Housing and the Debt Pool

Both Australian and the UK are facing a housing bubble with panicy headlines about housing affordability. Fingers are being brazenly pointed at governments and builders. While the actual cause is best described by Ross Gittins of the SMH in his recent article "Housing Crisis: We Did It Ourselves". Summary: greed of current house owners has pushed up the prices.

Various proposals have been made about "fixing" the problem. However, one fact is conveniently ignored. To "fix" the problem, house prices will have to fall. Not really a politicians greatest wish. Releasing more land, re-developing brown sites (particularly in London), reducing the bureaucracy for planning permission, cutting various taxes and changing tax treatment of investments will help the issue. The single biggest problem for politicians is managing the process that will see house prices stall or fall. House prices are invariable driven by demand, if supply meets demand prices won't rise as quickly.

Is that all that can be done? The fixes proposed will do a lot to alleviate the problem in the short to medium term. It will not fix the debt problem that is tied up into the "housing crisis." Instead, we need to look at how debt is managed for consumers. The debt repayments related to buying a house is what causes the stress. Dealing with this requires more than just lowering interest rates.

So how do we deal with the easy debt problem that leads to the payment stress? The total debt any individual needs to be capped based on their cashflow and the interest rates. This includes store cards, car loans, credit cards and all the other methods of debt.

It works by working out a total debt pool of an individual. The individual then gets to choose who and how much debt an individual provider extends to the consumer. The debt pool is calculated from cashflow and the inverse of the interest rate. This way the debt pool enlarges when the interest rate drops and falls when it increases. This will reduce the opportunity for individuals to fall into repayment stress. A buffer between theoretical debt pool and actual available is use to ensure that the individual never progresses beyond the debt pool.

A side effect of this will be that each individual interest rate change will have more effect as not only does it change the repayments an individual has to make it also changes the amount they can borrow.

tags: Housing, Ross Gittins, Debt Management

Perpetual Analytics and policing Social Networks

In what is likely to create a MSM storm, MySpace has deleted profiles of 29,000 convicted sex offenders. As noted by Michael in his post the whole process is complicated by having the data stored in multiple databases. Which will lead louder calls to make on massive DB.

But is one massive DB (and all the problems this may entail) the only effective answer. No, I don't believe so. I think judicious use of perpetual analytics will deliver a more effective solution thatis better at respecting privacy than having one massive DB. The other advantage is that each social network could build on and contribute to the policing of SNS for sex offenders.

tags: Perpetual Analytics, Social Networks, MySpace

Facebook - the next x?

The blogsphere has oscillated between hysteria and backlash against Facebook since the release of the Facebook platform. Some have asked, what is so special about Facebook while others have breathlesssly compared Facebook to Google, Apple & Microsoft.

Now, I personally think the underlying value of Facebook is enormous. However, capturing that value or more accurately realising that value for both the company and users is going to be difficult. More importantly, this will be massively more difficult while people keep talking about Facebook being the next "wunderkin."

Put another way, Facebook is not and never will be Google or Apple or Microsoft or any other wunderkin company. It will be its own wunderkin company that charts a new direction for the industry just as the others have before it. Any punter that talks about Facebook being the next x, will completely and thoroughly miss what Facebook is and will achieve. Do not trust them. These punters are still stuck in the old world and will fail to see the new world.

Truth in advertising - beauty addition

I've wondered for a while whether many beauty magazines and advertisements for beauty products could fall foul of the truth in advertising standards.

The logic is as follows.

Take an image of normal woman. Touch it up and the image is no longer a real representation of the individual. It is no longer true. It is false advertising. The implicit message, particularly of beauty products, is you could look like this if you used the particular product. However, the image is not true. Does this make the advertising untrue?

It would be interesting for such as case to go to Advertising Standards Authority or court.

Tags: Advertising, Policy

The Multi-Touch Revolution

What this video and think about interfaces.

The revolution that the iPhone introduces is not about features and, to a degree, Leopard as well, is around how we interact with information. This is arguer of the coming revolution in IT/internet. The services that win will be the ones that provide the most effective interaction for the user with masses of information.

Remember we are in an age of information. Getting information is not a problem. The problem lies with how we interact with information. How can I, as a user, interact with the information in a way that makes me most effective in achieving my aims, whether it is finding something or manipulating the information.

The multi-touch screen is going to be a huge part of this revolution. Multi-touch opens the door to truly effective manipulation and navigation through complex information environments. That is not to say that the keyboard will die. The keyboard still remains a very effective input device for certain tasks (i.e. word processing). But for other tasks, touch is the way to go. Multi-touch will have more effect on mouse usage as it can directly replace most if not all mouse input functions.

