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Pulliam and Demos look at the murky world of pre IPO trading of shares by venture capital companies and by employees of the pre-IPO companies in the secondary market. Federal and state laws permit pre-IPO trading for unregistered securities. The SEC has not issued more than a couple of enforcement actions for the trading of pre-IPO shares from startup companies. Wealth is now created before an IPO is done. During the 2000 tech boom most of the surge in price happened after the IPO- Amazon's IPO giving the company a valuation of $400 million based on IPO price then, compared to $171 billion in 2015, and Facebook worth $104 billion at the IPO price in 2012, and twice that in 2015. 78 privately held companies are worth over $1 billion in 2015, with combined valuation of $310 billion. The surge in prices of pre-IPO shares comes from the huge demand from investors, who are willing to accept that not much financial information will be disclosed by the startup companies, in the hope of quickly earning a large profit. The estimates of pre-IPO trading for the shares is in the range of $10- $30 billion in shares traded in 2014. This is what the WSJ's Puliam and Demos learned from extensive interviews with traders, investmetn bankers, hedge fund managers, venture capital executives, lawyers and company officials....

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At this rate China and India will through the time young people are being encouraged to pursue reading and education- and through strictly regulated social media and videogames in China and TikTok banned in India- move in the direction of developed nations and the US with 150 million users of TikTok be moving in the other direction where Brazil 126 million users and Indonesia 99 million users are. This report in MIT Technology Review says in 2022 the children and teenagers in America spent 103 minutes on TikTok. Tiktok and Facebook split the social media market with about 5 billion minutes each. If users are on both this could give an average of 206 minutes or over 3 hours a day. Consider that there is a Chinese version Douyin. In China its version of TikToK is strictly regulated for a long time now and nowhere poses the kind of threat to education, reading and building a better educated population in China than in the US. Is that a conspiracy. No, says MIT Technology Review, it is because how quickly and forcefully the Chinese governments regulates digital platforms.  It a clear failure of the US Congress and the federal government that has led to this situation where this may be the first generation of young people that are less prepared for civic responsibilities and are from the amount of time dedicated to social media spending less time on reading to to be knowledgeable, and reading in general for education.  In China action is swift. Take for example video games and addiction. In 2021 the rule was put in that children under 18 could only play video games between 8.00 pm and 9.00 pm on weekends and holidays. They are blocked from using outside of these hours. China is looking for new measures that require creators to obtain a license, and for ways for the government to regulate the social media algorithms themselves.  ...

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The book that is The Times and Sunday Times best thought of book of the year 2024 is Jonathan Haidt's Anxious Generation. It shows how teenagers instead of playing with their friends and doing activity outdoors, are isolated in their rooms scrolling through smartphones and deluging their minds with information that is very often toxic. Life was simpler and physically active before Steve Jobs smartphones and social media of facebook, twitter and tiktok. Quality of life has deteriorated not advanced with these technologies. Born to Rule by Friedman and Reeves is about the British Elite. The puzzling thing about the people in it is that they want to pass themselves off as relatable and normal, says The Times. None of the powerful and influential will admit to being in the elite or establishment it says and asks why are they so embarrassed? The same could be said for the American elite or establishment who will pass themselves off as normal and relatable too and don't think of them as part of this group.  ...

