Monday, July 30, 2012

Things I've Learned Today- 7/30



Things I've Learned Today:
  • Starbucks is now expanding their mobile payment method to locations in the UK and Canada, bringing their total mobile POS footprint to 14K. Sounds like some of the hip, new features they have include a tracker to tell you how close you are to your next free drink and an (it seems optional) optional safeguard that you can enable to request a PIN when you use the scan and go payment method. More importantly, they've solidified their partnership with PayPal, and now you can use PayPal to reload your card (or a major credit card) directly through your phone. A few months ago, PayPal went on record saying that they didn't believe all the hype around NFC and that, basically, they were going to hedge their bets by investing in other forms of mobile payment. Seems like QR is a good way to go
 
  • Amazon has finally cast aside all speculation that they "might" go into the smartphone market by actively testing new hardware. In all reality, this shouldn't be a surprise. Amazon, a proud parent of one of the most popular (some argue the most popular) e-reader in America right now (Kindle Fire), has made it clear that they're not just a tech firm, but they're also a hardware firm. Super secret sources say that it will begin production late this year or early next year. Judging by the infographic, Samsung (famous for nexus Android phones) and Apple have both increased market share YoY, mostly stealing from RIM's base. I would expect this to continue, particularly since RIM seems to be floundering to stay relevant (see: epic fail of RIM tablet)
   
  • The New York Times reported last night that Apple is considering a stake in Twitter. The news blurb is read as follows:
    • "Apple, which has stumbled in its efforts to get into social media, has talked with Twitter in recent months about making a strategic investment in it, according to people briefed on the matter. While Apple has been hugely successful in selling phones and tablets, it has little traction in social networking, which has become a major engine of activity on the Web and on mobile devices. Social media are increasingly influencing how people spend their time and money — an important consideration for Apple, which also sells applications, games, music and movies. Apple has considered an investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, one that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, up from an $8.4 billion valuation last year, these people said. They declined to be named because the discussions were private."
    • This is a big deal. The reason why it's a big deal is because Apple is essentially not only inflating the valuation of a company and therefore giving it more firepower to usurp the social media throne from Facebook, but it's also giving Twitter a new twist on its traditional business model. Originally targeted for the micro-business, Twitter has been migrating to the "on-the-go" segment by buddying up with many taxi services. By partnering with Apple, Twitter gets a wider demographic (a lot more consumer-based than before) and the stigma that comes along with Apple-- walled garden techniques abound. If Twitter can harness the somewhat-new  demographic an capitalize on the sleekness of Apple products (let's be honest, they look pretty similar any way), they can prolong their relevancy by expanding into a new niche
 
That pretty much wraps it up this time.... stay tuned! 

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Interesting Things I Learned Recently




Things I've learned recently:
The first thing isn't really something I learned so much as it is something that I never really thought of before. My first exposure to character differences was when we were coding the back end system for a client and, since the client needed the data to flow through from multiple countries (i.e. multiple languages), the character spaces needed to be different. Normal Cyrillic or Latin characters typically take up one bit to code. However, Asian characters require double-bit coding because the characters are a bit more complex. "This 78-character tweet in English would be only 24 characters long in Chinese." True fact.


