Social media is the same as everything else

The partisans of social media, e.g. blogs, facebook, twitter, speak of it fundamentally changing how we interact, ushering in a new age of transparency and direct connections
But, it ends up being like everything else. Consider two examples.

Jim Jubak used to write for MSN Money. While at MSN Money, he started a presence on Facebook. People could become his Facebook friend and receive updates from him. Then one day, Jim Jubak stopped writing for MSN Money. The editors of MSN Money said that he was on haitus. Their note was brief and had few details. Readers of Jubak had many questions, even concern for his health and well-being. The Facebook page should have shed some light on what happened, but there were no updates. It turned out that there was some kind of dispute, and Jim Jubak started a new site. Until the new site was launched, there was very little communication between Jubak and his fans about his status. It was as if he had disappeared from the landscape.

Another example involves The Onion's weekly newspapers. There used to be one for San Francisco, but it stopped being published. While there was coverage in other media, The Onion hardly made a statement about it.
They had (and still have) a vehicle for making annoucements, http://sanfrancisco.decider.com/. I don't recall seeing a message there about the shutdown of the San Francisco edition of the newspaper. This url now redirects to http://www.avclub.com/chicago/. There is no mention that the San Francisco edition existed and is now shut.

What do these two examples prove? Nothing really, except that we have not arrived in Utopia. Social media, or just the relative ease of publishing content on the Internet, has enabled more openness and easier communication. But, when there are things that are uncomfortable or require some discretion, better tools aren't enough for full transparency.

Oracle and Sun

Sun recently agreed to sell itself to Oracle. There has been much speculation about how Oracle can make money from Sun. My guess is that Oracle will start charging for Java. Java has become entrenched in enterprise software development, so there are no worries that cost will slow down the adoption of Java. Additionally, the enterprise market is used to paying for software and services, so Oracle would not have to break new ground to get that market to pay for Java.

Oracle has managed to extract money for database products even though there are several free (and open source) databases that are popular. It uses the feature richness and performance of its database product to compete against the free offerings. It also takes advantage of its incumbency to charge for a product because free competitors are not free due to switching costs.
It could use the same model for Java and probably with the same customers too.

amazon and the importance of core competency

How importance is core competency? I first knew about Amazon.com as online bookseller. Then it expanded into other categories like music and electronics. Eventually, it started to sell all kinds of products. It dabbled in other kinds of retail endeavors like auctions, but it seemed to be sticking to selling products to consumers.

Then Amazon introduced EC2 and AWS. Suddenly, it was selling computing resources to developers which seemed far afield from selling books on the web. Then, it developed and sold the Kindle, an e-book reader with wireless access.

These seem like separate lines of business that are not very connected. What happened to the idea of core competency? It's an important concept that businesses need to consider when choosing what to do. Now, it may be possible to come up with a core competency for Amazon that encompasses all these businesses, but I would expect that explanation would cover almost any other business too. Such an all-encompassing purview seems to defeat the point of articulating a core competency.

The demise of Conde Nast Portfolio

Conde Nast's decision to shut down its business magazine Portfolio received a lot of attention. One common viewpoint was that the magazine's monthly publication schedule was not appropriate for a business magazine. BusinessWeek wrote, "It came at a time when business is a moment-by-moment bloodsport uniquely unsuited to being chronicled by a leisurely monthly frequency."

I understand that things move quickly in the finance world. For example, the day I started writing this, the stock market opened with big gains only to close with a small loss.

However, many of the important business stories of the past few years developed much more slowly. The housing boom lasted for years. And, the housing bust that followed took years to manifest itself too. There is plenty of room for a monthly publication to explore important developments.

In fact, a monthly publication has an advantage in that it can ignore the hour-to-hour, day-to-day fluctuations that the cable news and weekly magazines drown the viewer/reader in. It is too easy to lose the forest for the trees. The thinking that "a moment-by-moment bloodsport" can not be covered by a monthly frequency is not right and should be changed.

Why is Columbia Park boys and girls club in the mission?

I've walked by the Columbia Park boys and girls club many times. It's located on Guerrero Street in the Mission, and there is no place called Columbia Park near it. I've often wondered why it was called that.

The answer turns out to be fairly straightforward. The boys and girls club used to be located near Columbia Square. Columbia Square is a park in SOMA, near Harrision and Columbia. At some point, the club moved to Guerrero Street but kept the name of the old location.

This information came from "San Francisco: As it Was, as it Is, and how to See it" by Helen Throop Purdy. From that book, I also learned that Dolores Park used to be called Mission Park and used to have a wading pool. It's available on the internet at Google Book Search