Friday, March 28, 2008

MySpace and Friends Need to Make Money. And Fast.




The numbers are amazing. MySpace's membership has ballooned from 20 million people in 2005 to 225 million today, an average annual growth rate of 513 percent. Rival Facebook grew at 550 percent a year during the same period. LinkedIn's rate was 182 percent.

Yet one social networking metric is distinctly underwhelming: the one with a dollar sign. Lookery, an ad network specializing in social media, offers display ads on MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo for only 13 cents per thousand times the ad is served (CPM); Yahoo's average CPM is estimated at $13. Video ads on MySpace reportedly fetch just $25 per thousand showings; CBS charges $50 on affiliated sites, NBC as much as $75.

Social networking was supposed to be the Net's next rocket to riches. But many social sites are having trouble capitalizing on their audiences, and it's looking like the convivial atmosphere that promised to boost the value of commercial messages may actually diminish it. Even the big brains at Google are stumped. The search king, which pays a special rate to place ads on MySpace, has suggested that it may be paying too much. "I don't think we have the killer best way to advertise and monetize the social networks yet," Sergey Brin admitted during a January conference call with analysts.

Some smaller competitors are doing better. LinkedIn, for example, has a CPM as high as $75. The difference: The site caters to professionals, making it easier to target ads. (It helps that the company also charges for premium features and job listings.)

For sites with broader audiences, the key may be to give advertising a social dimension. Facebook tried to do just that with Beacon and Social Ads. These formats send users an alert or display ad when one of their pals patronizes an advertiser. But Facebook has yet to gauge the effectiveness of these programs because online privacy watchdogs pounced, and the site moved quickly to let members opt out.

Still, the idea that ads can be a social experience is the industry's best hope. Social Vibe encourages members to choose brands to endorse on their pages. AdRoll shares ads across related niche sites, turning a blogroll into an ad network. But it may take time to work out the business ramifications of online friendship. The first site to meld commercial messaging gracefully into these new group dynamics will have advertisers poking them to be friends.

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Is Cheney betting on Economic Collapse?

Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly.

The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation.”

Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all ‘bad news’ is bad for everybody.”

This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.

Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is “intentionally” skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney’s portfolio?

It doesn’t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn’t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that’s what’ll happen.

The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP.

This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness.

Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly, foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China.

Do the math! They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We’re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and “American Celebrity”.

The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat corporations who’ve abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise.

This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and inflation.

Did Americans really think they'd be spared the same type of economic colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the rubric of "neoliberalism"?

Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang.

The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office; more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the life's-blood of every economy.

Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats:

“Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000manufacturing plants in China. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and US industrial conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide.” (“The Globally integrated Enterprise” Samuel Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page 130)

“60,000manufacturing plants” in 3 years?!?

“Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies”?

No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.

Welcome to Bush’s 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting.

Take another look at Cheney’s investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the blackguards in office and their satrapies at Federal Reserve.

Original here

Dad gets 25 years for microwaving baby

GALVESTON, Texas - A jury on Wednesday sentenced a young father to 25 years in prison for severely burning his infant daughter when he put her in a microwave and turned it on for up to 20 seconds.

Jurors deliberated for 6 1/2 hours over two days before sentencing Joshua Mauldin. They also fined him $10,000.

The jury rejected Mauldin’s claims he was insane when he stuffed his daughter Ana, then 2 months old, in the microwave and convicted him of felony injury to a child.

Prosecutors had asked that Mauldin be sentenced to life in prison. His defense attorney asked for probation so his client could continue receiving psychiatric treatment.

On Tuesday, the jury convicted Mauldin, 20, of felony injury to a child, dismissing his claim he was having a psychotic episode when he put his daughter in a Galveston hotel microwave in May 2007.

Mauldin had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The conviction came after about four hours of deliberations, which began Monday afternoon.

Life sentence sought
Galveston County prosecutor Xochitl Vandiver asked jurors to give Mauldin a life sentence because Mauldin had given his daughter a life sentence as well — one of physical and emotional scars.

Mauldin at first told police his daughter had been severely sunburned, later changing his story and saying he had accidentally spilled hot water on her while making coffee.

Ana suffered second- and third-degree burns to her left ear, cheek, hand and shoulder and required two skin grafts after being in the microwave. Part of her left ear had to be amputated.

"She will always for the rest of her life be reminded just by looking in a mirror," Vandiver said.

Prosecutors said Mauldin was angry that he was in a loveless marriage and took it out on his daughter. Just before putting her in the microwave, Mauldin had punched the baby and put her in the hotel-room safe and refrigerator.

They also said Mauldin had a history of violence and of lying about being mentally ill to get out of trouble.

Probation, treatment instead?
But Mauldin's defense attorney, Sam Cammack III, said Mauldin has been wracked by mental illness since he was 10 years old. Cammack asked jurors to be merciful and give his client probation so he could continue receiving treatment.

Michael Fuller, a psychiatrist who examined Mauldin, earlier testified he could not conclude Mauldin was insane at the time of the crime. However, Fuller on Tuesday said Mauldin was not violent and would benefit from receiving treatment outside of prison.

"Let's give the kid the rest of his life in prison for hurting his child when we can't explain what happened? Don't do that," Cammack told jurors.

During the trial's punishment phase, Mauldin's mother, Joanie, pleaded for mercy.

"There is no way someone in their right mind would do something like that," Joanie Mauldin told jurors, crying.

Heather Croxton, Ana's foster mother, testified the little girl's wounds still need to be cleaned every day, and that she screams during the painful process. The little girl, who lives with Croxton and her family in College Station, has physical therapy five days a week.

Croxton said she hopes to adopt Ana, who turned 1 earlier this month. A trial to terminate the Mauldins' parental rights is scheduled for April.

Original here