Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

You Are A Facebook User, Right?

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February 5th, 2012

So where were you on Day 1?

To my everlasting disappointment I regret a missed opportunity. I was junior clerk in an engineering office downtown. Next door was a small insurance company. One of the clerks working there was a neighbor of mine in the street where I lived out in the suburbs. He was a few years older than I and we were only on nodding terms, both at home on the street and in the office corridors. From experience gained while working at the insurance company he started up his own insurance company. He collected money from friends by way of $1,000 “investment lots” and gave them shares in exchange. For some reason he never offered me any shares. His new company took off and became, and still is, a major international insurance company and his friends who invested became rich.

The Facebook story

Now it’s Facebook time. At the very start of the Facebook story, a guy called David Choe was asked to paint murals on the walls of the offices. Choe, who says his “dirty-style figure paintings combine themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation”, took shares in Facebook instead of a cash payment. He chose to gamble his fee and now the shares look like being the hottest property on the US stock market.

Street artist

Choe calls his painting style “dirty.” In his documentary, he says his smeared and smudged painting method comes from being left-handed when he was little. He told an art magazine, “dirty styles is painting on found object besides a blank piece of paper or blank white wall … so even before you start there’s some history, there’s some spills, chills and marks, then you keep creating more history on top of that, spilling, spraying, dripping, creaming, collaging, making a mess. I create hope from dark beginnings.”

The Facebook IPO

With Facebook being pitched in the $75-$100 billion range, those murals could turn out to be more expensive than the $140 million paid in 2006 for Pollock’s No 5, 1948, or even the $200.7 million paid at auction for a collection of Damien Hirst pieces in 2008. Jackson Pollock may lose his record for creating the most expensive painting ever, not to another enfant terrible of the art world, but to a minor Los Angeles mural painter who happened upon the Facebook offices in 2005.

New-found wealth

Although Choe declined to speak about his new-found wealth, his Facebook fanpage tells his story: “In 2005, internet entrepreneur Sean Parker, a longtime fan, asked him to paint graphic sexual murals in the interior of Facebook’s first Silicon Valley office, and in 2007, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg commissioned him to paint somewhat tamer murals for their next office.”

Millionaires and billionaires

David Choe could be the unlikeliest of all the millionaires and billionaires who will be minted by the social network’s flotation this year. If the company hits the top valuations being talked about, then Choe will have been paid about $200 million for the “graphic sexual murals” that adorned Facebook’s walls in its early years. Is he a good artist? Who cares?

Tags: facebook, IPOs, Shares
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Anti-Wall Street Movement Spreading By the Day

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October 16th, 2011

Wall Street goes global!

We could be seeing the start of a worldwide pandemic, meaning “an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across multiple continents, or even worldwide”. Throughout the country, from several dozen people in Jackson, Miss., to some 2,000 each in Pittsburgh and Chicago, the protest gained momentum.

Sunday the day of rest

The protesters at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement were planning a day of rest Sunday, a day after rallies across the globe drew thousands who marched and chanted and, in some cases, grew violent. In New York City, the group that insists on being leaderless had nothing on its agenda save its nightly assembly and one committee meeting. In the weeks that the protesters have occupied a park in lower Manhattan, Sundays have been used to recuperate.

Chicago

In Chicago, about 175 people were arrested in the early hours after refusing to obey a police order to leave a park that closed at 11 p.m. They were in somewhat of a contrast to demonstrators elsewhere, who have taken care to follow laws in order to continue protesting. Still, the arrests were mostly peaceful, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Rome

Saturday, billed as "a global day of protest", demonstrators gathered in cities throughout the world to rally against what they see as corporate greed and Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis. In Rome, rioters hijacked a peaceful gathering and smashed windows, tore up sidewalks and torched vehicles. Repair costs were estimated at $1.4 million, the mayor said Sunday.

The banks

As many as 1,000 demonstrators also paraded to a Chase bank branch in New York, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed. A few went inside the bank to close their accounts, but the group didn’t stop other customers from getting inside or seek to blockade the business. Lily Paulina of Brooklyn said she was taking her money out because she was upset that JPMorgan Chase was making billions of dollars, while its customers struggled with bank fees and home foreclosures. "The Chase bank is making tons of money off of everyone, while people in the working class are fighting just to keep a living wage in their neighborhood," the 29-year-old United Auto Workers organizer said.

Europe

Overseas, tens of thousands nicknamed "The Indignant" marched in cities across Europe, as the protests that began in New York linked up with long-running demonstrations against government cost-cutting and failed financial policies in Europe. Protesters also turned out in Australia and Asia.

Another Facebook revolution

Just like the social revolutions that hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Israel and other countries, this economic protest will spin out of control very quickly. Directed by email postings, it is virtually impossible to stop it. It is in the nature of a “happening” instead of an armed uprising. What’s interesting is the outcome: will this cause a change in the global economy which is teetering anyway or will it just die from natural causes in the end? Difficult to predict.

Tags: Economic protest, facebook, Occupy Wall Street uprising, Social protest
Posted in Business, Economy, Employment, Finance, Personal / Internet | No Comments »

That Get Rich Quick Scheme of Yours Will Probably Fail

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July 28th, 2011

Be careful what you sign up for

You’ve seen ads and watched late night infomercials for get rich quick schemes. You may even have signed up or bought a guide to quick riches.

The good life

We all dream of living the good life, guys lying back, surrounded by lots of beautiful girls in bikinis. Most of the get rich schemes are aimed at men. There are no ads featuring laid-back women surrounded by scantily clad men.

Reality

Reality comes crashing down when you realize that the only person getting rich quick off of these schemes or books is the guy who sold you the “system” which was supposed to make you wealthy beyond all imagination. Here’s the reality: while some get rich quick schemes really are crackpot ideas that will not make anyone rich, many of them actually do have some good ideas. The problem isn’t so much in the concept as in the methodology.

Important Aspect

The problem with a get rich quick scheme, assuming it is a decent one is that they show you the pretty girls and the fabulous lifestyle, but they don’t show you the hard work that goes into making lots of money.

Luck

We see people like Mark Zuckerberg and say wow, “that guy was so incredibly lucky to have created Facebook when he did”. What we don’t see is that he worked like crazy to create his company, putting in the 80 hour weeks to make it happen. We don’t see the time when he was poor and living in a college dorm, trying to build a successful company.

The Problem

This illustrates one of the two problems with get rich quick schemes: They focus on the goal of becoming a millionaire when they should be focusing on the work that it takes to get there. There is a certain amount of luck, of being in the right place at the right time with the right idea involved in them.

Another Reason

Whether you want to get rich quick or get rich slow, you’re going to have to work hard to do it. However, in order to get rich quick, it’s more than just working hard, it’s working smart. It’s coming up with an idea that could change lives and then running with it.

The cookie cutter approach

This is the second reason that most get rich quick schemes fail – because they suggest a cookie cutter approach rather than you taking the idea and crafting it to your own individual needs. If millions of people could follow a simple, turnkey idea and become multi-millionaires, there wouldn’t be any poor people left in the world. The reality is that not only do you need to work hard, but you also need to be innovative, to put your own “seal” on the get rich quick scheme by adapting it to your needs. That’s the way to make untold riches. Unfortunately, most of us have trouble thinking outside the box and as such, tend to fail at getting rich quick.

Tags: facebook, Get rich quick schemes, Hard work, Luck
Posted in Business, Economy, Employment, Finance, Money, Personal / Internet | No Comments »

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