Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Five Random Things I’m Thinking About

I haven’t written anything the past several weeks due to a lot of travel, a much-needed vacation and many small thoughts vs. a large thought worthy of deeper analysis and comment. I’m on a flight back from New York to San Francisco and wanted to share a few thoughts of no particular subject matter or semblance.

Twitter.com’s declining usage: here’s a great article on Forbes.com detailing that while Twitter usage is going through the roof, the percentage of people actually going to the site is decreasing at an alarming rate. How? People are accessing Twitter via third party apps. So while Twitter is achieving the much-desired “platform” status, it’s potentially also losing its ability to monetize that status.

Taxes: our tax system is totally screwed up. I just read Thomas Cay Johnson’s “Perfectly Legal”, about how our tax system is abused by the ultra wealthy, at the expense of the poorest taxpayers and the upper middle class (those who make $200,000-500,000). This book is shocking and outrageous – truly amazing how the political class overlooks and facilitates the abuses of the donor class, and more amazing how the ultra wealthy gets the lower and middle classes to vote against their own self-interests around the dogma of less government and freedom BS. READ THIS BOOK!!

Celebrities in airport security: I went through TSA security at JFK this morning with Sarah Silverman, the comedian. She was escorted by some sort of official who helped her with her stuff, and it made me want my own escort to help ME through airport security. I’m funny too, ya know. By the way, she wasn’t as funny in person, though she was pleasant.

Technorati.com performance issues: it’s been a BRUTAL month for technorati.com due to the move of our collocation facilities. People have no idea how hard it is to move 1,000 servers and a complicated real-time search infrastructure. In any case, our service hasn’t been great during the move, and that’s regrettable. Hopefully, we’re almost through it.

Kobe Bryant: I hate when uninformed sportswriters misinterpret the reason why Kobe Bryant is basketball’s best closer: it’s not that he’s the best last shot guy (he is the most feared for that actually), but that it’s the way he closes out a game in general – the way he takes over the last 5-7 minutes of a game and dominates every facet of it.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:38 PM

    "Celebrities in airport security" - If you haven't already, consider getting a CLEAR card, www.flyclear.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Get FlyClear, then you too will be escorted thru security!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I read the article on NYTimes.com about how some bloggers may be abandoning their own blog journals and jumping on the social media bandwagon. Social sites are a popular phenomenon but it's true, there seems to be "internet fatigue" happening lately.

    ReplyDelete