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Goldman Answers Why People Log On To Social Networking Sites
Today, instead of some arcane chart showing in some complex fashion the simple fact that only excess liquidity drives excess returns, we present something more in tune with the latest bubble du jour: social networking. As part of its social media survey Goldman Sachs asked respondents what is the main reason for people to "log on" to various social networking venues. The answer, by a wide margin, is the expected one: namely to spy, and to compare whether our lives are more boring, less glitzy and exciting, with fewer gadgets, gizmos, smaller houses or cars, and generally more in debt, than our "friends." Of course, the politically correct way of saying this is "to see what my friends are doing." In other words, there is nothing new about social media but a millennia-old regurgitated phenomenon- it is merely a new locus of exhibiting and observing social status, to see and be seen. One which can be enjoyed 24/7. At least, until something better comes along.
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That sniffing thing is no joke. It's not simply to determine good genes however. It is also used to determine a good match for yours.
So MySpace ver. whatever (essentially peeping through Vanetian blinds on people) is worth $100 billion one-click or 'fake sheep' 'virtual tulip' at a time?
Wow.
Lots of dead people, not far back in history, would think we are absolutely FREAKING InSaNe In ThE memBraNE
Don't forget, before MySpace, there was Friendster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster
During the 2008 meltdown:
Some people were glued to the scroom-blogosphere screaming "This Is It!" and "Any Minute Now!" and hunkering down.
Others were busy building up Pandora, Zynga, Facebook, Zillow, Linkedin, etc.
3 years later, some guys became billionaires taking these companies public.
3 years later, some guys IRA accounts set them up for retirement after getting fully invested in consumer discretionary retail stocks.
3 years later, other guys are still clutching the "Endgame" paradigm and are still hunkered down with no money left in their trading accounts after getting brutalized by TZA, FAZ, TVIX, and a plethora of junior gold stock investments.
And not only that, they are constantly looking over their shoulder, looking for Uncle Thug ready to confiscate their stash, or the IRS man keeping a keen eye on who sells what gold, where, and when.
LOL.....
It's too bad you didn't have any cash in your 401k from your pizza delivery job to capitalize on any of your rear looking ideas.
He's been investing all his money into a DeLorean, and trying to find Doc Brown on facebook....
Funny thing is as the world runs out of hard assets to repo, we are now going to soft assets like FB, Pandora, Zynga, Groupon ect.
Btw, fully think the ONLY guys who came out of no where and actually created true wealth in the last 3 years were in the Bakken Shale. North Dakota/Montana. The tech companies i prefer to invest in are actual service companies.
Like the darlings of 1998-2001, the companies you listed will create some new billionaries, amongst their founders. Perhpas create some millionaires among traders. Profitable for Investment Banks. But they will not create true wealth for the USA. And most will be gone 5 years from now. Likely they will leave more of a mark on their exit than they did on their entry..
Btw, some people hunkering down, in 2008 bot gold. They haven't done to badly, now have they.
And this is EXACTLY why i come here. We ARE famous. This ain't "nicey nicey" that you get on the worthless tele and all their dick sucking bullshit but CAPITALISM IN THE RAW, BABY! the best part OF COURSE is that the PTB really do try and kill us as well! PRICELESS ATTENTION! I think of all the useless people with their fat wives and lame ass excuses why "no one watches them or cares"...and i think..."clearly you're not a Zero Hedger." In short..."just another phucking pussy."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gekaEzqj5g&feature=player_detailpage
i must say i don't really know what to say about the setting of this scene. Too much to think about really. Should make one wonder why those buildings that the Rockefellers built really are no longer there...going into what should have been easily the biggest market collapse since 1929--a collaspse that never happened because "we were war-ed upon" instead... and we've have been stuck in the Middle East ever since--with nothing but "Bailout Nation" to show for any of it.
Stops stealing all of Rasputin's words, phrases and thoughts. Very pathetic and unoriginal.
In response to RobotTrader's Comment:
There's some truth to what you say, but it's also true that I netted over 5% after trading expenses, on over $200k of trading account and IRA assets 2011 (which is double+ the S&P 500) and I was only invested for less than 3 months during the year.
