Meet the ‘First Social Media Analyst on Wall Street’ Lou Kerner has dabbled in real estate, worked as a cable and satellite analyst at Goldman Sachs, and headed numerous companies, including two domain companies: The .tv Corp. and WildSites. Yet Kerner has seemingly found the role he was born to play as the self-described “first social media analyst on Wall Street.” He’s attracted quite an audience. Kerner has been quoted as an expert on social media valuations in the mainstream press, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the L.A. Times, no fewer than 120 times so far this year. He’s also cited regularly in online properties such as Business Insider and has appeared on television numerous times. “I’m building the Lou Kerner brand,” Kerner told me last week during a call from the New York office of Wedbush Securities, an L.A.
Kerner says he wants his brand to stand for “Lou Kerner helps people.” Kerner also used Sheen to talk up Twitter’s valuation. “You’ve got to sell it [to draw followers],” he told me. Pong. Pong “The machine is broken.” That terse message summoned Al Alcorn to Andy Capp’s bar in Sunnyvale two weeks after Alcorn had installed the Pong arcade game. Pong’s problem? Popularity. Its milk carton coin-catcher was jammed with quarters. Pong heralded a gaming revolution.
Mechanical arcade games like pinball had appeared the late 1800s. Whose Pong is It? Atari created Pong but Atari never patented it. In ‘Idea Man,’ Paul Allen Describes an Uneven Partnership With Gates. 10 Things Daily Deal Sites Won't Say. California Estate Sold for $100 Million. Quoted: Paul Allen on ’scheming’ Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer | Good Morning Silicon Valley. The magic of make-up, photography and a good model. Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness. My single best advice about writing — whether for marketing copy, blogging, a sales pitch, an investor pitch, or even humor, is: All done, you can stop reading now. (As if I have the power to decide when you stop reading.) Writer’s Workshop Sometimes it’s easier to demonstrate than to preach, so let’s take a simple statement and see how being specific makes it more powerful, more interesting, and even funny. Here’s our starting point: Experts say Twitter usage is increasing, but in many industries your marketing efforts are better spent in other channels.
No generic words The first and easiest step is to swap generic words for specific ones. Usagemanyeffortbetter Generic words are a sure sign of lazy writing. Besides being boring and uninspiring, generic words are interpreted differently by different people, so it’s not clear what message will be received on the other end of the Internet connection. Here’s a stab at converting generics into specifics; see how much clearer the point becomes: Die, RFP, Die, Die, Die! A few years ago provocateur Tom Foremski wrote a blog post titled “Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!” Today I’m hoping this post inspires you.
My hope is that together we can create a better, more streamlined way of sharing agency credentials with those who would like to hire us. But first, something has to die. To my fellow PR, digital and social media agency practitioners, and to the marketers looking to us to extend and elevate the conversations about their brands, please join me in throwing shovels full of dirt on the outlandishly time-intensive evaluation mechanism known as the RFP. Suggested epitaph of the RFP? I’ve been at this game a long time and I’ve grappled with more than my fair share of RFPs. A typical RFP means expensive senior talent must devote several hours (sometimes days!) Sometimes the firm must undergo training just to complete the RFP response via a system such as Ariba or Citrix. But I’m not naïve.
I personally don’t think technology is the answer. Who’s first? Buffett cautions social-networking investors | Digital Media. Warren Buffett is warning investors to be careful about which social networks they friend with their investment dollars. Buffett, the chief executive of the Berkshire Hathaway investment empire, warned investors Friday at a conference in New Delhi to be wary of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter--a sector that has recently generated great interest and anticipation on Wall Street. "Most of them will be overpriced," Buffett said, according to a Bloomberg report. "It's extremely difficult to value social-networking-site companies. " "Some will be huge winners, which will make up for the rest," he said, without specifying which companies he expects to be winners and which will be losers.
Buffett isn't alone in his dire warnings of another bubble in the offing. Investor buzz for hot Silicon Valley companies that aren't yet publicly traded--like Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga--has hit a fever pitch and reportedly captured the attention of the U.S. Sprint Cheaper Than 99% of S&P 500 Signaling Merger: Real M&A. The editorial search engine. It’s impossible to build a computer system that helps people find or filter information without at some point making editorial judgements. That’s because search and collaborative filtering algorithms embody human judgement about what is important to know.
I’ve been pointing this out for years, and it seems particularly relevant to the journalism profession today as it grapples with the digital medium. It’s this observation which is the bridge between the front page and the search results page, and it suggests a new generation of digital news products that are far more useful than just online translations of a newspaper. It’s easy to understand where human judgement enters into information filtering algorithms, if you think about how such things are built. At some point a programmer writes some code for, say, a search engine, and tests it by looking at the output on a variety of different queries.
I bring this up now for two reasons. There it is, from the mouth of the bot. S.F. tech jobs climb near level of dot-com peak. As technology companies' soaring valuations draw comparisons to the dot-com days, a new analysis highlights another similarity: The number of tech workers in San Francisco today is nearing its peak in 2000. The city had an estimated 32,180 tech jobs last year, compared with 34,116 in 2000, according to an analysis of state employment data by real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle. In 2004, the number of tech jobs had fallen to 18,210. The percentage of nongovernment office workers in San Francisco employed in the tech sector is also higher: 17.4 percent in 2010, compared with 14.4 percent in 2000, according to the analysis. While part of tech's growing share of the job market is due to job losses at financial and legal firms, it also reflects a growing desire by companies wanting to make San Francisco their home.
And with tech companies large and small ramping up their hiring efforts this year, the city may soon see the total number of tech jobs eclipse their dot-com era peak. Why S.F.?