributed the $50K and will be awarding winners. The fund aims to award ten teams with $5,000 each, but teams may request up to $10,000 in funding.

“The idea is that a small amount of dollars at such a resourceful school [as HBS] will yield huge results and hopefully encourage more students to consider entrepreneurship and starting their own business,” Rumennik added. “That is the real goal of this — to get more students who wouldn’t have otherwise considered [being entrepreneurial], to think about making a career in it.”

The deadline for Harvard students to apply for the fund is January 28th, 2010. Requirements and application information can be found here. Funded teams will be asked to check-in monthly with a mentor from the MVP program; attend a monthly gathering of MVP teams; and present lessons learned from the MVP program. The 2011 Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab include a list of investors like Jeff Bussgang and Gwill York and Eric Ries, who is the face and creator of the MVP methodology.

HBS’s Rock Center has also organized a Silicon Valley Immersion Program in January, for students interested in working at a start-up, working in venture capital, or starting their own business. HBS also offers an entrepreneurial Immersion Program to Israel as well as several others in locations ranging from New Orleans to India. For more insider information, check out the Harvard Start-Up Tribe on Twitter.

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500 More Red-Winged Blackbirds Found Dead in Louisiana - AOL News

Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Making Money Online Forum

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte Development, one third of all online communities now launched by businesses fail to engage even a hundred participants.

A new book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.
Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.
Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.
Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.
Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.
Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.
Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

robert shumake

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

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Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake detroit

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.
Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.
Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.
Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.
Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.
Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.
Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

robert shumake

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

One of the lesser known money-makers uses an idea called Pay-Per-Click Websites (or, more simply, PPC sites). A PPC site is a search engine, much like Google or Yahoo!, which rank websites based on the search terms you enter. Using a membership subscription process, you can be paid for using them. The idea behind these websites is to promote their search engine to potential advertisers, so that they can make money. Because of the prevalence of Google, Yahoo!, and ask.com, the lesser known sites have to offer incentives to people who use their service so that they can compete. Their method is to pay users, often at about one-thousandth of a cent per click, to browse on their site, eventually paying the customer when their balance reaches between $5 and $50, depending on the site. As I'm sure you can imagine, this takes a long time to build up, but once you automate your clicking, you can eventually work up a large sum of money and get a pretty big check. It can take awhile, but can be worth it if you spend a lot of time on the net already. The site you want to sign up with is PPC Appraisal (you can find all the necessary links at the bottom of this article)..

Simply sign up for a new account. When the site asks for your company, simply put your full name. For your tax ID, put 'n/a' and for your website, put 'www.ppcappraisal.com'. Sign up for any account name you please.

The next step is to download and install an automatic clicker. The only approved choice by PPC appraisal is the Ougo browser (), and fortunately, it happens to be one of the better ones out there. .

Now you need to do some initial setup. You only need to do this next part once. After you log in to PPC Appraisal's website, you need to click on the requests tab. Check the following boxes: Baltimore, Braintopia, Campaign, Cialto Art, Cockta, Cymicon, Joymars, Kazati.com portal, kili gaga, Medical health and fitness, NetVivid Portal and PPC Search engine. Do not select any others, or else it will take you years to get a check. Click the request bottom at the bottom of this page to continue.

Once you've made your requests, go to the "Menu" tab and find "Your link to rotation script for portals." Highlight the link inside this box, and press CTRL+C to copy.

Now it's time to set up the browser. Install the Ougo Browser you downloaded earlier and go to the "Surf" Menu, then click on Setup. Under Set1, paste (CTRL+V) the link into the panel on the right. That's all for setup.

To start the process, you need to start up the Ougo Browser whenever you go online. To start auto-surfing, and of course, making money, you simply go to "Surf" then "Start Surf" then "OK" when a pop up starts. You'll quickly see two windows pop up.

This is fine, but to maximize your options, go to "Tools -> Developers ->Analyst -> Six" to open six windows, and triple your browsing powers. Now let the money roll in, albeit slowly.

