The Twittering utilitarian

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O yikes! I’m laid low by a horrible streaming cold after two very intense work-weeks and so I logged onto Twitter (first time I’ve been online in nearly 24 hours) to alert my friends to this fact. I tweeted “Sneezing, coughing and spluttering with a horrible cold”. And then found a tweet from Charles Arthur pointing to a Blog post which suggests that he may ‘unfollow’ me. He takes a strict, non-nonsense line on these matters, viz:

First: what I like is people pointing me to interesting stuff. Which generally means people who include links to interesting stuff in their tweets. When people don’t have those sorts of things in their tweets, and when it really is the unexamined life (”Having cup of coffee” “Eating biscuit”) then I’m afraid I’m not interested. I love ya and all that, but I’d like to get something done. And for me that means finding a fresh perspective, not knowing that you still have a pulse and a functioning brainstem.

What does this mean?

If people start using Qwitter and ask me why I’ve unfollowed them, I’ll point them to this post. It’s simple really. In an attention economy, there’s only so much time I can listen to what colour your curtains are. Then, I’ve got to get on and earn some money. Please, no hurt feelings though.

So there you have it: useful stuff only. To be fair, Charles also provides some cute Applescript for quick-posting of links to Twitter.

I can see what he’s getting at. Some Twitterers (e.g. Dave Winer) are terrific at providing a constant stream of interesting links. But actually one of the things I like about Twitter is that it also enables me to know about the trivial detail of friends’ lives.

On this day…

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… in 1931, Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939. Wonder if any of the authors of WallStreetCrash 2.0 will go to gaol?

The G-phone: first review

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David Pogue has had a good look at the first G-phone to roll off the line. It’s a useful review. His conclusion:

So there’s your G1 report card: software, A-. Phone, B-. Network, C.

So here’s what will happen. 1. The software (done by Google) will improve rapidly. 2. Phone manufacturers will eventually produce a suitable handset. 3. The phone will be available on all networks in due course. All this will take a while, so my hunch is that the iPhone has a clear run for the time being.

I’m still tempted to try a G-phone when it arrives in the UK next month, though.

Cambridge joins Icelandic support society

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Well, well. The Icesaver saga gets more interesting by the hour. Here’s today’s Telegraph…

A series of official Government statements yesterday showed that several universities, as well as hospitals, police forces, charities and more than 100 local councils are now potentially facing financial crises after being blocked from accessing funds in Icelandic banks adding up to at least £1.164 billion.

Cambridge disclosed it had £8.5 million in Heritable, a subsidiary of the failed Landsbanki, and £2.5m in Glitnir, but said that the funds represented just three per cent of its total bank deposits.

Another 11 universities meanwhile, including Manchester University, the Open University, Glyndwr University, based in Wrexham, and Manchester Metropolitan University have deposits in Icelandic banks adding up to £66 million.

A Cambridge spokesman said: “We have alerted HEFC (the Higher Education Funding Council) and we are seeking to have a concerted recovery effort with the other British universities affected.”

One of the funniest things about these depositors is that they all solemnly explain that they poured money down the Icelandic drain after taking the best possible “professional advice”. Who are these mysterious advisers? And shouldn’t someone now be sueing them for negligence?

My schedule, not yours

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This is an interesting development for those of us who follow the decline of push media.

Online and DVR audiences for the three Tina Fey skits on “Saturday Night Live” spoofing Sarah Palin were twice the size of the original television audience, according to data released Friday by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), a provider of consumer behavior and audience exposure data to media companies and advertisers.

Among all the people who saw at least one of the three SNL sketches, 33% watched it on television during the original broadcast and a staggering 67% watched after the original broadcast either online or on a DVR.

“This is the first time we’ve seen delayed viewing numbers this big,” said Amanda Welsh, head of research for San Mateo, Calif.-based IMMI. “Usually it’s the other way around, with the overwhelming majority of viewing occurring during the actual broadcast.”

A failure of journalism as well as of banking?

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Thoughtful piece by James Robinson about why even the specialist media were taken aback by the banking crisis.

Should City editors and economics correspondents have predicted it?

Alex Brummer, the Daily Mail’s experienced City editor, believes they should have done. He argues that, although City journalists covered the problems of some individual companies creditably, few grasped the enormity, or scale, of the situation.

‘They were slow off the mark originally,’ he says, pointing out that young journalists who weren’t working during the last financial crisis in the 1970s did not have the foresight to realise that a problem at one institution can quickly become a problem for all. ‘That has something to do with the age profile. They’ve been brought up in a period of non-stop output and growth. I cut my teeth as a financial journalist in the white heat of the 1976 financial crisis, when 25 banks went under. Having lived through all of that you learned a [crisis] spreads from one institution to another and [governments] need to do something very quickly to stabilise the system.’

Brummer’s historical perspective is something only a few share. Jeff Randall, a business journalist and the Daily Telegraph’s editor-at-large, has been warning about personal debt and an unsustainable housing boom for years, and others have voiced similar concerns. Yet few identified the sub-prime market, or the credit crunch, as triggers that would push the world to the brink of recession, and senior figures at the FT admit they should probably have done better in that regard. Dan Bögler, the paper’s managing editor, says: ‘We believed the bankers when they said derivatives were making the world safer by spreading risk. But in reality it became a game of pass the parcel and the parcel ended up in the hands of those who least understood it. We take our share of the blame for that.

‘Why didn’t we spot it? Unfortunately, financial journalists – and the FT has better-trained financial journalists than others – don’t really understand this stuff, and they join a long list of people that starts with bank regulators, central bank regulators and money managers.’

Blogging and power

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Interesting comment by Peter Preston on the BBC’s Business Editor, Robert Peston.

On both sides of the Atlantic, destitute bankers are looking round for someone to blame. ‘Did the media spook the market?’ asked Tina Brown’s new website (thedailybeast.com) on day one. British political journalists, testifying to a Lords committee, said Peston had ‘played an instrumental role’ in the story. And the Daily Mail, of course, took to the warpath, demanding: ‘Does this BBC man have too much power?’

One answer came fast from the Mail’s own political editor, talking to their Lordships. ‘More power to his elbow, if he’s the journalist leading the charge, good for him,’ said Ben Brogan warmly.

But pause, for a moment at least, and take cautious stock.

The Peston tale that spooked the City last week wasn’t even a broadcast to begin with. It started as a blog. Peston is prolific, blogging continually between studio shuttles. He can write three or four quick blogs a day, telling the net world what’s going on. It’s a brilliant service, where one thing goes with another. He’s a voracious newshound. The BBC has special salience and special clout. All that training comes specially trustworthy.

Yet the wire grows higher and higher. Blogs don’t go through anxious committees of editors, pondering deeply. They are self-publication, performed at the double.

Their speed is part of their attraction, and we’ve reached a stage where one man at his terminal can rain billions over Britain.

Good Times R.I.P.

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This morning’s Observer column…

It’s not just in Iceland that it has dawned on people that there is a connection between the hallucinatory world of securitised assets and the real world of savings and deposits. Silicon Valley has also woken up to the realisation that – shock, horror – it might affect technology companies too.

Just to underline the point, last Tuesday Sequoia Capital, the second-smartest venture capital firm in the Valley (after Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), invited entrepreneurs and chief executive officers from its stable of start-up and established companies to a meeting. According to one report from an insider, invitees were greeted on arrival by a tasteful image of a gravestone engraved with the message: ‘RIP: Good Times.’