Double the gain, 75% less market-risk exposure.
I'd say that reading ZH has been very helpful to me...
I have never understood FB. I did plenty of things in my late teens and university years, that are best memorialized in "good ol'day" stories. Pictures posted on virtual walls, if i learned anything at university it was "leave NO evidence" behind.
I didn't know what Groupon was until Google made that $6B bid.
When i heard Zygna was going public i thought it was Zegna (italian menswear clothing). When i heard that peole spent real money building virtual farms, i figured the "greater fool" theory was actually proved.
$100B FB valuation. We are indeed living in lala land.
I've never done facebook, but I did do World of Warcraft and I got alot of looks. Yeah my gear was always that good.
Of course it is to spy, see what others have. I mean for christsake, right on facebooks personal info page it asks me to "show my sex in profile". I think that is inappropriate and besides, who would I get to take the picture?
I think Tyler needs a "That's the stupidest fucking comment I've ever seen" button.
shit what does it mean if I scrolled up to see if it was mine =P
I'd actually gun for that!! Kinda like shooting-the-moon on ZH.
(or what about a 'been drinking' notification)
The Sheeple love FB. It's a souped up version of the 90s chatrooms. Why do you think it has this crazy $100 billion valuation?
Governments love FB too. And anyone with an IQ greater than their age knows why. I've never been on it and never will. Scary shit Facebook is.
George Orwell must be smiling :) :)
Who needs to live life when you can just watch... ?
pass me the pringles, a pepsi product, and some cheese 'food'
Dear Goldman,
(voyeurs + exhibitionists) * (decline of community concept + increased social isolationism + growing professional competition + debilitative identity of social groups)
Ergo, Facebook IPO
Facebook overplayed it's hand. The kids are already moving to Twitter. It will give me great pleasure to watch the giant Zuckerberg extrovert orgy implode.
You mean like they moved from AOL chatrooms to MySpace to...
What I don't get, what I've never gotten is Second Life. Some people pay serious money to exist in a virtual realm, apparently. I think it's still around. I knew someone who used to run concerts there. I asked her what that meant. I still don't know what exactly she said.
We are a fucked up species.
Farcebook is the CB radio (look it up, kids) of our time. It's like those annoying Christmas family update letters, only instead of inflicted annually, it is self-inflicted 24/7/365. Oh the inanity.
Uh. This may be a dumb question... Is ZH a Social Media site?
It is for me.
When I have to resort to opening a Facebook account it'll be time to "off" myself with a Katana to the bread basket
Stuck on Zero asked:
Fuck no! ZH is an Antisocial Media site, dammit!
I suppose a virtual Fight Club could be considered social media. However, most come here to improve themselves through fighting. It is not a popularity contest, and knowledge is the topic, not useless personal data. The truth is the goal, and you discover true friends in the pursuit of it.
It's the new matrix. Like the movie
I for one refuse to be in it.
Eventually the next generation will forget how to communicate in person.
I’ll tell a little secret that I discovered this evening. {background first}
Lost a bid on a house by $10,000 dollars yesterday. Atomizer was in the doghouse last night because he wouldn’t increase the last call bid on Tuesday. So Ms. Atomizer was very angry with me last evening. As I came downstairs to go to work this morning, Ms. Atomizer was already sitting at her laptop house shopping again. She forgave me and said there are no more houses listed in Marco Island, only land.
So this evening, I decided to help her find new prospects. Going back one year ago.. we had a cat & dog fight, She wants Marco & I wanted Cape Coral location. We compromised, I bought gulf coast access property in Cape Coral.
So I fire up my computer this evening and she follows me on her laptop tracking the same sites. Then it becomes strange. We’re both on the same site, my searched house pictures don’t match hers. So a grab her computer to see if she placed filters on her search. None found. Closed out the sight, retype the sight name into Google. Looked over at my monitor and back at her laptop. Completely fucking different listings. Cleared her cache and history with the same results. Opened Google again, and finally noticed she was logged into her Google account. I disconnected her from Google. Guess what? Both house listings finally matched our computers.
Be aware of the filters. I don’t have any social networking sites or Google account. Lastly, Atomizer got a dozen + marks on his good house shopping scorecard tonight. We’ll begin the new house bidding process starting tomorrow morning.