To get paid, you need to simply wait until you have enough credits with these websites. To check your current status, go to the PPC Appraisal website and sign in. One option you probably want to turn on in Ougo is to send the browser to the tray when you click the minimize button. To do this, click Tools -> Ougo Browser -> Options -> Tray Options -> Enable Tray Icon ->Minimize to Tray. Now when you click the minimize button, it will not appear next to the other programs you're using, but rather disappear down by the clock on the right-hand side of the screen. It will continue running, but you just won't be able to see it.

Now, this alone will NOT make you any money whatsoever. It could take you months to earn enough for a single check, but you'd be losing money on electricity the whole time. You need to take you clicking business to the next step, or don't bother. The way you do this is simple. You get referrals. You'll need a lot of them to make it work, but if you get one or two really intrepid adventurers, you can get up to $4 a day with minimal effort. You earn 5% of what each of your referrals makes by clicking, and 5% of their referrals down to the fourth level (i.e. you -> your referral -> their referral -> their referral). It can add up nicely if you do it right. Currently, I'm making about $3 a day with four referral levels. Write up a set of instructions similar to this one (sorry, you can't copy this document outright), and post it in your blog, or on message boards, changing out my referral addresses with yours, and there's some money to be made here. Keep clicking yourself so that you receive checks, otherwise that referral money will simply sit in your account. If you have an alternate address, like a P.O. Box or an office address, you can use those too. Refer yourself to yourself! Not a bad idea if you ask me. Refer everyone else from your second level account, and you instantly get twice the bonus on any future referrals.

You can also sell this document on eBay or other Auction sites, as people are always looking to get some more income streams. It's hard work to do this, but once you get yourself established, all you need to do is request money once a week from each of your PPC sites.

Are there any dangers to doing this? No. It's completely legal, spyware free, and does very, very little to slow down your PC while it is running.

You should also know that a document has been going around the internet for a while now, very similar to this one, advertising the same site, though promising a lot larger gains in money than are possible, and giving out bad advice on how to get started. You'll find a lot of information online about how this is a scam, etc. It is not. I've been paid, multiple times already, and am on the verge of getting paid again. The trick is to use the method I describe, that is, not clicking on all the possible membership requests. As I stated in that section, this is a sure way to make no money whatsoever, as different sites pay different rates. The sites I've chosen for you to participate in have the best payrates, and thus, you're not wasting any time waiting for the slow sites to give you some money. Only the fast paying ones will be clicked through. Also make sure that you use Ougo Browser rather than Test33.

For example, I started off finding out about this method through that bad document, and clicked on request all. By doing this, I earned five cents from the highest pay-rate site in a week's time. I knew something was wrong. So I singled out that site for the next week, and low and behold, I got $2.92 in a week instead. As you can see, this is not the biggest money earner ever. However, I kept my PC auto-clicking for a while longer, and eventually got a $50 check in the mail for my troubles. Most of the time, I was using my computer for other purposes while it was clicking away, so I wasn't losing out on anything while it was running.
The reason you're doing all of this for credits is simple: a credit is a unit created by the search engines you're participating in by clicking on them. The way you make money is to make a batch request for your credits, and then to sell them on a site like De Quba . To sell your credits, use PPC Appraisal's Transfer option to transfer your banked credits away from PPC to your DeQuba Account.

To sell your DeQuba credits, you must become a platinum member - which means it's $36 for a year-long membership, and you won't make any sales in the first 60 days. I suggest banking your credits on PPC Appraisal, then after you've requested some, sign up for the Platinum Membership. You'll get a bunch of free credits immediately, just leave these as they are. After your 60 day "fraud protection" time is over, you transfer all of your credits from PPC Appraisal, and sell them in the DeQuba Forum (go to "sell your credits"). Find either a one-time sale (recommended), or a monthly sale (only do these if you are positive you can create a high enough balance). You will be paid by these people. Although this option now becomes a paid program, you make roughly $1 per credit, and since the minimum balance for cashing in credits requires you to have 50 or 60, you make your money back, and more, with your first transaction.

