UK Retail Downsizing Continues

It has been more than 15 years since the effective start of the Online Travel era. Arguably that started in late 2005 with the launch of Preview Travel and Travelocity's businesses.

Today we see a significant move in the UK which cements the decline of the retail high street market. UK Adoption of the web for travel purchases already among the highest in Europe has been accelerating in recent years.

In the mid 1990s we (collectively) predicted that Europe would follow the US by about 5 years in online adoption. Two things have actually happened.

1. The profile of web usage in Europe is vastly different
2. The adoption curve has been slower and longer

Today the Coop Travelcare group and Thomas Cook's retail operations are being combined into a single entity. Coop has the largest independent travel group after the big two. Thomas Cook is the smaller of the big players that used to number 4 which is now two.

In the past 15 years we have seen some spectacular failures in travel at all levels of the distribution chain from the supply side (think XL Airways which went bust in September 2008) to Tour Operators (Think Goldtrail which went out of business this year) to retail (Think Harvey World UK which went into Administration in June of 2009).

The pace of the closing of retail stores is reflected somewhat in the UK ABTA numbers

30/9/10 Travel Agent members 986 with 3806 branches = 4792 outlets
30/9/05 Travel Agent members 1397 with 4727 branches = 6124 outlets
30/9/00 Travel Agent members 1826 with 5222 branches = 7048 outlets
30/9/95 Travel Agent members 2263 with 4705 branches = 6968 outlets
30/9/90 Travel Agent members 2940 with 4265 branches = 7205 outlets

However this is masked by a change in the rules a few years ago when the category of small agent was opened to allow more people to join. but as can be seen in 20 years a drop to one third of the number of members. The definition of outlet has also changed over time.

We can now expect another wave of consolidation and shutting of storefronts in the UK at the same level as the USA experienced about 10 years ago. This can only mean that the same will apply to other markets' retail location based businesses. So if you run a retail business - beware. The change is coming.

Its sad but its progress. Perhaps this will finally kill off Viewdata!

DoT Caves to Big Airline

Continuing its policy of serving the industry - the US DoT has approved a broad brush of alliance requests. In doing so it has set the standard for a world of an oligopoly of airlines.

I have long argued that while alliances are very positive from a business perspective for the airlines they are distinctly un-consumer friendly and will ultimately result in higher cost of travel to the customer.

The evidence of this can be found in viewing the average fare revenue cents per mile. Over the last year in 12 months the revenue has shot up for the US airlines by an average of 18%. By any measure that is astounding. And that was with the loss of only one player.

With now CO and UA merging we are going to see more. So the oligopoly is in effect here. What used to be the big 10 is now the fab five.

And if no one else is listening I hope the DoJ and the DoC are.

Cheers

Are Passengers Happy?

I travel a lot... regular readers know that about me. I therefore get to enjoy the best and the worst of travel. I have one rule for travel. The destination is the goal not the journey.

So its often interesting to overhear people who are griping about travel and its problems. I think Americans complain more than other nationalities. I have always attributed it to the time squeeze of the US passenger.

Just lately I have noticed an increase in unhappy people. More people griping more shouting at desks. I think this is in part due to the reduction in the number of customer service people and their replacement by machines. Its rather hard to shout at a machine. So what do you do? With the significant reduction in manpower over the last year the human has to go somewhere. Well since the US DOT who overseas the services of the US carriers made it a little easier to file a complaint - indeed they are up a lot.

However the Wall Street Journal could not quite fathom the answer. In my view its obvious. Less people to resolve, More machines and more avenues to complain results in more complaints.

Check out the WSJ article.

Cheers

Vote NOW. Best Road Warrior Selections

OK chaps time to get your votes out.

Vote for your fave airline and experience as a road warrior.

The Flyertalk awards can be accessed here.

http://vote.ftawards.com/ballot.php

Public Mea Culpas. How Not To Do It

I love baseball. For no other reason that going to a game and just hanging out. This season I didn't attend one single game. And with good reason. My local team - the Seattle Mariners sucked badly.

Yesterday they ended the season with a record breaking loss. 105 games. But don't worry folks there is always next year.

Except to rub the noses of the fans in it the organization pushed out a kind of apologia. I reprint it here so you can see what is probably not the right way to do that.

This is the point where the more noble of people would have fallen on their swords. Not these guys.

Oh yes and the final score yesterday in Seattle? Yup they lost again 4-3.

