Extraordinary Twitter Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

For this last post, I've decided to go out with a bang and a reference to one of my favorite books, by Charles Mackay. Latest in date, Twitter (as in, Twitter will save the world).

A new contender, Karim Gargum, a self-proclaimed online marketing expert, proclaimed that Twitter will menace google, because people will from now on search for content on Twitter rather than google.

His presentation is below.

10 Twitter Future Trends

View more presentations from Karim_Gargum.

If you clicked on the hyperlink on the genius' name, you noticed it's a broken link. Yes, the visionary can't even get a URL right.

So let me join with David Letterman (check Billy's blog if you haven't seen the video yet), and conclude: THIS IS FUCKING STUPID PEOPLE!! (also note the use of the fleeting expletive - the FCC has jurisdiction over broadcast, not the internet).

With that, I bid you farewell.

Is my local paper going down?

A month ago, I reported that my El Segundo Herald was advertising a "stimulus package": any add ran in any of their three South Bay papers would for free in the other two papers.

This week, the Herald reports going online. What's going on here? I do not see a point for a free local paper to go online, unless they upload special content that is not in the print version, but it does not seem to be the case here.

There are reasons why pay print papers would go online, amongst the the following:

- offer additional content
- offer free content in order to compete in a free world, where people do not want to pay for the paper anymore.

But the Herald is free already! And it's already widely distributed. I get it on my doorstep. I get it at the coffee shop. I get it at the pizza place. And this is where I read it, too. My need are already fulfilled, and I will not go online to read it.

So why go online? ... Oh wait ... is my local paper secretly planning on going paperless soon ?!

Any thoughts?

Why Twitter is useless, as far as journalism is concerned

I understand that my feelings for Twitter put me in the minority in the class. I argue that Twitter is a useless piece of junk, tailored for hipsters / virtual social networking fiends / blind lovers of mark zuckerberg. I further argue that Twitter, and any site of the sort, will have no positive impact / have no future, as far as quality online journalism is concerned.

While a lot of people will call me heretic, numbers have emerged that indicate that I may be right after all. According to Marketing Charts, only 41.7% of Twitter users DISagree with the fact that "you should follow people who follow YOU". Meaning that 58.3% of users do not disagree with that statement. Also, 58.1% of users do not disagree with the statement "people you follow should follow you back."

Now people, if this is not the proof that Twitter, like facebook, is an ego-boosting medium with no educational value, I don't know what is. "People should follow me because I follow them"?! And this community is supposed to be the future of journalism?

The Oracle on the future of newspapers

In case you missed it.

Mr. Buffett on Newspapers

Mr. Buffett has long held himself out as a newspaper man. As a child, one of his first jobs was delivering newspapers. An Omaha newspaper Berkshire owned, Sun Newspapers, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 based in part on a tip Mr. Buffett provided. One of Berkshire's biggest investments in the 1970s was the Buffalo News, which it still owns.


But his view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price," he said. "They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."

As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers, he said. But news is now available in many other venues, he said.

Berkshire has a substantial investment in Washington Post Co. He said the company has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold on to it, but its newspaper business is in trouble.

Mr. Munger called newspapers' woes "a national tragedy....These monopoly daily newspapers have been an important sinew to our civilization, they kept government more honest than they would otherwise be."

A Washington Post Co. representative couldn't be reached for comment