Blotter

Getty Images and Facebook executive say marketers rely on fear-mongering tactics

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Stock photography allows branders and marketers to introduce what many agree are the four basic marketing emotions that get people to pay attention to an advertisement: Greed (75% off!), Vanity (Be the best!), Exclusivity (Limited edition!) and Emotion (Don't lose in life!). Companies like Apple elicit exclusivity when new hardware flies off the shelf. The sports equipment industry knows that vanity is the great motivator for selling their products and major grocery chains rarely veer from catering to customers' greed. Now, representatives from two of the richest media companies, Facebook and Getty Images, have teamed up in an attempt to force marketers to diversify their imaging strategy by stymieing the emotional female fear-mongering advertisement. Their message has more to do with the desire for marketers to diversify which emotions they are eliciting when portraying images...

Twitter loses billions due to bad design

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On February 5th Twitter announced that slowing sales and disappointing user growth means they need to reconfigure their design and core functionality. Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, told disappointed stock holders that twitter is desperately working on making its interface easier for users to use. “We will continue to invest in making Twitter a more visually engaging medium,” he said. “It will be a combination of changes introduced over the year that we believe will begin to change the slope of the growth curve.” But could bad design really explain the nearly 25% erosion in its stock price? Absolutely. Twitter is facing a slowdown in user growth, admitting that only 3.9% quarterly growth is half what previous quarters experienced. The shocking drop in the company's valuation could point to a hyperinflated stock price, but New...

What flavor is your website?

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If websites came in ice cream flavors, many website entrepreneurs would think theirs a variety of Ben & Jerry's. "Wait until you hear about this cool idea," they say. "No, this one's different – there's something unique in this business recipe!" Never mind they're probably trying to reinvent the wheel. Listen and nod. Being a website manager invites clients and acquaintances to offer endless ideas on their next great Internet offering. "That's a great idea!" you say. "Now, Google it and see how many others are doing it already." Listen and nod. Butter Beendone Before or Strawberry Pipe Dream? The point here is that most websites and ice cream flavors consist of the same basic ingredients. Although Baskin Robins famously claims 31 flavors, most of these flavors start with chocolate, vanilla or some common...

Should ISPs be regulated like banks?

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Let us, for a moment, draw comparisons between U.S. Internet service providers and U.S. bank lenders. Both data providers and lenders wield great power to influence productivity and economy. Chicago Tribute columnist Phil Rosenthal went so far to suggest that a lack of net-neutrality could make the rich richer and the poor poorer by allowing data providers to squeeze customers, charging variable rates that would inevitably cause poorer customers to suffer. A similar thinking goes that unchecked U.S. bank lenders would tend toward lending discrimination which would deny loans to groups of people based on socioeconomic limitations. Net-neutrality advocates want the government to enforce fairness in data distribution in a similar manner that the government regulates banks to ensure all classes have access to equal lending practices. There was a time when no mandate was in place...

How an outage kills a $400 million business

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Hedge funds and institutional traders may no longer have the option of paying a premium to Nasdaq for access to an API that includes consolidated real-time market data pertaining to major US exchanges.

The Nasdaq Securities Information Processor (SIP) has been in the cross hairs of government regulators and anyone impacted by a three-hour Nasdaq outage caused by the SIP last year on August 22nd. “Events vastly exceeded the SIP’s planned capacity, which caused its failure and then revealed a latent flaw in the SIP’s software code,” the Nasdaq report said.

When was the last time you told one of your clients “a software flaw” caused the primary and backup system outage?

By quickly responding to market data movement, traders use the Nasdaq SIP to beat others to the punch. These electronic traders also use the mass of information to predict future stock price movements and adjust their trading algorithms accordingly.

Nasdaq has decided they no longer want to support the SIP for consolidated quote and trade data for stocks, unless major resources can be found for upgrading the legacy ITCH protocol feed and Windows 2003 operating system. Although revenue from the SIPs was $400 million for 2013, the risks are too high, said the report.

The winner will be NYSE Euronext which runs two SIPs on behalf of the nation’s exchanges, albeit at a premium and with the superior infrastructure to justify the higher cost to traders.

The loser will be the small traders, where consolidation could mean a virtual monopoly for NYSE Euronext. At a time when regulators want more transparency spread across more participants, one could guess that there will be a cash infusion to rejuvenate the retiring Nasdaq SIP. Nasdaq says they are open to any and all “suggestions,” or what sounds like a stipulation that someone else needs to chip the money for an upgrade.

The cancellation of the Nasdaq market data service is not scheduled to take effect until 2016.

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