June 7, 2006
Hedgestock 2006, or the “new-age networking event for the hedge fund community”, as the FT reported, strikes us as a bit desperate.
The organizers of the two-day love-in apparently had Woodstock in mind for those who miss or missed the hippie mirth and they certainly hope hedgestock ‘06 will be the next best thing. Of course, free love, free drug and free sex would never lose its luster as long as the world still revolves around love, drug and sex. Hedge fund managers are today’s “masters of the universe” and they use other people’s money to pump up and down other people’s shares, and boy, do they know how to love -
“Love the banter and banish the cliches”,
“Love knowing your hangover has not been in vain”, and our personal favorite
“Love letting down what’s left of your hair”.
Roger Daltrey, of The Who, leads the concert that will open a ‘festival of networking’ or to put it mildly, an orgy of destruction. After all, what beats getting comfortably numb at Winton Capital’s psychadelic tent replete with bar, painted VW camper van and otherwise-dignified Britons in hippie wigs and tie-dyed shirts.
It’s a shame David Gilmore was stuck at Royal Albert Hall signing off the anesthetized epic.
Microsoft has come out swinging. The software Goliath plans to give its MSN Spaces blog publishing and hosting service new social networking features, as well as support for Gadgets. The move is designed to take on MySpace, owned by Murdock’s News Corp. Popular among teenagers and young adults, MySpace ranks second only to Yahoo! in page views in the U.S., and drew almost 5 percent of all Web site visits in March, ahead even of mighty Google, which drew a little over 4 percent, according to Hitwise.
We have been fascinated by the explosive interest in social networking. Emails nowadays rank only 4th among hip teens, behind IM, blogs, and social net. They are so busy managing their virtual social life, we wonder whether their physical social life would suffer as a result. After all, you only have a limited social time growing up. On the other hand, while adults are slowly taking up social networking, their focus seems to be more on business networking, using tools like Linkedin.
MySpace is the clear leader in so-called social net, with more than 73 million registered users worldwide. Google has an invitation-only social network called Orkut and Yahoo has a blogging service Yahoo 360. AOL recently launched AOL Pages. Now that everybody is on board, we can’t help but wondering where the bandwagon leads.
At any rate, as to the war on your space, we’d say “bring ‘em on.”
We break our regularly scheduled program to bring you this sad news. A new weekly paper, Our Town Downtown, is launched today by Manhattan Media, for “residents of Lower Manhattan who call the area below 28th Street home. ”
Apparently, says Tom Allon, President & CEO of Manhattan Media, because “the demographics of Lower Manhattan have changes dramatically. Young hipsters who may have read publications like the Village Voice and the NY Press have all moved to Brooklyn.” Brooklyn - Who knew.
die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden
Not soccer, the “beautiful game” most Americans don’t care much. Or maybe they do, judging from this: The New York Times has launched a World Cup ‘06 blog, featuring “where to watch in New York“, among others.
So it seems blogs have added a new dimension to pop culture. If World Cup is being blogged by the NYT, then it’s made it to the “it” list.
On the flip side, it may just be an ‘open house’ marketing opportunity. ESPN also announces that it’s going to simulcast 52 World Cup soccer games for USA Internet viewers beginning Friday. To put it another way, World Cup ‘06 Blog Style: FIFA World Cup Blog. And never to be left out, Kissinger says he’d ‘reschedule’ to accomodate for the matches.
Or doggy celebs made possible by the internet.
The New Yorker
To lighten you up from a morning of depressing rain, we bring you the quiz of the week: Are You a Celebrity?
In an age of celebrity craze, fueled by pop contests like American Idol and made easier with the internet, we believe there’s a celebrity in every citizen. Call it the democratization of celebrity.
Please, send a postcard whether you “live in Iowa” or are “hiding” in Namibia.
The Da Vinci Code is here to stay. The latest comes from Vanity Fair. In a massive piece published today, Seth Mnookin details the claims of Lewis Perdue, author of “Daughter of God,” a novel published three years before Dan Brown’s widly success book. Two textual analysis experts also believe Brown borrowed the plot from Perdue’s book. And Mr. Perdue has engaged in litigation, to no avail.
In April, Random House U.K., Dan Brown’s publisher, won a case in the English High Court of “copyright infringment” brought by the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”. The judge ruled that although Mr. Brown had relied on the earlier work, he had not stolen its “architecture,” as two of its three authors claimed.
In VF’s piece, Mr. Mnookin said that in researching his article he came to believe that what could seem suspect to the lay reader might still be legal. To us, lay eyes mean common sense, which is to say the matter rests with the court of public opinion.
“Flat” was made fashionable last year by Tom Friedman in his sublimly named book, “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.” Sneered - “a dreadful failure“- by The Economist, it nonetheless won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. Andif Google search results are any indication, the world has definitely become flat.
Flat or not, Friedman admirably popularized globalization with envious success. The world is smaller, irrevocably so, says Friedman. This is viewed from the epic center, which is the good ‘ol US of A. But multi-polar seems to be more like it, despite the Gallic whiff. Manufacturing, as we know it, has become global with ever-more sophisticated supply chains around the world. Services, however, remain the ‘bread and butter’ of the west, esp. the U.S. with 75% of the economy. Culturally, while American pop culture is still emulated with envy outside its shores, indigenous products are increasingly competitive, esp. in Asia where China and India are on the rise. Moreover, Zakaria’s Newsweek piece voices the threat of the erosion of science and technology, both in secondary education and research and development, which has prompted a cry for action from the intelligentsia.
If America’s core competence is services, and it does not look like it is going to surrender its dominance soon, then emerging Asian powers, in particular China, should consolidate its power in manufacturing, complimented with technology development (with its low cost case). The “old world”, while competing with the US for service excellence, with Asia for R&D, should capitalize on its stellar cultural performance and continue to enlighten the world in splendor. As opposed to the flat ‘glass half full or half empty’ metaphor, our crystal ball seems to indicate a metamorphosis with a multi-polar world emerging.