Cheers

The Professor



October 4, 2010
A Message from Mariners Chairman Howard Lincoln and Executive Vice President-General Manager Jack Zduriencik

I've been a naval officer, an attorney and a business executive in my life. But before any of these, I was a baseball fan.

I was born and raised in Oakland, California. As a kid, I sat in the bleachers and rooted for the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks. Casey Stengel was the manager and a young Billy Martin played second base. When the Giants came to the Bay Area, I spent a lot of sunny days and foggy nights at Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park watching the Willies - Mays and McCovey.

I'm still a baseball fan and, like you, I was very disappointed with the performance of the 2010 Seattle Mariners. It was a frustrating season and, yes, we made some mistakes on and off the field. Good organizations learn from setbacks and make themselves better - that's the mindset we're taking into 2011.

I have asked GM Jack Zduriencik to give you an end-of-the-season report on our baseball operations. You'll see that despite our struggles at the Major League level, Jack's plan to build through scouting and player development is working well at the minor league level. I trust Jack. I believe in his plan and I see progress. He has the full support of our ownership group, Chuck Armstrong and me, along with the resources to be successful.

Will it take some time? Yes. Do you have the patience to see this through with us? I hope so. Our number one goal remains to bring championship baseball to Safeco Field. I'm sure we'll get there.

Before you hear from Jack, I want to say something straight from the heart, from one fan to another: Thanks for sticking with this team, thanks for caring as much as you do, thanks for wearing the Mariners "S."

Sincerely,

________________________________________
October 4, 2010
Jack's Report to the Fans

Some of you may remember an old-time player named Rocky Bridges, a colorful middle infielder who went on to manage in the minor leagues for many years. Rocky once said, "Well, there are three things that the average person thinks he can do better than anybody else. Build a fire, run a hotel and run a baseball team."

After the 2010 season, I'm sure a lot of you are ready to step up and tell me how to run our ballclub. And I'm always willing to listen.

But despite our poor performance at the Major League level in 2010, there are plenty of reasons to believe that our long-term plan is working. In fact, looking at the big picture, our organization actually took a step forward last year.

Before you click away from this e-mail, give me a chance to explain.

Let's start with the cornerstone strategy established when I came to Seattle in October, 2008: We will build a winning franchise through talent that we draft, acquire and develop in our farm system. This is the key to long-term, sustained success in baseball.

The good news is, you gotta like what you see down on the farm.

• Eight of our nine minor league teams made it to post-season play in 2010.
• The AAA Rainiers, Class A Lumber Kings and Northwest League AquaSox all played in their leagues' championship series.
Two won league titles.
• As a group, Mariners minor league hitters ranked #1 in home runs, runs, slugging percentage and on-base percentage.
• The cumulative won-loss record of our minor league teams was 489-410, a .544 winning percentage. Only one organization
did better - the Cardinals at .549.

Does this mean that we should start printing 2011 World Series tickets? Unfortunately, no, not yet. But it does mean that we've got talent at every level of the organization - talent that's developing, scoring runs and learning how to win.

Let's talk about some of these kids.

We've got a flock of top-rated prospects on their way to the big club. These include position players Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, Carlos Peguero, Nick Franklin, Kyle Seager, Johermyn Chavez, Greg Halman and Matt Mangini, along with hard-throwing pitchers like Michael Pineda, Blake Beavan, Dan Cortes, Mauricio Robles, Maikel Cleto and Anthony Varvaro. Many of our best prospects are headed for winter ball and the fall instructional league - they're driven to improve and play at the next level.

Some of these youngsters will develop faster than others, but we've got a rich pipeline of talent. Impressive, considering how thin our minor league system was just a couple of years ago. Plus there are more top prospects coming: We have the #2 pick in the 2011 June draft and we continue to scout and sign top international players.

At the big league level, Mariners pitchers tied for the third best ERA in the American League in 2010. Felix Hernandez has fulfilled his potential as a perennial Cy Young candidate. Jason Vargas, Doug Fister and Luke French made major strides in 2010. We like our pitching; our staff is young, developing and hungry.

Two young players, catcher Adam Moore and outfielder Michael Saunders, got valuable playing time and impressed scouts around the league. Meanwhile, our four core players - Ichiro, Felix, Guti and Chone Figgins - are signed to long-term deals.

I'm a baseball man. I'm not trying to sell you on the idea that we're at the top of the baseball world. We still have work to do, lots of it. My first job is to hire our field manager - and I'm already hard at work identifying and reviewing candidates. Obviously, we need to score more runs by adding to the middle of our lineup. And, for much of the past season, our team didn't play the fundamentally sound baseball that I want to see. I'm addressing all our team's needs and I'll keep you posted throughout the winter.

