Blog For Sale - Inquire Within

In case you missed it, Yahoo bought the blog site Tumblr for over a Billion Bucks. You heard that right. See the story here at http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/05/yahoo_buys_tumblr_for_11_billi.html#incart_river_default.

A billion dollars for a social media blogging site, while rather amazing, may be reasonable considering the continued popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. However, relevancy cannot be bought. Hewlett-Packard tried it to compete with Dell in the early 2000s and now there are rumors that HP will try to buy Dell (we’ll see: http://www.computerdealernews.com/news/is-hp-crazy-enough-to-buy-dell-sadly-probably-not/23107). Microsoft bought Skype in 2011 for a ton (http://www.wired.com/business/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/); and remember last year when Google bought Motorola for 13-big-ones (http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/22/technology/google-motorola/index.htm).

[In comparison, dropping only a paltry billion for Tumblr is not only “walking around money”, but may be kind of score you expect to see at the Saturday Farmer’s Market]

Here’s the point: the consumer tech industry is in an upheaval.  Whether or not Windows 8 is to blame for the decline in PC sales is debatable (see “Yes”: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153111-windows-8-causes-most-precipitous-pc-decline-in-history; and “No”: http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/windows-8-pc-sales-woes/), the fact is that PC sales are down is not. I would contend that PC sales are down because the consumer market is – and has been – transitioning to mobile computing in a big way.

Mobile computing has made remarkable gains since the introduction of the iPhone only a few years ago (does anyone remember the Palm Pilot?), and Windows 8 is really only the grand conclusion of this movement. The problem for Microsoft seems to be that they missed the target by about 2 years.

Here’s why. As with any major industry cycle– and we are in the middle of one right now – there will be a transition to Maturity (for an excellent graphic of the Product Development Life Cycle, see: http://www.witiger.com/marketing/plc.jpg). Apple for the most part, spends it’s time in the early stages of the Growth phase with innovation being it’s hallmark. However, even for Apple, it is difficult to stay there (see: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/21/apple-suppliers-idINDEE93K06320130421).

But, the PDLC is a slippery slope. And, once it moves into Maturity, you can’t buy your way back to innovation. PCs are long into Maturity, and mobile devices are getting there quickly.

Instead, watch for a big “shaking out”. We have heard this song before: pending some kind of crazy event or bubble-burst, we should see over the next few years a reorganization of the mobile and social media industries to only a few very large players.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see this one coming.

Kmart Email Phish?

I received a most interesting email this weekend from “Kmart” as an e-receipt for purchases made at the Salem Kmart. You can register with Kmart to have these receipts sent to your email. It is a nice convenience which we chose last Christmas so that we could track purchases and exchanges. What was troubling was that I was in Salem last week but did not make any purchases anywhere. Additionally, the e-receipt showed the last 4 digits of the credit card and they were not any of mine. Hmm…

Now, there are some interesting analytic software out which can customize spam messages to your location, jobs (based on my .edu domain), and even shopping habits. This is also why you get customized advertising on some sites after doing a particular kind of search.

Additionally, I tracked the destination on some of the hyperlinks and saw a site called kmart.rsys2.net. Interestingly, I found an rsys2.net server in Russia. Ah-ha! Gotcha. So I sent a spam report to Kmart.

It turns out that the e-receipt was indeed authentic. The problem was that when we applied for e-receipts, the data entry person aligned our email with someone else's account. So when they made a legitimate purchase, it was applied to our account. [!]

The moral of the story is: sometimes the hacker you fear most is the data entry person inside your own organization.