Maura Welch on Social Media

Where we're headed

I've been reading Fred Wilson's blog for a long time. He always provides intelligent, incisive observations and ideas.

He recently gave a talk at Google about why the internet is disruptive, what it's disrupting and where we are likely headed from here. Worth contemplating. Here is the slide show:

Disruption - Final Version

View more presentations from fredwilson.

Fail and Opportunity

Today on HuffPost the headline is all about Chrysler's bankruptcy.

But Infiniti has an expanding multimedia banner buy right above it.

Well done Infiniti. Chrysler? You never, ever got it.

Now the taxpayers are stuck with you.

We need to make this a turning point. With Obama administration and taxpayers, surely we can get a new American-made hydrogen cars, or major green initiative cars?

Starbucks "R" Us?

If you vote tomorrow, Starbucks will give you a free cup of coffee.

WWSPD (What would Sarah Palin do)...about that? Take a swipe at elitist, Starbucks-sipping voters?

Or maybe not...we know she favors Starbucks Mochas based on her stump rhetoric:

"I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

Even though that's not what Albright really said...insert "help" where Palin said "support" which puts a different spin on it.

But hey, Starbucks isn't just a cultural indicator, it's increasingly referred to as an economic indicator.

Salon notes that you don't need to chart foreclosures or rising unemployment to know how badly the economy is really tanking...you just watch how many Americans are "cutting back on their morning lattes at Starbucks."

On Halloween The Motley Fool named Starbucks the World's Scariest Stock due in part to "a bone-chilling outlook for consumer discretionary spending."

But why stop at the US economy? Slate's Daniel Gross has a theory that there is "a close correlation between a country having a significant Starbucks presence, especially in its financial capital, and major financial cock-ups," er...meltdowns.

"Having a significant Starbucks presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess. It's also a sign of a culture's willingness to abandon traditional norms and ways of doing business (virtually all the countries in which Starbucks has established beachheads have their own venerable coffee-house traditions) in favor of fast-moving American ones."

Hmm...I'll have to think about that over my free Starbucks coffee tomorrow.