Twitter Economics

The Twitter flotation got a lot of press this week.

They floated at $26 a share, with 505 million shares in circulation leading to a market cap of $13.1 bn.

There was lots of interest in the shares and they rose above $50, and now stand at $41.  That's a market cap of around $20 bn.

It's a very popular service, I can't deny that - and it has tentacles into all media outlets - as they have been suckers for feeling the need for a presence on it.  Especially individuals of media who feel the need to self promote (despite the obvious danger of an ill judged tweet ending your career).

But this service has never made a profit, has yet to work out an advertising strategy - and could easily be replaced by a newer more trendy upstart.

I was dubious about Facebook - this is just crazy...

Facebook Economics IV

It has been a long time since I've looked at these shares, and the madness of the Twitter float has made me look back - I was pretty downbeat on them.  Give Facebook their due, it looks like they are working out how to advertise to mobile/small screen users.

So how about the shares?

There are 2.43 billion shared in circulation.

$47.53 dollars per share,  $115.50 bn market capitilsation

$38 dollars at floatation, indicating $92.34 bn value.

So an overall increase of $23.16 bn, a 25% rise in value.

Steady progress I say, and compared to Twitter this almost looks like a sensible business now...

Social Media Sign Up

I've always shunned social media, I suppose not for any deep ideological reason - but just the inevitable consequences of a free service needing to ride on the back of the data you provide to earn money from advertising.  It creates a race-to-zero pressure to always be "innovating" (read taking liberties with your personal information) on the provider.

Of course if social media were "pay-for" I would not use it either, and I know it is up to the user how much information they are prepared to divulge.

But now as a consiencious objector of sorts I face a new threat.  I use the e-mail of a well known provider who also happens to offer a social media element.  But now almost every time I login it feels like there is a new "trick" to try and get me to accidentally sign up to their service.  Obviously as a user I'd like a button that says "not now, not ever" - but there is no way the provider would offer that, they lose an oppourtunity to catch me out.

I'm wondering how long I can hold out for...

Film: Elisabeth directed by Shekhar Kapur

A film from 1998 about the reign of Elisabeth the first.  It has historical backdrop of the Spanish Armada, but most of the film focuses around Elisabeth her lack of marriage and court intrigue.

It makes for a good film overall, a few liberties with history as always with Hollywood - you want to believe the speech delivered on horseback to rouse the troops was authentic, but surely not...

Film: Rush directed by Ron Howard

When I first heard of this film about the 1976 Formula 1 championship battle between Hunt and Lauda I knew I would be interested in seeing in, then when I heard it was directed by Ron Howard I knew it was essential viewing.

I was not disappointed, despite being relatively low budget this portrays life in Formula 1, the danger, the glamour, and the two very different characters of playboy Hunt and technocrat Lauda.

Despite all the horrific things concerning Lauda's near death the film still has plenty of room of humour and describing the world title that year.  Hunt is portrayed somewhat one dimensionally to contrast well with Lauda - but that can be forgiven as it is film and not documentary.

Book read: A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins

A really compact account of English history that does a good job of linking up the various ages of history and listing the main leaders and historical figures.

This is the kind of history that would be good at school to give such a general understanding and try to give some relevance and echoes of the history today.

Linux: Install ISO image from DVD (CentOS5)

This is for CentOS5, creating a bootable USB image that can install the .iso images:

Summarised from the following:

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey


1.  Use fdisk to setup partitions (about 60M for the boot partition, "a" makes bootable):

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *        2048      124927       61440    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdc2          124928    15638479     7756776   83  Linux

2.  Create filesystems:

mkfs.vfat -n BOOT /dev/sdc1
mkfs.ext2 -m 0 -b 4096 -L DATA /dev/sdc2

3.  Remount the USB drive, and copy iso image

mkdir /media/DATA/centos
; copy .iso images

4.  Configure syslinux boot on the FAT32 partition

syslinux -s /dev/sdc1
dd if=/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdc

mount the .iso image locally using -o loop
cp -rv /tmp/image/isolinux/ /media/BOOT/syslinux
cd /media/BOOT
mv syslinux/isolinux.cfg  syslinux/syslinux.cfg
rm -f syslinux/isolinux.bin

5.  Edit syslinux.cfg on the append statements add:

method=hd:sda2:/centos