But there's one thing you need to know about the Seattle Mariners organization:

Everybody wants to win - from Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong to the clubhouse attendant in Everett. We have a plan in place and we're working days, nights and weekends to make it successful.

But as a fan, you want results, not promises. We know that. So we're doing everything we can to make it happen sooner rather than later.

I love the people of this city and this region. I love the energy you bring to the ballpark and the loyalty you've shown to the organization. We owe you a winner. It's coming. Stick with us, there's a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you.

Sincerely,

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Blondes Are More Fun?

OK this is one of the few times when I can honestly say this story deserves much better coverage than I can ever hope to give it.

The Lithuanian company Olialia Group have come up with an idea to show how Blonds are better than other people.

As part of their brugeoning empire - they want to enter the travel space with a resort in the Indian Ocean Island Paradise of the Maldives.

I got this story from TTG. by Sofie Griffiths - herself a blond it would appear from another story in TTG - click here for her picture (she is the one in the middle).

I was very tempted to put in a few of the pictures from the company's website but I think this is a family oriented blog and the only potty mouth or potty brained ideas we really follow usually come from Michael O'Leary.

Anyway - enjoy this story... I did.

Cheers

is Blogging Important?

I have been pondering Blogging as a subject recently and even posted on the subject of late. Where I have some issues is the amount of junk out there. Last week I posed a question and thanks to all of you who gave me encouraging responses, privately.

It does seem that many people do not like to post comments on blogs. Given the ease with which this can be done I find that surprising. However then I looked at the amount of re-tweets.

Taking a sample of TNooz - and using Tweetdeck to follow a few stories, I found that Tweets and re-tweets amounted to an average of several hundred times the number of comments. I took stories by one poster on TNooz and then counted the number of Tweets appearing on the story vs the number of comments.

But this is just my little counting in an unscientific way.

Interestingly when we look at larger scale - our friends over at eMarketer did some more in depth study entitled: “The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media.”

It seems that on average about half the web users in the USA will read at least one blog each month. I suspect that the numbers are far greater.

Blogging has become a media form and an outlet for commentary - both quality and frankly crap.

But there is no qualitative measurement. The social blogsphere applies its own rules based largely on popularity rather than quality as there is little to provide a qualitative measurement in the Social Sphere.

That bother's me. There are clearly a lot of people who are upright citizens who blog and blog responsively. There are those who don't care. Journalists - particularly traditional players in a broad generalization turn up their noses at bloggers. In many cases that is understandable. Given the growth and the impact of blogging - particularly to the detriment of the traditional media outlets for journalism - perhaps we need to set standards for blogging.

I hope that we can do that and self regulate rather than have all blogging classified as junk by such esteemed bodies as the US Supreme Court.

With Special Thanks to the Phillipines Blogging Idol Contest for the image.

http://wordpressphilippines.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/blogging-idol.jpg

Would the Real Low Cost Carrier Please Stand Up

The model for LCC airlines has changed over the past few years. At last week's World Low Cost Airline Congress, that question kept popping up.

Ralf Anker of Anna.Aero does a good job of keeping things in perspective. I really like the website and recommend people who are interested in the model to read it on a regular basis.

He gave a spirited presentation last week on the subject comparing the top real LCCs. The interesting thing is that he has so far not taken into consideration the GCC carriers such as Fly Dubai. Nor does he rate Vueling as a LCC - which is understandable as they have become more like a full service airline.

The emergence also of long haul airlines is beginning to show. Feel Air CEO Kai Holmberg was on one of the panels.

Clearly across the board the adoption of some of the successful LCC characteristics are paying off. You see the unbundling of the product occurring in almost all instances. At the same time you also see the hybridization by the LCCs of things like - offering a frequent flyer program, participating in the GDS and moving to regular airports. But the core principles seem to stick. Focus on costs and simplicity of product.

As was said several times during the conference - the big boys are coming to the LCC model. Few are going the other way.

Cheers

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

New data from the US TIA shows that those long wilting violets - the US traveller has finally woken up and started travelling outside of the USA again.

With good numbers showing 11% growth in June - we could think that there is a mini-boomlet going on.

Not so fast.

The market characteristics are showing a high degree of fragility.