After publicizing the proper methods to everyone I could, I got plenty of referrals, and made some nice money. I opened up my requirements to all the sites listed above, and now get a bevy of checks every six months or so. Referrals help immensely, of course, but the money is still earnable, and it's not a scam.

Good luck!

robert shumake

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

robert shumake detroit

Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.
Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.
Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.
Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.
Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.
Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.
Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

robert shumake detroit

Social News Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL News

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake detroit

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Making Money Fast

We don't have enough public market acquirers to sustain the start-up ecosystem.
That was the real back story that explains why Google failed to close a deal to buy
Groupon. Groupon wanted to
sell to Google for $6 billion. Of course they did, that is a huge amount of money – real cold hard cash – for a 2 year old
venture. Do you really think they turned that down for the vague possibility of
making more from an IPO in the distant future? Yes we all hear the stories of
visionary entrepreneurs who are such bold risk-takers and some of that is true but
most entrepreneurs don’t love risk, they love eliminating risk on the way to
building a venture. The real story is that Groupon only backed off due to worries that the deal
would fall into AntiTrust
hurdles.

If we only have a handful of acquiring companies (basically today it is Google,
Amazon and Microsoft, now that eBay and Yahoo are wounded), the AntiTrust hurdle becomes more real. Even
if there is no AntiTrust
issue, Google, Amazon and Microsoft simply cannot buy all those venture-backed
companies.

So we need Groupon to go public and use their public
currency to buy other ventures working on local advertising/ecommerce. That will be
good news for lots of ventures. And a Groupon IPO success
will spur on other ventures that are getting ready for IPO.

I don’t know if Groupon really have the solid
financials to go public. We won’t know until they issue their prospectus to the
SEC. Until then we only have rumor and speculation. But if I were a betting man, I
would bet on Groupon being able to go public before
Twitter. And, this will be more controversial, before Facebook. But that as they say is another story. I am not trying here
to compile an actual list of ventures that could IPO in 2011. This is more about the
general environment for IPOs.

This has been what Steve Blank calls the “lost
decade” for tech IPOs. So why do I think that 2011 will be the year this
changes? There are 5 reasons:

Private
markets are under SEC scrutiny. This takes away the easy option of getting
liquidity without either selling or going public. If you have more than 500
shareholders you have to make your financials public, it is the law.

There is a
backlog of great companies that have the financial strength to IPO. The IPO market
has been pretty well closed for a couple of years (some notable exceptions prove the
rule). So the companies that have the potential to IPO have had more time to grow and
get their act together.

Investors
are hungry for growth outside emerging markets. GDP in America and Europe seems to
have a ceiling at 3% and the Chindia and BRIC stories of
emerging markets growing at 8-10% has created too much capital flowing to those
markets (generating fears of a bubble). So investors want companies in the developed
markets that can grow at really fast pace (at least 30%, ideally 60% plus) from a
base of at least $100m revenue for a long time to come. That has to come primarily
from tech/media ventures.

The
macroeconomic picture is improving. Yes, there are always worries and another
crash is always possible, but "markets always climb a wall of worry" and the general
trends seem positive. But cycles don't last forever, so the people making these
decisions (Boards and their Investment Bankers) will look at 2011 as a good window of
opportunity.

The bean
counters have figured out how to live with Sarbox. For a long time, Sarbanes Oxley ("Sarbox") regulatory overhead has been seen as a reason why you cannot
run a public company. Baloney, as they say in Brooklyn. It is a simple bit of
operational overhead, a rounding error for a great company.

