Six years ago I sat in a room with a group of 'clever' people all punting Facebook as the next 'Tech whizz kid on the block', much like those who were punting the Bitcoin con not so long ago. People love false hope and things that are just too good to be true. They fall for it time and time again. Much like sitting at a slot machine in a casino. As if we were so naive as to have forgotten the 'Tech Bubble' Financial Services con of the late 90's, the Financial Services property overvaluation con of the early 2000's.. So-called 'highly respected' Financial advisors where now trying to persuade poor, naive investors to buy extraordinarily overvalued Facebook stocks as the next big flyer.
Meanwhile the young marketing 'wizards' in the room attempted to persuade the who's who of Global Marketing that this Social Media platform was going to be the big advertising alternative to waning traditional media and literally "fly".
I was the lone voice of, in my view, simple logic and reason in the room, as I could just not get my head around their valuation justification, nor understand how a Social Media (emphasis on the word 'social') provider thought that they could make money out of users, without having to bastardise their free communication model and commercialise something people used for socialising and sharing amongst friends and family, by bombarding them with highly annoying advertising banners, whilst using their database to unscrupulously abuse loyal users to the point of losing them altogether..
And that now appears to be exactly what has happened.. 6 years down the line.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-07-26-facebook-in-freefall-as-weak-outlook-stuns-market/
Thursday 26 July 2018
Monday 23 July 2018
Life can be short - Begin with the end in mind
I've tried to live life from relatively early on by my own mantra of 'Life can be short, so begin everything with the end in mind'. Not in a melancholy way by any means, but merely to try to make the most out of this life, as there is no other, and "don't dream it, be it" (to coin a phrase from The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
That means, I stopped or never even embraced chasing things that just don't matter in the end - to me, (e.g. climbing taller and taller corporate ladders, playing business politics, accumulating material wealth for the sake of it, befriending and even entertaining pretentious people, stressing about what other people think, living to work as opposed to working to live life, sweating the small stuff, not saying what you honestly think, getting caught up in a group of negative political propagandists, not having enough time to do the things you truly want to do and places to see, not eating food and drinking wine that feeds a ceremony, etc. ). Rather I have done the opposite, in attempt to chase and do things that really do matter, do things and visit places that feed my 'soul' and surround myself with those who really mean something to me, challenge me, impart wisdom, thrive in vociferous debate covering.., at times, controversial subject matter to many who prefer the PC, 'rather not go there' approach.
That makes life rich to me, as much as a game ranger friend once remarked to me years ago, that he didn't earn much money by what he did, but got paid in sunsets instead. A profound comment that said so much about him and what 'life' truly meant to him.
Sometimes I forget however and need reminding, sometimes other people's experiences help put it all into perspective too..
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