The bright spots are Latam (Mexico exempted though in this report they are showing good numbers - but this was before Mexicana tanked). The astonishing growth is coming going to the Middle East.

Here are the hightlights:


• Overseas markets increased 11 percent in June and increased four percent year to date.
• Europe increased 11 percent for the month but decreased one percent for the year.
• Asia grew 14 percent for the month and was up ten percent year to date.
• Canada increased nine percent for the month and grew six percent for the year.
• The Caribbean increased six percent in June and increased four percent year to date.
• For the month, air traffic to Mexico increased 15 percent. For the year, air traffic to Mexico increased eight percent.
• South America was up five percent for the month and grew one percent year to date.
• Central America increased five percent for the month but was down three percent year to date.
• The Middle East was up 24 percent in June and up 30 percent for the year.
• Oceania increased 34 percent for the month and grew 18 percent year to date.
• Africa increased 20 percent for the month and increased 17 percent for the year.

For the latest stats go here:

http://www.tinet.ita.doc.gov/view/m-2010-O-001/index.html

Cheers

Rich Folk Don't Have Time To Shop....

I always thought the concept of a personal shopper was complete BS. But it seems that there are quite a few of these people out there. Real professional shoppers who use OPM to do the dirty deed.

I find that I spend less and less time in a store. About the only time I visit a real Retail Outlet is at airports. Especially as I seem to spend so much of my time there. Indeed I was trying to think when was the last time I actually was in a shopping mall. I can't honestly remember.

But I do shop online. I also when I have a moment do go to a particular store to look at some things. For example I am looking to acquire a new PC so will likely go to the real store and buy or examine there and then buy online.

I don't consider myself by any stretch of imagination to be an affluent person. I would describe myself as "comfortable" but like just about everyone else I am a working stiff. Probably more so than I should be at my advanced years. They say that teaching doesn't pay very well and I can attest to that fact.

One thing I find just abysmal in shopping both online and offline is customer service. The ultimate oxymoron in my view. In the retail stores - the amount of useless sales people who dont know their products is legendary. I am however very happily surprised when I come across an individual who does know his product and is prepared to help address my questions and interact with me accordingly. For that I have time and respect.

So what of the affluent. How are they handled and what is their value? eMarketer did a nice piece on this.

I once visited a well known travel attorney who had this poster on his office wall. I thought that a little tacky. I wonder if its still there.

One critical factor for anyone dealing with servicing these folks is the ability to be 100% comprehensive. In my view that is essential and so my advice is to offer live chat and/or telephone support right there. Otherwise these people will not wait and will go elsewhere.

Enjoy that glass of champers

Corporate Bloggers Off Point - Me Too?

As a blogger - I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing or bad thing for the world. Am I contributing for the benefit of the travel community or simply spouting a load of BS that no one is interested in?

Well wonder no more Professor has some answer.

Firstly I guess I have to answer my own charge. There are quite a few unique visitors to the blog every day. Counting the RSS and the email subscribers we are looking at more than 1000 per week. So that is a reasonable number in my view. The make up is interesting but also is how they come. Consistently over one third arrive from google searches. So I thank you for reading and am humbled by your attention to this little blog.

As I am not a corporate blogger and (well most of the time) do not use the blog to promote my company or my clients I find it interesting to read other people's blogs. In general Corporate Blogs fulfill a useful purpose of getting a story out. By definition they are self serving as one would expect. I think everyone is fine with that. Not if however a private blog is used to push a corporate agenda.

eMarketer just did a report on the subject. What is astonishing in my view is how off point people are on the subject of not being true to the corporate need.



In the report there is a great statement. "Distorted messages are not a new phenomenon; they have been a problem in mainstream media as well. Still, the message gap between companies and the traditional media is significantly smaller: Less than half of all messages in mainstream media failed to reflect company messages, and here the US performed above average."

So are blogs in corporates therefore mostly a personal vehicle for commentary by the blogger.

That is an interesting question

You Just GOTTA Go To This

Are you a left or a right brain person?

Most conferences are somewhat dry and focused on the functional set of industry issues.

For the past 5 years I have been going to the WIT - Web In Travel Conference in Singapore. By far it is the best conference going. What makes it different? apart from being the only real representative of what is going on in Asia, it is the context of the content that makes the difference.

If you want to stimulate your right side hemisphere and still satisfy your need for left hand side knowledge acquisition - then this is for you.

Check out their video. The talent assembled is pretty darn good.

Cheers

Farewell CO. No Longer Moving Its Tail

Today is the last day you can buy a Continental ticket.