The companies that succeed in this new environment will be ones that make the new input devices and the ones that create software programs or services that most effectively utilise the power of multi-touch. As a thought experiment imagine Google Earth on a large multi-touch screen or Microsoft's Sea Dragon/PhotoSynth combination.

Tags: multitouch, iPhone, UI

Facebook as a market

I'm just reading Fred Wilson's recent post about Facebook. Essentially, Facebook has created a stock market-like entity for web apps. Which validates my point underlying my previous post on Facebook and micro web apps.

Extending the concept of the market and micro web apps logically leads to some interesting conclusions. A stock exchange like market could be created that allows micro web app designers another method for monetising their creation. The market would track some combination of the number of users (number of shares) and the value per user (stock price). The movement in the value of the apps would be fascinating to watch.

I wonder if you could create a Stock Exchange app using the Facebook platform?

Apart from the intellectual interest of the Facebook Stock Exchange, does it have any value? Yes. The exchange offers an interesting way of trialling new applications for possible future investment. If an application within Facebook takes off, this is a reasonable indicator that this application will a good candidate for full blown development. Facebook becomes a rapid prototyping and marketing testing platform for the internet.

Facebook Exchange also offers a Darwinian environment to develop and trial new features for existing Web companies. The features to develop out are the ones that gain widespread tracking amongst a target demographic. This will allow web companies to focus their development resources on features that will be worthwhile to their users.

The developments going on around Facebook is fascinating. Where it will end is unknown, but the ride getting there is going to be fun.

Tags: Fred Wilson, Micro Web Apps, VC, Facebook

Facebook a Platform for Micro-Apps

Just as eBay prompted the rise of the micro-retailers, the Facebook Platform has the potential to prompt the rise of micro-web apps. Facebook Platform provides a range of infrastructure services necessary for these micro-web apps to survive and thrive. Social networking, network distribution and hosting are all provided.

Just like the micro-retailers on eBay it is only with the environment of Facebook can these micro-web apps exist.

For search startups the real barrier to entry is the index

I was drawing up a brief document for my CEO yesterday around search, the developing technologies and the startups in the space. What caught my attention was the number of starts calling themselves "Google-Killers". It took me a while to put my finger on it but I just didn't agree no matter how cool/ground breaking/esoteric their technology was.

Why don't I see these companies such as Powerset or Hakia as "google-killers"? Index. The simple fact is that unless the company has an index that is significant percentage of the Google or Yahoo or Microsoft search index's they can't compete. Early on the size of the web was such that a new search engine could easily develop a useable index. Now it is orders of magnitude harder to not only develop the index but also make it fast, reliable and generally useful.

There is a way to mitigate this barrier to entry and that is to pick a vertical and index that. Indexing a vertical is a much easier that trying to index usable portion of the internet. Given the nature of the technologies that Powerset, Hakia et al are deploying I think health (which is also relatively open and new) would be good fit for them.

[I had included Yedda as a Google-Killer but as Yaniv Golan pointed out in the comments, Yedda is along the lines of Yahoo Answers with knowledge ranking.]

Tags: Search, Google, Startups, Powerset, Yedda, Hakia

A human experience

I have found it fascinating to watch the every widening ripples that the Kathy Sierra et al saga has unleashed.  Tom O'reilly has just posted the basics of a code of conduct, which continues the expanding ripples.



Even more fascinating is how entirely human the whole issue is.  How entirely human the responses and counter responses, the alliances and friendships are.  All in all, I found it demonstrates one very, very important fact: geeks, techs are as irrational and human as the rest of the population.  They are as likely to get angry, to be mean as anyone.



What concerns me most is the seeming wide acceptance of meaness not only in Tech based blogs but also in political blogs as well, even across the whole blogsphere.  The acceptance of meaness hidden behind freedom of speech. Does this not de-value the concept and importance of freedom of speech when it becomes something to prop up an individuals own pettiness and anger? If I remember my history lessons correctly, freedom of speech is about disagreeing with government.  It was never there to protect some one from the consequences of every thing they say.  Something a long history of court decisions has upheld.



The web and internet has grown since the early days.  The norms that arose in those days hung together as a majority of the users belong to the same community and with that community came limits on behaviour.  Now that the majority of users do not come from the same community the norms of behaviour to a greater or less extent do not have the weight or power they use to.  The internet has descended into a "Lord of the Flies".

Blogsphere Civil War

"And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the other are based."
- Lord Vetinari

Background: Blogsphere Civil War

At what point do the cries for Freedom of Speech, Liberty become hollow when we stop taking the consequences of our actions?

We like our freedom, so long as we don't have to accept any unpleasant consequences. We want to be able to say what we want, without accepting condemnation by others. We want the ability to do what we want, without accepting responsibility when our actions hurt other people.