Wait 12 months you will get the house for half price.
Good luck with your house hunting Atomizer :) patience, dilligence hunt & sharp intuition should be rewarding
about search engine, tracking and cookie, here's some practical precautions:
- make sure one always verify the COOKIE in the browser's option/pref!
set the browser to keep the cookie for current session only; del all when exit. Still from to time check its Option or Preference to erase all manually.
- use MORE THAN ONE browser, use different browser for different purpose
eg. if one MUST login to his google acc then use a dedicated browser for it; and browse with another browser. Better again logout from the google after usage; del all cookies!
- SRWare Iron. Mozilla Firefox both have quick way to remove ALL cookies at ease (cf. in Opera one needs to del one by one in Tools/Pref).
Chrome is made by google, so i choose to avoid it generally, but will still use it limitedly for some gugel related activities; facebook yes facebook i "occasionally/rarely" access it to fire up some news, touching the sheeples there gently, eg. some light news about ZH, petrodollar collapse, world debt etc...just modest ones, not want to overshock the audiences there... i regard it as kind of blog i'm too lazy to create... :)
of course no scrap post about those personal silliness :D
- look at TOR https://www.torproject.org/ if such anonymity suits your needs
- try OTHER search engines that do NOT TRACK you (perhaps they meet your needs):
https://ixquick.com/
https://startpage.com/ (belongs to ixquick; using google but w/o tracking)
http://duckduckgo.com/
http://www.teoma.com/
http://gibiru.com/
from Gibiru site:
"Search: Neither Google nor the NSA have commented publicly on their agreement. Absent any openness, there is no way for Google customers to know what information the company is giving the NSA and no way for U.S. citizens to know what the NSA is doing for Google in return. Gibiru is part of the Search Engine Privacy Project founded by Underground Internet Privacy Activists."
more about google wickedness here: http://bit.ly/u9PLfZSo Ms. Atomizer was very angry with me last evening
Ms. Atomizer??? So she already divorced you??? (or are you married to your sister)?
COME VISIT ME ON MY NEW SOCIAL NITWORKING SITE!
FACESPACE.COM
ReallyLike Stuff!
Pictures On Your Own Monolith!
FarmSex Games!
Free NSA Surveillance!
http://www.facespace.com/pages/Frosty-Zoom/106140096083553
hahahaahahaaaaa!
Or, if you're truly enlightened, you simply don't have a facebook account. I had one in order to keep in touch with my old high school friends, until facebook became too popular for me (about 2 years ago). Account deleted, and I don't miss it one bit. Now, I have reverted back to actually talking to my old high school buddies in living voice over the phone! Imagine that. My next step is to visit them in person once again.
According to the FBI & DHS, that is "suspicious" activity. Sounds like terrorists meeting.
Next step get skype.
Nah, you can just have fun with it. Whever my husband has a friend bragging about their new condo/house they just bought he posts housing bubble articles (this is Canada, it's only beginning to pop here, finally)...
I was young during the original internet and tech boom and AOL and instant messanging and all of that stuff. I can't believe how stupid and gullible people are these days.
When you grow up, you realize that only physical interaction counts, that you can only trust your family and close friends, and that privacy is extremely important.
All of these virtual "friends" will disappear in good time. Distance and the passing of years will do away with them. It's nothing but an ego orgy of the worst kind for pathetic young serfs.
Facebook is just the latest incarnation of a social phenomenon that's been in existence for a very long time. To me, it's a way for generally boring people to compare/contrast their lives with those of other boring people. I've talked to friends and family lately who have inactivated their accounts (can't close it) on FB. These are the same people that will be a part of the next trend/novelty, and not see the connection. Some of them teased me about not being on FB. When you can step outside of that sort of social framework, I think it makes some of them nervous. They have trouble understanding someone who doesn't conform to the rules they subject themselves to. ZH has some characteristics of "social networks" but, I see more diversity of thought here than on any other site I've been to. That's why I come here.
Well said!
Edelweiss, well said! Fully agree!