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The failure of Nintendo's new handheld 3DS video game device to win market acceptance. Sales dropped to 710,000 in the last 3 months from 3.6 million the prior quarter. Nintendo has now made a big price cut from $250 to $170. The entire videogame industy is going through a transformation where a closed platform like Nintendo's is facing obsolescence. Today any device with a screen and an internet connection can work for videogaming. Companies such as Zynga have Facebook games such as "Farmville" and "Cityville." Mobile and social games are $1 or $5 and often free when they have advertising within the games. They can be readily acccessed instantly by downloading, Contrast that with Nintendo games for 3DS which can sell for $30 to $40. Nintendo has sold over 87 million Wiis and 147 million DS devices. But the sales are dropping precipitiously. Wii sales dropped to 1.56 million in the most recent quarter compared to 3.04 million in the prior year, and DS sales fell to 1.44 million from 3.15 million, according to Nintendo. As a whole game sales in retail stores including hardware and software are declining down to $995 million in June 2011 from $1.111 billion for the same month prior year, according to NPD Group. Microsoft continues to see an increase in its Xbox gaming business- with a 30% increase in sales to $1.49 billion for the last quarter for the division with the Xbox business. One reason is that this is a group of hard core gaming customers who prefer shooting and sports games including the use of a camera device called Kinect where body movements are used by players. In that manner this business is insulated from the overall trend where game developers are shifting to new technologies and developemnts such as Facebook and iPhone. Electronic Arts is focussing on the fast growth for popular games on the iPad....

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A ban on TikTok in 270 days is plausible, with credit going to Republican senators in Congress, as they insisted on it being incuded in the Ukraine aid bill package. Not only because of security and democratic process concerns- then one asks why what other real even larger concerns?  A ban on TikTok by restricting its use that does not affect education is already in place in China, yet such a ban is easier implemented in state power centralized government for the benefit of China's young generation and not in the US system of government. Excessive time spent on social media apps in the US including TikTok as the largest are a serious problem in America today -for young people's educational activity such as reading, studies, and for mental health. Taking a large part of the young generation in a direction that is not beneficial for the US, for democratic process to function with young people taking time to be better informed and for the health of the younger generation.  People assume that TikTok audiences will shift to other social media apps such as Facebook, but a large part of the TikTok population may engage in other activities that promote health as the consciousness for food and its preparation increases, for the value of exercise, engagement in sports and viewing sports or music, engagement in Nature and hobbies, and in time spent on travel, all happening as the Nation shifts its attention and consciousness after these troubled decades from financial crisis of 2009 to the pandemic, a period of dismal failure to deliver public services with funding diverted and misallocation in capital markets collapsing or near collapsing infrastructure around us sapping the Nation's spirit and its energies.  A new spirit is emerging in the Nation and a shift in the attention of the younger generation as it feels the fatigue that is now felt for music idols such as Taylor Swift is entirely plausible so that TikTok would have risen and faded away both in the US, India, and even in China as it shifts its attention in a different world. ...

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Google is competing with Facebook and Apple for startup companies.

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Peter Funt points to the time before the internet when daily papers were delivered and radio carried the news between music, and it was hard not have it rub off while hearing the radio or glancing at the sports pages. This rub-off effect meant that even by casual listening or accidentally people got the news. Before cable television the news came from nightly and evening general interest news broadcasts. People usually caught the major news at dinner time or before bedtime as most entertainment broadcasting paused for news broadcasts. By contrast in today's environment news is pulled on the internet home page only from the sources and topics one has selected, or watching one of the 24 cable channels that are essentially covering a liberal or conservative agenda, leaving people less informed about current events except in ways that reinforce one's opinions or biases. Others get their news from tweets, or social media. Funt call this a complete inversion of the traditional process of getting news- where the traditional process was to combine what people wanted to see and ought to see, the new process was to give what people wanted to see. Add to this competitive pressures and budget cuts, and news was shifting by design and intent to what people wanted or were likely to click on frequently, even on sites like BBC News with proliferation of trivia. The net result- there is too much which poses as "news" but is not news such as trivia, less coverage of news, and as the title of this article suggests, too much media and too little general news to shed light on events that affect our daily lives. Funt was writing in 2009, when Google News and Facebook News Feed were just getting started. By 2016, this inversion was causing serious alarm because of the way misinformation was becoming prevalent. This article reminds one that this was not always the case, this is something that has developed only in the last couple of years- that it is not a constructive development, and which we now realize can have a disruptive effect on democracy through spread of misinformation. Funt cites Scripps News slogan- "Give light and the people will find their own way," - that there is a role for traditional general news in our daily lives which informs and lets us form our own opinions afterwards,  that the social media news feeds on the internet run by algorithms or 24 hour cable news channels run for conservative or liberal agendas is not a subsitutute,  that most of us can use the help of good editors, and good broadcasters.       ...