If you build a site like mean kids or write a blog, you have to accept the consequences of that action.

True freedom is the freedom to take the consequences. Strength of character comes from accepting the consequences of your actions.

Kathy Sierra, Anonymity, Internet

Liability in the age of targeted ads

Every so often you here about the latest advertising based scam. An ad is located somewhere in magazine or newspaper and this leads the un-suspecting off in a merry dance that sees them loose some or all their life savings.

Generally the service (magazine, newspaper etc) are not held liable for this type of scam. Which is fair enough because the service is not targeting ads at specific people.

But...

What happens when a service is predicated (Blyk) on delivering very target ads to a specific demographic delivers advertising that is the start point of a scam? It could be very easily argued that the scam would not have been successful without the targeting provided by the service. Which of course opens the service to liability.

Liability for scams is something that does need to be considered with highly targeted advertising. Particularly, where the targeting focuses on populations known to be (more) prone to duping by scams.

Tag: Blky, Mobiles, Targeted Advertising

Rant: Playing Music on a Mobile Speaker Phone

I've been meaning to say something for a while but today on the bus into work was the last straw.

What idiotic engineer or marketeer decided that it would be cool to allow people play music stored on a mobile on it's speaker? The only time that is going to happen is when the person is in a crowded bus/train/building where is going to piss people off.

Now, to those people who do this. STOP. I don't care what music you like but I don't want to have to listen to it. I have my own favourite music and I don't want to have to listen to yours because you are too selfish to not use headphones. You are intruding on my personal space.

Strangely enough it always seems to be teenagers who insist on playing music on the speaker. Some people would say I could simply ask them to turn it down. Yes I could, BUT, they should never have turned it on in the first place. Why can't people think of those around them?

The qantum shift in Climate Change

Tony Blair has said there has been a quantum shift in climate change in the US and there is now a possibility of a deal as long as India, China and other similar emerging economies join in (China and India are 2nd and 4th worst emitters respectively). Yet recent comments by an Indian minister seems to think they should still be allowed to emit at their current levels.

Which kind of leaves us in deadlock. The US is not going to accept caps without the major emerging economies also accepting caps. Neither side seems to be willing to shift. Is there anything that break the deadlock?

There is.

The US, Europe and other interested countries sign a treaty to create caps and a global emissions trading scheme. But included in the treaty is an agreed method to calculate the carbon cost of goods and services. This serves as a standard and is used across the economy. Companies (whether in the signatory countries or not) can receive an audit to show they are below the standard. This allows them to purchase less carbon credits as their goods and services fall below the standard (or even sell carbon credits).

Now to deal to recalcitrant countries. All goods and services receive a carbon cost whether they are produced/provided by the signatory countries or not. Here is the key aspect. The goods and services need only to be consumed in the signatory countries. Companies wanting to sell goods and services within signatory countries would have to purchase carbon credits.

The majority of the exports from the emerging countries go to be consumed in the developed world. Without this methodology, carbon caps will only see the carbon production transfered from the developed world to the developing world. Nothing is gained. By requiring carbon credits at point of consumption forces the producing companies to take the lead in reducing their carbon emmissions as they now have an economic incentive to do so.

A side benefit of this methodology is that it will turn the externality of carbon emission generated in the transport of products (currently not included) into an internality. This will allow the price of the good to better reflect the true cost of production.

Tags: climate change

The news is out- MarketClusters Receives USD3m in expansion funding

MarketClusters (the company I work for) has just raised USD3m in expansion funding. The press release is here. AlarmClock talks about it here. In summary we are continuing our expansion of StrategWire platform. In addition to on-going development of new features we will expanding the platform's coverage to Clean Technology market.

Tags: MarketClusters, StrategyWire, enterprise2.0

Transport in Sydney

I've just returned from Christmas in Australia. Starkest difference between London and Sydney was how hard it is to get around Sydney by public transport. Not having a car in Sydney is a significant obstacle to enjoying Sydney.

This only serves to highlight how (relatively) good London's public transport network is. This is not to say that there isn't room for improvement, there certainly is. But the cost of improving London transport is dwarfed by what Sydney needs, nay must, spend to get a decent public transport network.

Unfortunetly for Sydney, public transport is the single biggest hurdle to further development, increased tourism and maintaining its status as a liveable city (which is already rapid falling).

Yahoo!

Wired has an excellent story about Yahoo and its performance over the last few years. Several bloggers have already commented on the story (Michael Parekh and Brad Feld). My take: I'm not really surprised about anything in the article. Yahoo has been rudderless for at least the last year.

Terry Semel has to go. His performance is simply not good enough.