Why is this interesting? Because this partly explains why micro-blogging has caught on so well in China. In a study on the verbosity of languages (fascinating, I know), romance languages tend to be the most verbose. Funnily enough, the most frequent European languages in the Twitterverse after English is Spanish and Portuguese. This has led to a whole new sub-language for Twitter-- in Portuguese for example, "bjs" stands for "beijos" and "abs" means "abracos"-- kisses and hugs.
In "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" (I think The Economist is letting the interns title the articles again, btw) studies have confirmed that attractive women are more likely to be promoted than plain-Jane colleagues. Because people tend to project positive traits onto them, such as sensitivity and poise, they may also be at an advantage in job interviews. However, surprisingly, they found when sending applications with or sans headshot of an attractive women, it took attractive women longer (11 applications before an interview request) than plainer colleagues (7 applications). Strangely, for men, it played out as planned-- hunks were more likely to be called when they included a photo, unattractive men were more likely to be called when they did not include a photo.
How to explain this? At first, researchers had the "dumb-blonde hypothesis", assuming that people associated beauty with stupidity. But since the study also had rated photos on the intelligence level of the candidates, this may not hold. So what else could cause this discrimination? Couple thoughts: HR departments are usually staffed mostly by women--maybe women discriminate against pretty candidates? Who knows. Let's just chalk it up to penance-- let it be harder for the pretty ones. Haha (just kidding! Kind of...).
Knowing that you are paid less than your peers has two effects on happiness ("Pay, Peers and Pride"). The well-known one is negative: a thinner pay packet harms self-esteem. The lesser-known one is called the "tunnel" effect: high incomes for peers are seen as improving your own chances of similar riches, especially if growth, inequality and mobility are high. Interesting.
Here's something more interesting because it means men just can't win--men retiring a year early lower their odds of surviving to age 67 by 13%. Wah wah wah.
John Carter fail. In "How to Make a Megaflop", Schumpeter outlines the way to make things fail out the gate. So here's some characteristics.
1.       Slaughter a Sacred Cow: A la Coca-Cola when they took away classic Coke, causing outrage among the caffeinated and obese everywhere. They brought it back. Everyone keep their pants on.
2.       Mix Oil and Water: Trying to make things that shouldn't be... For example, trying to turn Hamlet, Lolita and Ernest Hemingway's drunken last days into musicals. In other words-- the McDonald's up-market burger-- the Arch Deluxe. More examples? Ford producing a truck for the luxury market, Bengay stretching its heat rub brand into the aspirin market, Colgate making TV dinners. 'Nuff said.
3.       Produce a Genuinely Awful Product. The Ford Pinto catching fire every time it was rear-ended for example. I can see how that would upset people.
So here's what I've done for ya today folks. Social media future trends, the trials of pretty people and some tips on how not to make a megaflop. Don't say I never did anything nice for ya.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Amazon-- Investing in the Future


In an open letter today, Amazon announced the "Amazon Career Choice Program", where they will offer to pay 95% of the educational costs for their employees to learn other skills. They claim that although many of their employees will choose to grow their careers at Amazon while others will pursue other fields, by offering to help finance their education, Amazon wants to make it "easier for employees to make that choice and pursue their aspirations".
In an economy where benefits are leaning towards employers simply because of the high volume of applicants, it's refreshing to see Amazon is investing in its employees. Although these types of innovative management moves are typically associated with the Googles and the Apples of the world, I see this move by Amazon as part of its larger debutante presentation. They've  shown they can play in the hardware space (Kindle) and the software space (Amazon Silk browsing software)-- that they can rival even the most extensive distribution (very-close-to-same-day-delivery? Eat your heart out UPS!) and still maintain excellent customer service (and may even open its own brick-and-mortar store!). Moreover, they've even coined their own term, "showrooming", where consumers will go into a store to look at products but go home to purchase it online (usually from Amazon). With next day delivery and competitive prices, Amazon is the clear winner here. A recent report even indicates that the percentage of consumers doing this overall is in the 60th percentile, but that among smartphone owners, the number skyrockets to 78%.
By investing in its people in such a public way, Amazon is sending a clear message to all the other tech-darlings out there-- We're gunning for ya. Or, in a more colloquial terms "so you get better hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husbands, cuz they're rapin' errbody out der". And who can say that we didn't see this coming? With fast-growing demand for competent, young, intelligent techies out there, Amazon would be silly not to be open in saying that they're willing to invest in your future. Studies have shown that the newer generations are job hoppers, less likely to stick around one place for their entire lives, they value exploration and the "soft stuff" (work/life balance, family, quality down time, etc.) than their predecessors. So if Amazon can change the mind of just a few of these youngsters and get them to invest themselves into Amazon, they guarantee themselves continuity as time passes and can start spreading the word that they're just as desirable as any Apple or Google out there. So...hide your kids, hide your wife....Amazon is comin' to getcha.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

