“Sign up with Groupon if you’re going bankrupt”

I wrote a column a few months ago where I suggested that any economy that reckons Groupon is worth $5 billion is about to go pop. In the few weeks since I wrote that, its valuation has skyrocketed past $30 billion (those are American billions, but still…) Most of the reporting of Groupon so far has concentrated on its explosive growth, but a few sites have been looking beyond the attractive numbers – and they don’t like what they see.

This Techcrunch post, Why Groupon is Poised For Collapse, is fascinating.

In many cases, running a Groupon can be a terrible financial decision for merchants. Groupon’s financials also raise questions about its ongoing viability. Buying Groupon stock could be as bad a deal for investors as running a Groupon offer is for merchants.

The author argues that the shakier the business, the more useful Groupon becomes.

Assume that you’re a business that is unscrupulous and you’re looking to make a quick buck. You could create a wildly generous deal that would sell like crazy. In about 30 days, you’ll have 2/3 of your share of the deal. Then you shut down operations.

It also works for businesses that are just having a tough time. As critical as I am of Groupon, the slam dunk case is to sign up with Groupon if you’re going bankrupt. I strongly encourage every business that is about to go under to call Groupon. (Don’t tell them Rocky sent you.) It makes total financial sense—as a Hail Mary play. If you’re lucky, the upfront cash will be enough to help you stay afloat. If not, well, you were already going out of business. It may be your best option. In the short term, you’re actually helping Groupon because they’re being valued on revenue and no one is taking into account risk.

As one commenter puts it:

I can’t remember who posted it, but I read a comment a week or so ago that nailed the current bubble: for fear of missing the next Google, people are valuing everything on the assumption that it’s the next Google.

Facebook is coming for your children

I do a wee news roundup for Techradar each week, and this week social networks were the main story. Facebook, it seems, is coming for your children.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like the way the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prevents Facebook from giving accounts to under-13s. But it’s not because he wants to make money from advertisers desperate to target the elusive and big-spending pre-teen market. No sirree.

It’s because getting the wee ones on Facebook will make them clever, or something. “In the future, software and technology will enable people to learn a lot from their fellow students,” Zuckerberg says.

Remember the adage “If you can’t see what the site is selling, the product is you”? That’s Facebook – so when Zuck says he wants kids on Facebook, I have a mental image of children being fed into mincers and made into sausages. I know I’m not Facebook’s biggest fan – I’d love to write a column called Fuck Zuck where I make appalling and libellous comments about whatever annoying thing the Facebook founder’s done that month – but when a company whose business is selling your life to advertisers says it wants your kids, my Sinister Detector tends to go off the scale.

According to Reuters, Zuckerberg is now “contradicting some media reports”: ”some time in the future, I think it makes sense to explore that, but we’re not working on it right now.” What he isn’t doing is changing his position. The comment that kicked off the “coming for your kids” stories was: “That will be a fight we  take on at some point.”

He isn’t saying Facebook doesn’t want your children. He’s saying Facebook doesn’t want them just yet.

“I swear if someone touches my kids I’ll do time”

I’m increasingly convinced that, with the honourable exception of this site, you should never read beyond the end of a product listing or online article. Comments are where the crazies live.

As you may have noticed, Kate McCann has written a book about her daughter’s abduction and the aftermath. Over to you, Amazon reviewer Matthew Charles.

I dont understand why this particular case is of such high knowing, kids get kidnaped all the time and while yes it is sad escpeically for the parents, i dont get why this one is so important.

plus no one seems to mention the fact that the parents left their children alone in a hotel room while they went out for dinner, everyone seems to leave out that little detail.

and if u ask me its a little sick to publish a book, if peopel really think all the money is goign to the cahrity then… thats just ridiculous thinking.

39 out of 75 people found that review helpful.

Prolific reader Matthew has reviewed one other book, Pat Reeat’s “Whatever happened to the English?”, which he reckons is “truly a work of art”. He says:

An incredibly well written take on modern england… oh sorry I meant “united kingdom” no doubt the police will arrest me for making that simple mistake rather than stopping actual crime.
What has this country come too!!!?????