With recent coup in Fiji, the troubles in the Solomon Islands and riots in Tonga, you have to wonder what is happening. Over the last few years, the south pacific island nations have seemingly lurched from one crisis to another and there does not seem to be an end in sight. The question is, how is this going to be solved?

The answer, I think, is a Pacific Island commonwealth that includes Australia and New Zealand.

Put it in RSS

Something that has been annoying me for a while is the lack of companies and industry bodies that don't put their news and press releases in an RSS feed. Or if they do require you to register. This post goes out to them.

I will say this slowly. Put. Your. Press Releases. Into. A. Feed. And make it public available. The purpose (and please correct me if I am wrong) of a press release is to make an announcement that reaches as many people as possible. The very fact you do not put your press releases in a feed restricts the number of people who can see.

Nor do I wont to register and receive emails. I just want an RSS feed with your press releases. There is absolutely no benefit for me to register for your press releases. Registering is only useful when the user gets a service out of it. Press releases are not a service.

It is even more nonsensical for industry bodies not to put press releases in a RSS feed. The whole point on an industry body is to act as advocate and communicate with society. Making it difficult for me to get hold of press releases is not the way to do it. I do not want to have to visit your site to check. I do not want to have to work at it. Nor do I want to register to get an email. I get enough already.

I'll say it again. Put your press releases in a RSS feed.

Tags: RSS, Marketing, PR

Paying people for UGC

In a recent post Umair wrote a reply to a question that had come up in a recent Beers & Innovations night. Summary is when will people be paid for "user generated content." I made a point in the comments about how different people get value from services in different ways i.e. monetary payment is not the only form of received value. This is all well and good but many people will still want to be paid.

The biggest hurdle is that transferring small sums of money is prohibitively expensive for the size of the funds transferred. Widespread payment for UGC will not occur until someone cracks problem of providing transfer of funds between parties with a cost approaching zero.

There are several possible methods for doing it. The first would be for a company such as Google to create a financial transfer company and absorb transfer fees the banks impose as a cost of doing business. This is a big and costly option that runs up against (massive) regulatory problems.

The second would be to create a frequent flyer style points system that people can accumulate and then use to for discounts at stores or to purchase gift certificates. This option is probably one that would work well. The "frequent generator" (FG) points would be tied to an identity. For example, I could state (just as Amex holds my "loyalty points") that all my FG points would be held by Google whom attaches my FG points to my Google identity. I can then go to various stores and reclaim the points for discounts, gift certificates etc.

The third option is to essentially create an "internal market" where parties with an identity can transfer, at zero cost, funds. For this to work a provider, lets say Google, would create relationships with the various users of UGC. These users would deposit an opening balance to Google (Google holds this in escrow). When a user uploads some UGC to the site, which then makes some money, the service "transfers" money to the user by saying to Google "user x receives y amount". Google records against the users identity that they have received x without directly transferring the money. The costs are only paid if the user moves money to their real world bank account. Paypal on steroids if you like.

My guess is that a frequent-flyer like system is probably the best option. There is less regulatory overhead, capital and technical requirements. The other major attraction of FG points is that everyone understands frequent flyer systems and the redemption of points. GAYME companies are the obvious candidates to create these systems (they have identities and relations with the users and UGC companies) and I can see this being the next battleground for the hearts and minds of internet users.

Tags: UGC, Web Services

UK Age Discrimation Laws - The death knell of target job boards?

As of 1 Oct 2006 the UK's age discrimination law (Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006) came into effect. I am now reading through a "guide" on these laws and, I am, to say the least astounded. The UK government has taken a massive sledge hammer to crack a small nut and then missed.

What strikes me as most interesting is the possibility that target job boards could possible be ruled illegal under the new laws. From the guide is the following quote:

"If you limit your recruitment to university ‘milk rounds’ only, you may
find that this is indirect age discrimination as this practice would
severely restrict the chances of someone over say, 25 applying for
your vacancies."

or

"Example: An advertisement placed only in a magazine aimed at
young people may indirectly discriminate against older people
because they are less likely to subscribe to the magazine and
therefore less likely to find out about the vacancy and apply."

Now the obvious first shot will be on services such as Milkround. However, I can see the same logic being extended to any target job board. For example the TechCrunch, Joel on Software and 37Signals job boards are seen by an audience that is by and large of a particular age group. This could be be seen as indirect discrimination.

Perhaps the biggest question is the liability of non-UK companies for job advertisements placed on the Internet? The obvious answer is don't be silly, but if a non-UK advertises a job that can be done by telecommuting, lawyers could argue that the advertisements do fall under the UK laws.

The law of unintended consequences raises its head again.

Also puts a damper on the outcome of News International's purchase of Milkround.

Tags: Web Services