The last day you will take a Continental Flight.

The end of a golden era of US Aviation history. The airline of Bob Six and (not so fondly remembered) Frank Lorenzo... it is now going to be a distant memory

I flew CO on so many occasions. International and US domestic. The Proud Bird was also my livelihood for a while too.

So let me just add my farewell

Cheers

Open Travel Has An Open Position

Here is a request that has come out from the Open Travel Alliance team.

Members and friends of OpenTravel,
OpenTravel is looking for a talented part-time technical resource for a Specification Coordinator position beginning ASAP as an open-ended contract. The job description is available by contacting below.

If you are interested in being considered for this position, submit a cover letter and CV/resume along with an hourly or monthly rate to positions@opentravel.org by Tuesday 12 October 2010.

Ping them if you want the job spec

Cheers

Mobile OS very like GDS

If you watch the world of technology - the battle for the Operating system has been a long and interesting one. Back in the early 1980s there were some significant players who really knew about how to talk to machines.

IBM had about 7 or more ranging from big mainframes (VM, MVW and TPF) to mid range (Sys36 and Sys 38)and then the PC - OS/2 and Dos. Plus some weird ones. Now there are really only a few - zTPF, VM iSeries and of course they are big Linux fans now.

In the mobile world Symbian used to be the Amadeus of the mobile market. Now we see them losing customers and now their only major customer is Nokia - itself a company not in great shape. So the image above looks a lot different now that Sony Ericsson has pulled out.

So who are the new kids on the Block?

As we move to smart phone we have several.

Mr Closed is RIM and his enemy Mr Apple iOS
Mr Open is Android and WebOS (now HP)

So its the big 4 vs all the others. Sound familiar?

Cheers

Why Can't We Create a Self Ironing Shirt?

....And other questions of the universe have been troubling me for some time. In my head there are questions that never get answered and ones that are almost always there to be slowly chipped away.

One of the key questions I ask myself is do we have good data to make decisions. Those who read the Professor on a regular basis know that I have this progression of data to power.

Data--> Information --> Knowledge --> Power.

One of the critical issues facing our society is the overload of data. How do we create ways for us to comprehend all the data available.
How much of it is useless?
How much of it can be inferred?
How much is qualitatively good?

As lately I have been looking at different ways to refine the process of getting at the relevant information this makes me think about search - I keep coming back to the data driven pure objective search all the way through to the highly subjective desirable results. Search remains a thoroughly unfulfilled experience today. Both in the B2B environment and of course the B2C web based environment. And I doubt highly that Google will make it - sufficiently - better when they acquire ITA as they surely will be able to.

I have no answer - I am thinking about search a lot. Fortunately the Shirt problem is not urgent. The search to the better result however is very urgent. And it is a critical matter.

Cheers

Lies, Damn Lies and then there are Fees...

I think we all know what it is like to be lied to. Politicians lie. Pressure groups lie. Advertisements lie.

So it is somewhat bad that respectable organizations such as ASTA align themselves with other organisms that are not telling the truth.

So here is the headline from BTC:


MORE THAN 50,000 TRAVELERS TELL THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION THEY ARE “MAD AS HELL!” ABOUT HIDDEN AIRLINE FEES

Consumer and Travel Groups Deliver Petition Signatures to DOT on “Mad As Hell Day!” in Support of Secretary LaHood’s Efforts to Require Airline Fee Transparency.

Er... excuse me that is actually a lie.

As I noted yesterday the issue of airline fees is but a small part of a far broader rule making input that the DoT is requesting. Further transparency of airline fees is no better - but definitely no worse than the issue of say special fee conditions that a travel agency has to live with.

While I don't personally like fees - they are here to stay. I am one of the 50,000 people who signed the petition but I was very clear that I was signing the petition for a reason to state that I supported the right of the airlines to charge the fees.

Further I also made it clear in both my submission to BTC and the coalition as well as the DoT itself that the mechanism of making the airline fees "transparent" as advocated by the Coalition was itself highly misguided. IE that making the fees transparent via the GDS channel would create a burden on everyone that was unnecessary. IE the airlines would have to do extra work and the agencies would have to do extra work and the consumer would not be any better off.

Forcing such a process would make every airline rule and regulation required in each GDS. Something that is a backward step - 15 years ago before the internet became so important to our society - yes. Today no.

So I do hope that some people will stop with the misrepresentation and the lies. Also the coalition should stop hiding its intentions and be very clear that it is against fees. Wait... isn't that what it says? Mad as hell about airline fees...