White and Black and Green All Over


I took a lot of classes in college that dealt with the perception of race-- it was always kind of a hobby of mine. Maybe it's because I, a Chinese girl, was born in a predominantly white (very small) town in northern California and never realized the extent to which race played a part in everyday life. I can honestly say that, growing up, I never really thought of myself as different from the other kids-- sure sometimes the "bad kids" in class would make fun, but they were often quickly shushed by my friends, my teachers or a quick dodge ball to the throat. (Playground vengeance!) Perhaps it was because we were younger then and we didn't question-- "why are you different looking than me?", but I like to think that it was because of our childlike ignorance that we simply didn't care-- we didn't question why because in our small scope of the world, it simply didn't matter.
When I moved down to southern California when I was 12, things changed. There were suddenly a lot of other Asian people (not just two families like in my old town) and not just Asians-- a lot of other races too! But it wasn't as cohesive as I was used to-- the Korean kids were "KP Kids" (Korean Pride Kids) and flashed "KP" hand signals to each other in a joking (but not really joking) way. The Chinese kids were split between the Americanized ones ("The Twinkies"), the FOBS ("Fresh Off the Boats"), and the CP (you guessed it-- "Chinese Pride") kids. Within the Chinese Pride kids, they subdivided into the Taiwanese kids, the nerdy studiers, the ones who thought they were thugs with the baggy pants and everything-- all leaving their multi-million dollar homes in Turtle Rock every morning. There were a ton of others- Indian kids, Persian (Iranian) kids who were not to be confused with the Arabic kids.
I was ostracized a bit. For the Chinese kids, I wasn't Chinese enough because I preferred to hang out with my best friends who were Persian and White. Growing up, my boyfriends ran the gamut-- Spanish, white, Brazilian, Mexican, Korean and Chinese... but because they weren't always Chinese, I was relegated to Twinkie status. Which is not to say that everyone wasn't nice. It was more of an understanding that I would normally hang out with the mixed or not-all-Asian groups but that I would always be welcome to hang out with the Asian groups if I chose.
So I grow up. And now, I've been noticing an influx of articles about how the recession has really increased the disparity between races. I find it so ironic that growing up, I was essentially color-blind (maybe color-ignorant, since I saw the difference, but just didn't care/know why I should care), I suddenly live in this Utopian place where everyone gets a long (mostly) and now that I'm an "adult" and "mature", race suddenly matters more than ever.
The subprime implosion, for example, has apparently set African Americans back more than normal since they are more typically the customers that started with below-average credit scores to begin with. The flooding of money for mortgage lenders changed all that, and soon, African Americans were one the largest untapped markets. They were able to get loans despite subpar credit and the financial industry simultaneously was spurring home ownership as well as creating jobs and driving the economy. In the words of a Wells Fargo lawyer, "There was a loan for almost anybody who wanted a loan. It was just priced differently based on credit". I want to bring this up with a note of irony, because Wells Fargo is paying $175M to settle allegations of steering customers to high-interest or risky subprime mortgages when they were qualified for a subprime loan due to their credit scores. The ones they steered were predominantly Hispanic or black.
The Pew Research Center estimates that the wealth of blacks declined by 53% during the recession. Supposedly, it goes farther than this and may hint at the racial segregation already in place in financial instruments. In Atlanta, it was reported that black homebuyers paid an average of $700 more in fees to close than their white counterparts with similar profiles. Around this time last year, the data collected by the Census Bureau indicated that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66% between 2005 and 2009, making them the hardest hit group by the recession. Whites fell by 16%, African Americans fell by 53% and Asians fell by 54%. These declines have been noted as the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the Bureau has been collecting data. Median wealth of whites is now 20x that of black households and 18x that of Hispanic households.
Research claims that whites now have 2x the consumer power as blacks, due to the "Great Recession". With another potential recession (one that is supposed to be much worse) on the way, how much larger can the disparity grow?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Things I Learned Today