Indeed. What has it come too!!!?????

[The quote in the title is from Private Eye - it's a running joke in the magazine's From The Message Boards section.]

“You’re all our bitches now”

Good news for the BPI: BT and TalkTalk’s appeal against the Digital Economy Act has been rejected. It turns out that the Act is perfectly fair and decent and nothing to worry about whatsoever.

Amazingly, I have an opinion about that.

“Shareholders and customers of BT and TalkTalk might ask why so much time and money has been spent challenging the act to help reduce the illegal traffic on their networks,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said. “You’re all our bitches now.”

OK, he didn’t say that last bit. But it’s true all the same. If BT and TalkTalk don’t appeal, we’re stuffed.

This is, like, quite interesting, you know?

What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness: The decline and fall of American English, and stuff

I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.

Stay classy, National Enquirer

I wrote this two years ago. It’s relevant again, with the National Enquirer running a particularly horrible story about Steve Jobs based on that old medical procedure, “showing a media-friendly doctor a photo and publishing whatever shit he says”:

Steve Jobs doesn’t have his finger on the nuclear button, he doesn’t run the world, and his personal life is none of our business. He’s a smart man with a good job in an interesting company, a man whose family don’t need, let alone deserve, to see every newspaper, blog, TV station and forum poster second-guessing his doctors’ diagnoses.

Panorama and videogames

Last night’s Panorama programme – the BBC’s flagship current affairs show – was dedicated to the evils of videogames. I haven’t seen it, but I do know that John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun is an eminently reasonable and trustworthy writer, so I’m linking to this piece he wrote about it.

I believe that there is a real risk for those who use gaming to compensate for other negative factors in their lives, and for those whose gaming becomes problematic for any reason. I believe that these matters deserve to be taken seriously. It is to be treated with severity. This sort of scaremongering endangers such people by mis-labelling.

For example:

We move on to the tragic story of the Korean couple who let their baby die through neglect, as they spent their time gaming. We get told that they both had “low IQs” and that both suffered from “depression”, but both those factors are ignored because as a result of their circumstances they spent too much time playing Prius Online. “She was mentally not that stable to begin with,” explains a doctor at the clinic that treated the mother. But this isn’t an episode about mental illness leading to the deaths of babies. It’s about gaming causing it. Gaming caused it.

I agree entirely with John: so many people play games that it’d be strange if problematic gaming didn’t exist. However:

Until there is some evidence that gaming can create an addiction in someone otherwise undisposed to addictive behaviour, then it must be understood as a consequence of addiction, not a cause. To do otherwise is ignorant, dangerous, and harmful to the individuals. Blame it on gaming, and you’ll take away the games, leaving the person to continue suffering.

Twitter trials and tech tomfoolery

Two things online, one serious and one less serious. First, why the Twitter joke trial is a travesty.

If you can be arrested for saying something unpleasant, if obvious attempts at comic hyperbole can get you prosecuted, then Charlie Brooker, Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr had better get out of the country fast.

Also, it’s weird tech – including plans for luxury hotels that’ll let you stay for free if you’ll have sex in front of their webcams.

Could such a scheme work here? We asked the manager of our local Travelpit, who told us that while free rooms probably wouldn’t happen she’d throw in breakfast if we [censored] her [censored] and [censored] [censored] [censored]. We’re pretty sure that isn’t national policy.

The original said Travelodge, which I think is funnier. Oh well.

OMG you’re fired

Once upon a time, I saw something on the Internet that annoyed me.

I thought I was immune to disturbing online images, but apparently not: I saw something today that had me jumping round the room in fury. It was a redundancy letter, uploaded to Flickr, and was signed not by hand, but in a handwriting font.

Stripper boots – y’know, for kids

Is it just me, or are these Lelli Kelly boots — currently the subject of near-constant advertising on kids’ TV channels — utterly inappropriate for the under-tens they’re aimed at?