Leave Toyota Alone, Please
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Business, Politics
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic congressional delegate from the District of Columbia, decided to use the congress’s inquiries into the Toyota recall situation to ask about her own car.
This action should not have been tolerated by any of the other members of the Transportation and Infrastructure committee overseeing these hearings. I’m sure Ms. Norton felt she was making an important point, but it was not only pointless, but it was selfish. “So I ask you, is there any chance that the Camry hybrid will be recalled?” Probably a question that millions of other Toyota owners in this country alone would like to ask the company’s executives but won’t get the chance.
This question was proceeded by a story of Ms. Norton looking for an “American” hybrid, which apparently she defines as a hybrid produced by either Chrysler, Ford or General Motors. By the way, Ford and GM (to my current knowledge) both do make hybrids, but apparently Ms. Norton was unaware of that. She also wasn’t aware that most Toyotas sold in North America are built in the U.S. with parts made in the U.S., as Mr. Yoshimi Inaba told her following the story.
She then said that it was Toyota and suggested that therefore must be a Japanese car, and then accused the executives of disavowing themselves from the car and blaming Americans for the problems that the vehicles are being recalled for. Whether or not it was in jest, that really is an inappropriate comment to make to a company that is providing jobs to Americans even though they don’t really have to.
Do you think that the comments made by Ms. Norton were appropriate? John C. Dvorak on the latest episode of No Agenda (episode 177 from 2/25/10) doesn’t think so. And honestly, I agree with him and I hope the voters of D.C. are paying attention.
How Twitter Can Effectively Monetize
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Business
It’s the constant subject of bickering on any kind of podcast that includes Leo Laporte. How can Twitter better monetize? Personally, I feel as though there constant collection of money from Capital Investment firms seems to be working fine, but eventually the money faucet is going to be turned off. So, when Mom and Dad stop paying for me to backpack around Europe and go to Graduate School for the third time straight, what do I for money?
Well, this humble individual who happens to be intelligent enough to run his own blog has an idea. Among my following, are my two favorite airliners, JetBlue and Southwest. Just as a side note, they are my two favorites because they are the only ones I’ve flown on where I wasn’t treated as a serious inconvenience to the flight attendants, receptionists, and pilots flying the plane.
Well, these airliners like many other companies consider Twitter as part of their Marketing efforts on the Internet. No, you mean JetBlue really doesn’t just want to be my Twitter friend? Well, I think the people in charge of these accounts have an awful lot of fun doing it. But, here is how both JetBlue and Twitter can start making some serious cash off of this new platform.
Let’s say for example that JetBlue decides to offer a flight from New York JFK to San Francisco for $175 one way for 200 first come, first serve customers. What they can do is announce this offer to their million plus followers on Twitter and the the first 200 who click the link and book the flight at that price will get the deal. JetBlue could easily sell 200 tickets at that price in a manner of seconds over Twitter, netting $35,000 of new revenue. But, it seems to me that Twitter is a middle man in this process, so why not give Twitter a small cut of the funds? If each customer is worth $175 to JetBlue, certainly they can give $1 of that to Twitter, giving Twitter a total of $200.
Now, let’s say that JetBlue offers a similar deal to this every day or so. The next day it could be tickets from Long Beach to Las Vegas for $35, and Twitter nets 25 cents for each ticket they sell. Southwest could offer $25 off any flight over $200 for one day only over Twitter and give Twitter 5% of the sales from that offer. Twitter is being used already as a sales platform and it seems that Twitter deserves a small cut for providing this service to these companies.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, Twitter just needs to work with the many companies on Twitter to see if they are interested. It would be better than these companies having to pay a fee for their account because the company would have to be making sales before Twitter got any money. The technology to do these sorts of offers is already their and can be very beneficial for Twitter, the companies, and the people taking advantage of the offers from companies they are following.
Followers will love this, it will allow them to get good deals not available to the casual customer. “I like your company so much that I follow it on Twitter, and I deserve good deals!” I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?