Btw i like the flower, edelweiss, only to be found in high altitude mountain area, and when keep dried, it lasts very long (my own experience, 10yrs++) :)
At ZH one has the full liberty to express his or her thought...often backed by ref link one is able to crosscheck.
Of course it's inevitable that info and disinfo present here... trolls and shills do exist everywhere and ZH is of no exception!
However, if one stays long enough at ZH, he or she should be able to acknowlege which one is gold which one is tungsten :D
If still facing difficulty, just dig continuously to hone one's own skill :)
some old manuals to help on...
"A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays, pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed "engineering of consent." During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would "Make the World Safe for Democracy." The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.
Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses."
Propaganda (1928) by Edward L Bernays
"Built upon Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression by David Martin, the following may be useful to the initiate in the world of dealing with truth, lies, and suppression of truth when serious crimes are studied in public forums. Where the crime involves a conspiracy, or a conspiracy to cover up the crime, there will invariably be a disinformation campaign launched against those seeking to uncover and expose the conspiracy. There are specific tactics which disinfo artists tend to apply, as revealed here.
Also included with this material are seven common traits of the disinfo artist which may also prove useful in identifying players and motives. The more a particular party fits the traits and is guilty of following the rules, the more likely they are a professional disinfo artist with a vested motive."
25 Ways To Suppress Truth; The Rules of Disinformation (1997) - Michael Sweeney
These social sites pray upon one of the vices that haunt the core of humanity - vanity.
If I have to log on to facebook to see what my friends are doing - are they really my friends?
Back in the day, BBS boards were the social networking of the day. The only difference, no advertisements. Not much has progressed other than graphs and such.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV9y3CVn-bU
While in high school, I paid $10 a month for a BBS account. It would take three minutes to get a response from a question using a 300 baud modem, but "chatting" on the "Internet" was very cool!
The USA wanted to create a large database on everyone, but public outcry shut down the idea.
Facebook coincidentally comes along later & the people "willingly" create the database. Suckers.
600,000,000 users is a compelling number for anyone in business!
They forgot people sharing anti-NWO articles.
Facebook is brilliant, like Reality TV it gives ample opportunity for buffoons to expose themselves to ridicule. The way people volunteer to expose themselves and the lives is quite amazing and the notion of Transparent Citizens is quite a feature of modern life. It shows just why Power lies in what you don't reveal and what you keep to yourself; which is why Goldman is so successful in "dealings in the dark".
There is value in illiquidity of information.
You guys can friend anyone of my 12000 accounts I use for legitamate purposes anytime.
For the user, the active engagements with FB et al are simply self-administered Panopticons; the amount of time, effort & self-administered reinforcement of stale beliefs / memes is obvious. Rifkin (having trawled through his Empathetic Civilisation, somewhat good) makes a point about the millennials being the most narcissistic generation we've seen.
The real passive benefit to businesses is this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-ou...
Now: Target only mined purchase data. If you add in sites viewed, media exposure, friends, friends' walls, shared link tracing (i.e. the old Fw;Fw;Fw;Fw;Fw;Fw FUNNY CATS! LoL!11!!1!), bookmarks, phone address books etc you've a much more comprehensive predictive indicator of who buys what, who votes what, who is unhappy and needs pills and who is going to commit crimes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrYKQiyeNv0
Oh. And don't forget that an abscence of data can produce its own shadows, much like tracking submarines: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-building-shad...
As for the article: GS has an active interest in making sure that the FB IPO goes well, and that the plan keeps on rolling; money mostly, but also orders, pip pip.
Be Seeing You.
That 'shadow profile' page is why it migth be better to have a real profile with lots of fake information, or several profiles with and fake partial information (not that I do that at all, *cough*) than to try to have nothing at all.
I was inspired by an old friend in the early nineties who had a habit of subscribing to random free catalogues, especially if it didn't conform to his demographic. His intent was to screw with marketers' profiling... Love the idea...
Facebooker = Dumbfooker
Fookin Prawns
So, I guess that whole argument, "you can get a job and make money on it" was a farce too, unless you happen to own and run the social media itself.
No wonder our economy is in shambles. They inflated the facebook community to 347% in order to fit all their percentages in. And wtf are they doing worrying about what your mom and kid sister are doing anyway? Pervs.