Read the fine print my friends and then decide if you want the government deep in regulating the distribution of airline products. Heck why not re-regulate the industry and re-award mail contracts.

.... BASTA as the retiring DG of IATA says. Let's not waste the government's time for something that is already more than adequately in place.

I really do wish the coalition would stop rubbishing the hard work that agents on the line do. But then I guess the real little people don't matter when you are trying to get media attention.

Cheers

Airport Delays? What Airport Delays?

So the great debate can finally be put to bed....

Yes the Tarmac rule was successful. Last month a total of 3 delays. Of course some people are cheating but still the performance during the busy August travel time was a marked improvement.So now airports will be wonderfully quiet places as people will be flying not waiting.

Further this topic of delays is also being beefed up with more regulation. And this leads me onto the other point... The issue of airline ancillary service fees.

This is likely to embolden the Anti-Fee brigade. But caution. The characterization that the Proposed NPRM is all about fee disclosure is out and out wrong.

Contrast the two statements:

This is from BTC:(Today's email blast from Radnor)

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is accepting industry comments until September 23 on a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). DOT is asking for comments on whether airlines should be required to make ancillary fee information available in a timely manner to travel agencies and travel management companies.

This is from the Official DOT Proposed Rule Making

The areas specifically stated in the NPRM.....

mentioned as being under consideration were as follows:
(1) DOT review and approval of contingency plans for lengthy tarmac delays ;
(2) reporting of tarmac delay data;
(3) standards for customer service plans;
(4) notification to passengers of flight status changes;
(5) inflation adjustment for denied boarding compensation;
(6) alternative transportation for passengers on canceled flights;
(7) opt-out provisions where certain optional services are pre-selected for consumers at an additional cost (e.g., travel insurance, seat selection);
(8) contract of carriage venue designation provisions;
(9) baggage fees disclosure;
(10) full fare advertising; and
(11) responses to complaints about charter service.

So in fact the wording of the comment period almost excludes the generalized comment on fees. It only specifically allows the addressing of baggage fees (Article 9) disclosure.

For a full view of all the documentation and the right place to comment go here:

http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=DOT-OST-2010-0140

Cheers

Expedia Rating Cut on Google Fears

Today I almost feel like a regular journalist - the headline was pure Newspaper.

However the issue is that one of the leading Internet Stock Analysts Marianne Wolk at Susquehanna Financial cut her rating for Expedia on the fears of Google entering the Travel eCommerce arena. You can read about her here.

Adding the OTAs to the mix of people threatened by the Google ITA acquisition now makes clearly two. The Meta Search companies and the OTAs.

In my view - there are two more - the suppliers particularly US airlines and the GDSs who are faced with disintermediation.

As you travel around speaking to industry heads - I find this is not something that is well understood as yet but as more people think about the individual impact - no matter how Google spins it - this is a major shift in the balance of power in Travel Distribution.

In my view that represents a major threat to a large number of players. And this is now only becoming clear to them.

If you are further interested - please feel free to contact me ProfessorSabena@gmail.com - notice the irony of the use of Google's mail.

Cheers

Has America Turned Socialist?

Americans love conspiracy theories.

The emergence of the Tea Party as an anti-government movement is a trend that will worry some but delight others.

But in reality has America turned socialist and its organizations fallen to Socialism?

The answer of course is that insanity reigns and yes America has become far too Socialist for anyone's sanity. The Socialism I am speaking about of course is Social Media. The adoption thereof has become insane.

Consider now that everyone is on Twitter. Exactly how much time would we be on the darn thing to be productive. Twitter is the ultimate time waster. It has value in selective occasions and occasionally I tweet but only when I have something to say. for the Faithful who read this blog - it seems there are now quite a few of you - it has to worry you as to the volume of stuff you are reading all the time.

If you read the true definition - well at least the Social Media version - aka Wikipedia - then it can apply in a perverted way to the use of Social Media: Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

In my view we are reaching a point of diminishing returns on Social Media. But it is still growing. Recent articles have started to question things such as privacy and the one big bugbear I have which is VOLUME.

Infoworld's Columnist has a great one on this:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/have-we-hit-social-media-overload-802?source=IFWNLE_nlt_notes_2010-09-20

It poses the same question in a humorous way. But the volume is no laughing matter. STOP!!!

I for one am getting off some of the insanity.

And thanks to Cowbell A Rays Blog for the image.