Smoking in Modern America
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Business
My father, brother and I took up an invitation to join some of our friends at their home for Independence Day this last weekend. It is a family of a man of Korean descent, his wife who is native born Scottish, and there twin girls and baby boy. The woman’s Scottish mother was also there from her home on the British Isles. I love nothing more than to celebrate our country’s founding than in such diversity. Of course, being all very social creatures, we discussed many different topics, one of which being Obama’s new anti-smoking legislation.
I mentioned that I thought it was an interesting move considering the current economic situation in out country. You see, part of the legislation bans flavored cigarettes, which apparently make smoking attractive to candy addicted youth. Granted, they will still allow Menthol cigarettes because big tobacco apparently begged them for leniency. However, clove cigarettes, or Kreteks are banned. Clove cigarettes are native to Indonesia, where they are made by a number of companies including the largest, a company called Djarum (pronounced De-Jar-Um).
As of right now, Djarum cigarettes are available in most of the United States, and are exclusively imported by a company called Kretek International based in Moorpark, California. It’s an entire company who’s business is buying and selling Djarum brand clove cigarettes in the United States, and they have just been told that their business is now illegal.
Now, it is now a fact that smoking is bad, we can all agree on that. But, isn’t one of the great things about this country is our ability to freely choose to destroy our lungs? It seems to be poor form for Obama, who is trying to get the economy to turn around and then shut a small company like this down? I would like to know how many people will be losing their jobs over this bill. I imagine their are other companies like this in the same situation and that Phillip Morris and ReynoldsAmerican are also looking at making some cut-backs.
Are people ever going to remember that Tobacco is one of the things that help put our country on top economically? That a large part of our economy and our government funding through taxes depends on people continuing to buy and smoke cigarettes?
The State of Flying
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Business
As many of you know, I went to visit family in the Seattle area for a few days last week before going to Utah for my Orientation at the U. Well, I flew one of my least favorite airliners to Seattle, of which I won’t name but it begins with “U” and rhymes with “spited.” Well actually, I was having a pleasant experience for once. I had a spacious window seat in a CRJ jet from Manchester, NH to Washington Dulles, and a “Premium Economy” seat from Dulles to Chicago O’Hare. Well, at O’Hare, Spited gave me a chance to get free tickets if I agreed to get bumped to another flight to Seattle on a rival airline leaving an hour later. I won’t name the rival airline but it shares an acronym with a support network for Alcohol abusers.
Well, I happen to like flying Alcoholics Anonymous, so I agreed and got a free round trip to anywhere in the lower 48. I also figured that anything would be better than what would be a middle seat on a Boeing 757, a plane that should not exist. Being in the middle seat of a 757 for 4 hours is like sitting on a barstool for 4 hours with 300 pound man sitting on your lap. The only catch was, I had 20 minutes to get to the next terminal over. Doesn’t sound like a big deal to someone who doesn’t travel much, but usually it is a complete nightmare. But, that’s another rant for another time. My question to you, the reader, what is the definition of irony?
Well, irony is getting out of what could be a bad situation (like a middle seat on a 757 for 4 hours) and ending up in an even worse situation. When I got to the gate (“Hi, my name is Andrew Davis, and I’m a passenger”) and found that I now had a middle seat on an MD-80. Not only that, but it had rust on the wings and when the engines started up, it sounded like a 20 year old Chevy pick-up with a bad ignition. How are those freaking things still in service? When we landed at SeaTac, I crossed myself, praised Allah and Yahweh, and said many prayers of gratitude. I looked at pity at the people who were waiting in the terminal to take that same plane to San Jose.
Why is it that we spend literally hundreds of dollars flying across the country only to have to make three or four stops, sometimes in cities that aren’t even on the way to your final destination, in planes 20 years old and rusting, either baking like an oven or freezing your fingers off, and if you want a blanket, it’ll cost you ten bucks. You don’t get a personal entertainment system, you don’t get nuts, and you have limited drink choices. Where is all that money going? I know they have to pay for fuel and personnel, but they seriously have no money left over for maintenance and updating their aircraft? Just mull it over next time you lose the feeling in your knees while some kid kicks the back of your chair.