Let's get ready for another remix of "things I learned today".
  • They released the US Olympic uniforms today for the opening ceremony. They were designed by Ralph Lauren, which is an excellent choice for a true, innovative American designer. That being said, I think they're atrocious... I showed them to a couple of friends and we all laughed that the tagline for the article was that the uniforms are "meh", because I got a response ranging from "We look like the French girls from the Harry Potter movies" to "What are we now? Hitler youth?". So there you have it.... in choosing an American designer, we've unknowingly associated ourselves with the French and Germans. Thanks Ralph
  • Apple released the MacBook and then the MacBook Air, which spurred computer makers to launch this idea of the "ultrabook", which is basically code for "a smaller, thinner laptop that is light, but that we can also upcharge you to death on". IDC and Gartner released a report today that showed HP, Lenovo and Dell taking a wallop-ing, while Apple smoothly cruised by with a rise in units shipped and in overall US market share. They attribute the lacklustre adoption of ultrabooks to the high price and the changes on the horizon (Windows 8)
  •  I hate to be a hater...well, actually, that's kind of a lie. I kind of like being a hater. Especially if it entails me being right. I feel bad because Groupon is from my hometown, but their stock took a plunge again today, meaning that they've dropped approximately 70% (!!!!) since their IPO. The drop is attributed to the public's uncertainty of a sustainable business model, which is something I've been questioning for awhile, though I did read an article recently that although there's a lot of copycats out there, Groupon is still killin' it with a definitive lead as the market share leader. There's a fun little infographic too
  • Chicago seems to be getting some notice in the travel scene, and was featured in the Travel Section of the New York Times. Note to self: Make a trip to The Roof at the The Wit before the summer is out. I am long overdue!
  • Viacom apparently is demanding a 30% increase in fees from DirecTV, and because they are getting in a bit of a tussle over it, Viacom has pulled Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central from its offerings. Media execs seem increasingly worried (and rightfully so) that the Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Primes of the world will soon be taking over. Viacom pulled full episodes from the redirected options that DirecTV provided its customers, but have left full episodes on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime
  • Apparently the average working week in Spain was 35 hours a week. Rajoy recently raised it to 37.5 hours a week as part of an effort to restructure his country to be more productive and to align better with the austerity measures that he is phasing in place. In response to some cutting of coal subsidies, miners marched from surrounding regions and threw rocks and firecrackers at police, who responded with truncheons and rubber bullets. Can you imagine if that happened in the US? "Today, hoards of white collar workers gathered on Wall Street to protest the tax subsidies. They threw rocks and firecrackers at police, who responded by shooting rubber bullets into the crowd"-- America just doesn’t know how to throw a good public riot like Spain does I suppose
  • Airlines have consolidated their flights into the higher-volume airports, and due to this shrinking sphere of activity, some of the cities on the periphery (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Oakland) now have a lot of extra space sitting idle. Airports generally generate revenue in two ways-- through fees paid by airlines and general aviation operators and through income from parking, rentals, concessions, advertising space and rentals of maintenance and other buildings. If no airplanes come through, no people will, and without people, an airport is a giant empty space. Options?  Sell space to commercial interests (DHL), transform into a giant maintenance hub (Pittsburgh), or sell to expanding budget companies that specialize in smaller planes typical of a smaller airport (Southwest). Not so friendly skies anymore I suppose

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Valley: Sex, Drugs and Open Platform Development (oh yeah)


Ahhh.. sweet revenge. First there was "House of Lies"-- that supposedly showed the consulting world in all of its ugly, fattening, debaucherous glory. I haven't watched the show myself, but the clips I've seen insinuate that all consultants are hip, young, attractive professionals making an ungodly amount of money to say things like "let's leverage learnings" and making approximately one powerpoint slide a day. If this is true, I would like to say that I'm available and very much open to change, but alas, consulting is not an exception to the age-old adage that nothing is free. I would just like to note that, in reality, consulting (particularly at the levels where you actually matter and are having all of those shmoozy client dinners) are dominated by older, typically white, men. And for every "team dinner" you get, you pay for it with about 120 hours of sitting in a conference room, eating greasy Chinese food, madly tapping away at your computers in a rush to do something ridiculous, like manually clean data from over 12000 lines of Excel or something. If you're lucky and nothing goes wrong, you can assume 60-80 hours a week on average, no social life on the weekends due to exhaustion and days upon days of modelling, powerpointing, client meetings and scope creep (which is a fun term we use that basically means "being made to do things outside of our contract because our client says so").
Anywho. Bravo apparently is starting a new reality show that focuses on Silicon Valley. Frankly, I'm just surprised that they didn't do this earlier-- a bunch of young, smart kids making it big and potentially coming into a lot of money very fast? Sounds like a sexier version of "The O.C." to me. Realistically though, Silicon Valley was never really in mainstream media (from an entertainment perspective) until "The Social Network", which apparently made quite a lot of people mad in the valley because they felt it focused on Zuckerberg's desire to woo a girl more than it did the fact that he wanted to change the world. (Let's be honest though, in all reality, it was probably a little bit of both. Like a "Hey I bet I can show her!...Wait, I can make money off this?" type of moment). Funnily enough though, one of the executive producers is actually Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's sister. Bravo has even admitted to portraying this false sense of reality by saying "In the editing process, we try to get rid of everything that is going to be a snooze"-- and that was said by Bravo's president. I suppose that there are a lot of really boring, unimportant things like raising capital, actually coming up with an idea, recruiting resources, figuring out a business plan, figuring out your investment model... you know, things that will probably be cut out in editing.
Among others, Bravo's cameras will focus on the Way siblings, Ben and Hermione, who are developing a fitness app. Already, they had a chip company and a coconut water company sponsor Hermione's birthday party and have thrown a lot of their filming time to focus on their pad in San Francisco, which oh, by the way is $17,000 a month. "If you divide by the five roommates, it is not so much money" Mr. Way has been quoted saying (as he works out with his personal trainer --see above). But the best quote has come from Ms. Zuckerberg herself:

“Silicon Valley is high school, but it’s only the smart kids and everyone has a lot of money.” (Later, she qualified her remarks on Twitter. “Apologies that I said Silicon Valley was like high school. I meant middle school.”)

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

What Is True Charity?



I recently read this article about Panera opening a "pay-what-you-can" cafe in Lakeview, Chicago. Although I think that this is good in theory, I have a lot of questions about why they would choose Lakeview. For one, Lakeview is one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in Chicago, if they truly did want to "create an experience to lift people up", they should consider neighbourhoods where people could really use the food.
In the article, they justify that they need the "million dollar homes" down the street to make sure that there are a stable flow of affluent folks who will pay the suggested amount for food in order to support those that cannot. However, I think that there could be many other alternatives. Putting in the loop for example would not only put it closer to the west and south side that have much greater need, but also give it access to many more "affluent" (in the sense that you have a captive lunchtime audience of white-collar workers) but also give it the high volume that could make a store like this more profitable for the company. Moving it to the far north (Andersonville and farther), would also put it closer to the lower income/middle income sector if they wanted to play it safe, and would allow for it to become more of a "neighbourhood hangout"-- the type of place that people go to work, read or just enjoy a cup of coffee-- a mysterious mix that Starbucks made famous and companies have been trying to replicate ever since.
Perhaps I am just over-sensitive now that I live in the Near West and I see the discrepancy of the "have-a-lots" and "have-nots". My neighbourhood, for example, is filled with BMWs, Audis and brand new "middle-market" cars like Toyotas and Hondas. However, 5-6 blocks away I run into public housing. 5-6 blocks in the other direction brings me to one-bedroom apartments that go for $1800/month. The area, in my mind, is something that makes me more aware of what a real city looks like out of the posh neighbourhoods of River North, Gold Coast and Lakeview.


More likely is that I recently read a fantastic article in Fast Company about Homeboy Industries. Founded by Father Gregory Boyle and based in LA, this organization focuses on rehabilitating ex-cons and provides services to the community by providing a service. Homeboy Industries started by making salsa, and has now spread to making tortilla chips, guacamole, bread and is on the verge of starting their own chain of quick service restaurants in high-volume areas like the Los Angeles International Airport. Using the revenue from these ventures, Homeboy focuses on tattoo removal, educational classes and job placement services while providing food and shelter to those who need it.
I know that these two organizations are different ("But there's way more low-income than there are ex-cons!", "The ex-cons have forfeited the right for specialized treatment!"-- these are all things that I've heard in discussing this with friends, so bear with me). Homeboy probably does have a smaller demographic base, but the business model still stands. If Panera really wanted to make a difference, they would focus on areas where they could do double duty.  If they set up in the far North, West Side or South Side, they could offer jobs, subsidized food to the poor, reliable food to those residents that live in "food deserts" and still be close enough to "affluent neighbourhoods" that would support their venture. Homeboy got it right in that they don't just provide a product and expect others to sustain it-- they built a model where the business could feed itself. (No pun intended...Okay, a little bit of a pun intended.) Homeboy Industries' budget is approximately $14M for 2012, and is on pace to open additional locations in the next two years. We'll just need to wait and see the impact of Panera's store in Lakeview.