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This NYT account of what happened at Facebook as it faced privacy issues and issues related to its detrimental impact on societies here and abroad, is based on interviews with 50 people close to Facebook. Its social media presence slows and it shifts to a different strategy of focussing on its role as a messaging app following trends that show young people are turning away from publicly posting status and photos. Meantime its controversial role in information in the past is coming under heightened scrutiny. A realization that social media role in information was never appropriate  happened by accident, and is reversible. Other accounts say that the shift happens from trends of young users not from company management and values. 

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The tech boom bust since 2000 that has hurt America and Europe and which also laid the foundations for the loss of manufacturing and technology to China, ceding American leadership and critical advantage, is shown here in the WSJ. The role of the finance sector  is explained here. That has added one more factor to the factor of endless wars in the Middle East, where American and European investment in healthcare, education and new infrastructure was somehow diverted away, and much of America's and Europe's resources wasted- or not turned to the benefit of the people of America or Europe.  One financial firm that rode the tech boom to the hilt finds itself with unacceptable losses except in a severe recession. Tiger Global Management was using tens of billions of dollars from pensions, endowments and rich clients riding on some of Silicon Valley's hottest stocks.  With the plunge in tech stock values including startups in which Tiger pushed into aggressively now facing large losses after hyper valuations, Tiger's hedge fund which managed $23 billion at the end of 2021 was down 52% in 2022. Another of its funds that managed $11 billion has lost 62%. WSJ says this wiped out two thirds of the gains Tiger has made in the tech stocks since its founding. In addition large writedowns are expected on its venture funds valued at $64 billion at the end of 2021, says WSJ.  WSJ says cheap money (money somehow diverted from infrastructure and funding manufacturing in China instead of the US now goes by the misnomer cheap money) reshaped Silicon Valley in the last decade, as pension funds, rich investors and celebrities turned to well connected money managers such as Tiger to put money in tech stocks and startups. This WSJ report says compared to Sequoia Capital and an earlier generation of venture companies Tiger Global is simply not interested in management of companies it invests in, taking a broad brush approach, using Bain Capital for research, and trying to haul in a large load of fish like trawlers at sea hoping for some companies to make big gains. Many pension funds such as Calpers California's public pension fund invest in Tiger with a $400 million investment. WSJ also reports that Tiger Global's venture funds do not reflect the realities of the tech business as venture stocks will reflect the drop over 2022 and 2023, including its ByteDance Chinese tech investment which will need larger writedowns. Tiger has also not hesitated to get into cryptocurrency which has loss of about $1.5 trillion dollars. It is of interest to note that Julian Robertson, hedge fund manager of the 2000 period (when Clinton-Bush were US presidents) who ran Tiger Management provided the impetus for Mr. Coleman, then 25 years old, for the start of Tiger Global. Julian Robertson closed his fund in 2000 during the dot com bust. Coleman hired a Blackstone analyst and started on the next cycle of tech with social media platform Facebook now Meta, followed by China's JD.com as investments in a new China boom were started. The end result is that during a period of Middle East wars under Bush and Obama, and building dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies under Schroeder and Merkel, China was the gainer as the US and EU lost much of its manufacturing and technology to China. During this period US and Europe neglected investment in infrastructure that would benefit the people of America in ease of living and quality of life. Just as money was wasted in wars much of the tech investment was wasted. The companies that added value over time were started long before and relied on sales growth and new products that revolutionized their field such as Apple with smartphones that started well before the nineteen eighties, Amazon with logistics and its own style of management, Microsoft from an even earlier era. Tech monopolies Facebook, Google, and others would not be missed much in terms of real progress for the people of America. The cost is many decades of ceding manufacturing and technology advantage to China by US and the EU led by Germany. China 2030 and the war in Ukraine with China's support have shown how fragile the foundations have been with weak political leadership and a finance sector running backwards in terms of America's and Europe's strengths in new infrastructure, better healthcare, services and education for the people of America and Europe. Leaving it to the Biden administration and a new coalition of Greens and Scholz in Germany to begin the task of rebuilding America and Europe on strong foundations, including the dignity of the workers and families, that makes who we are and what we believe in, and why the free world believes in us. ...