IPO is still the golden ticket. Real entrepreneurs want to IPO. Getting acquired
is a great way to build capital, but it is not the dream of the really driven,
talented entrepreneurs. There are logical reasons for this. The valuation at IPO is
usually (not always, plenty of exceptions to this rule) higher than you can get from
an M&A exit. And more importantly for the
entrepreneur, it is actually often easier to manage public market investors than a
bunch of VC with different agendas. But logical reasons be damned, an IPO is simply
the big badge of honor for the entrepreneur and the investors who back him/her.

It is not clear what we will call the decade that starts in a few days time
– the “teens” maybe – but it will possibly be one where we
get a sustainable IPO market for tech ventures. By “sustainable” I mean
that it cannot be a return to the Dot Com bubble years. Only great companies with
really solid financials will get through the IPO gate. And the valuations will have
to remain grounded in reality (short sellers will ensure that is the case).

Here’s hoping. Happy New Year folks.

What will happen to the US economy in 2011? If you're referring to profits of big corporations and Wall Street, next year is likely to be a good one. But if you're referring to average American workers, far from good.

The two American economies -- the Big Money economy and the Average Working Family economy -- will continue to diverge. Corporate profits will continue to rise, as will the stock market. But typical wages will go nowhere, joblessness will remain high, the ranks of the long-term unemployed will continue to rise, the housing recovery will remain stalled, and consumer confidence will sag.

The big disconnect between corporate profits and jobs is likely to continue because America's big businesses are depending less and less on U.S. sales and U.S. workers. Their big profits are coming from two sources: (1) growing sales in China, India, and other fast-growing countries, and (2) slimmed-down US payrolls.

In a typical recovery, profits lead to more hiring. That's because in a typical recovery, American consumers head back to the malls -- and their buying justifies more hires. Not this time. All the hype about Christmas sales over the last few weeks masked the fact that American consumers demanded bargain-basement prices. And the price-cutting dramatically reduced sellers' margins. In short, profits aren't coming from American consumers -- and profits won't be coming from American consumers in 2011.

Most Americans don't have the dough. They're still deep in debt, can't borrow against their homes, and have to start saving for retirement.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is rising because of foreign sales. General Motors is now making more cars in China than in the US, and two-thirds of its total sales are coming from abroad. When it went public last month it boasted that soon almost half its cars will be made around the world where labor is less than $15 an hour.

Walmart isn't doing especially well in America but Walmart International is booming. And Walmart is hiring like mad outside the US.

General Electric is keeping its payrolls down in the US but plans to invest half a billion dollars in Brazil and hire 1,000 Brazilians, and invest $2 billion in China.

Corporate America is in a V-shaped recovery. That's great news for investors and everyone whose savings are mainly in stocks and bonds. It's also great news for executives and Wall Street traders, whose pay is linked to stock prices. All can expect a banner 2011.

But most American workers are trapped in an L-shaped recovery. That's bad news for the Main Streets and small businesses in 2011. It's also a bad omen for home prices and sales, and everyone whose savings are mainly in their homes.

Home prices in major metropolitan areas sank last month, the third straight month-to-month drop. I expect home price declines to continue next year. We're in a double-dip housing market, largely because unemployment remains so bad that millions of Americans can't pay their mortgages.

None of this bodes well for US employment next year. I expect the official unemployment rate to remain around 9 percent.

In other words, whether 2011 is a great year economically depends which economy you're in - the one that's rising with the profits of big business and Wall Street, or the one that will continue to struggle with few jobs and lousy wages.

Sadly, the next Congress is unlikely to do much to reverse any of this. Most Republicans and too many Democrats are dependent on corporate America and Wall Street. Their version of tax reform is to cut taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations, and either raise them on everyone else (sale and property taxes are already on the rise) or cut spending on programs working families depend on.

At some point, perhaps, the disconnect between America's two economies will become so big and so obvious it can no longer be ignored. Progressives, enlightened Tea Partiers, Independents, organized labor, minorities, and the young form a new progressive movement designed to reconnect America.

One can always hope.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

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