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This New York Times editorial says a smaller Wall Street and growing jobs in other fields will be good for New York as well as good for the country. It says New York politicians should focus on finding new ways for New York to broaden its tax base and get new businesses and new opportunites in fields such as media, advertising, entertainment, health care and tourism. Especially welcome are initiatives such as the science and tech campus of Cornell University promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Tighter financial rules and higher capital requirements are good for the country and for New York the editorial emphasizes, because they help control reckless banking practices that destroy capital and opportunities for growth elsewhere in the economy. It points to Kevin Rose's Nov. 21, 2011 account in the Times showing a healthy culture shift in New York and the country with the status jobs being seen not at Goldman Sachs but at Google, Apple and Facebook. Rose's account shows that in the last 3 years the number of Wall Street employees of ages 20-34 declined by 25%....

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The old NASDAQ in 2000 cannot be compared to the new NASDAQ in 2015 because the companies in the index have changed, and the proportion of tech and health care companies has also changed. Healthcare and consumer companies are now 37% on the index compared to 18% in the NASDAQ index in 2000. Tech is a much smaller component of the NASDAQ, declining from 64% to 43%. And three companies Apple, Google and Microsoft, makeup 20% of the index, with Amazon, Facebook and Intel added making that 30% of the entire 2015 NASDAQ index. Only 3 of the top ten companies in the 2000 NASDAQ are around in 2015 NASDAQ index- Intel Corp., Microsoft, and Cisco Systems. Yahoo, Oracle, Dell, Sun, JDS, WorldCom are no longer the top 10 companies in the index as they were in 2015. The speculative momentum stocks such as Netflix and Tesla make up 0.38% and 0.33% of the NASDAQ in 2015. In healthcare part of NASDAQ 2015 companies such as Gilead Sciences and Amgen are in the top ten.

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According to ComScore the Yahoo internet site had 618 million unique desktop visitors globally in October 2015, compared to Facebook's 863 million. But for Yahoo this traffic is not yielding much in terms of revenue and profit. Yahoo's lack of quality content to command premium pricing means a continual decline in ad revenues. Analysts point to the lower quality of traffic on the Yahoo site, fewer direct searches on its site relative to clicks on ads, and aspects of its collaboration with Bing and Google, as serious problems. Compared to Google News, Yahoo News is chaotic and likely to draw less quality traffic, with the addition of Kate Couric and other commentary not having much impact on the gradual deterioration of the site. Facebook is dominant in mobile with $3.4 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2015, compared to $271 million for Yahoo. As a result Yahoo's internet site based on its current share price in Dec. 2015 shows a small or insignificant valuation considering the level of traffic. ...

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Zynga's losses and a 39% drop in share price in July 2012.

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Speaker Johnson says "all of us 100 percent support the principle behind it." 100% support means killing the key part of the Kids bill on protecting mental health. Republican Senator from Tennessee Marsha Blackburn is leading the fight for the Kids Online Safety Act. It passed the US Senate in a 91-3 vote.  Donald Trump Jr. says  “It's time for House Republicans  to pass the Kids Online Safety Act ASAP.” House Republicans are trying to water down a bill on social media (Facebook and others) by taking out duty of care language that social media companies want taken out. Lobbying by social media companies means Speaker Johnson is holding out even when DJT and Elon Musk, have joined 35 states Attorney Generals, and the Biden Administration's Surgeon General in a bipartisan effort to get the House to pass the social media legislation. Speaker Johnson says "all of us 100 percent support the principle behind it." 100% support means killing the key part of the Kids bill on protecting mental health. Limiting it to physical harm defeats the purpose of the legislation as the WSJ did an extensive investigative report series documenting the harm to mental health and mental health is what needs protecting.   ...