A Tech blog called Fudzilla announced on December 30, that Micosoft will be laying off 17% of its workforce, which comes out to be about 15,000 people.

Now, this is interesting because they don’t use the terms “speculate” “”could”, “might” or “possibly” to describe the layoff.  The exact quote is “The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it’s not a small cut, either.”

Meanwhile Henry Blodget of Silicon Valley Insider Reporter reports today that Fudzilla is just that, full of Fud.  He says “A cut of this magnitude seems highly unlikely, although the targeted areas do make sense.”

I don’t know much about Fudzilla, but I do know Henry Blodget is on the speed dial of every person in Microsoft PR.  So it’s liekly that Blodget is repeating something he’s been told.  Either Blodget is lying, is being lied to, or Fudzilla received some faulty info.  

On Jan 22, we’ll see who is closer to the truth, the blog that originally broke a story, or a reporter breifed by a PR team.  Should be interesting.

In no particular order…

1) Facebook will start charging $10 – $20 a year for company Pages, and no one will mind. Every small business has to pay $10 a year plus hosting for a web url, why shouldn’t they pay a yearly fee for a Facebook one?  Other companies like YouTube, MySpace and Twitter will attempt to follow suit.

2) Seattle sports:

• Mariners’ youth movement is fun yet painful to watch.  Bedard and Washburn are moved to contenders in spring.
• Since the Bidwill family owns the Cardinals, they make a huge off-season mistake and plunge themselves back to the NFC West cellar.
• The Seahawks meanwhile make a brilliant off-season acquisition, and climb back through a weak division to 9-7 and the NFC West title.
• UW football beats UCLA and guarantees Steve Sarkezian “hero status” for a year.

3) Layoffs at WAMU, Microsoft, Starbucks and other large companies create two phenomena:

• A greater number of qualified, highly educated, intelligent, white collar professionals than ever apply for teaching credentials.  The Teacher’s Union immediately works to figure out a way to stop this from happening.
• With a lack of full-time jobs and everyone fearful of the stock market, people turn to entrepreneurship, opening coffee stands, noodle trucks, photography studios and more.

4) Some state goes nearly bankrupt, and teachers and public workers get paid in IOU’s so that there is cash for welfare and unemployment checks.  This finally makes a segment of the voting population ask if things are out of whack.

5) New industries asking for government bailouts:

• Ski Industry:  If Global warming is real, and the US is responsibile for Global warming, then the US government should pay reparations to the US ski industry for screwing up their climate.
• Major League Baseball Players Association:  They’ve never needed a reason before, so they’ll ask for the fun of it.  And threaten to strike if they don’t get it.
• Green Technology:  Anyone who invested in a green company, bought a green car or acquired a green investment fund when gas was $5.00 a gallon now wants money back, blaming the US foreign policies for bringing prices back down to a reasonable level.

6) In a change, a number of ordinary line workers employed by the UAW are caught in an expose detailing some sort of extravagance.  Since its not an executive scandal, but ordinary workers living lavishly on tax payer money, we see a huge backlash toward more bailouts.

7) A perfect storm of rising dollar and great airline deals make it cheap to travel to Europe – cheaper even than Asia.  Tourism booms to Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.

8) With oil at $40 a barrel, this ridiculous winning streak the state of Oklahoma is on finally comes to an end.  Florida 59, Oklahoma 35. 

9) Thanks to the Sonics debacle and the host of other circus events coing from City Hall, people actually CARE about City Council elections this year, and a highly qualified pool of moderates and business people come in to take some of the spots. 

Got any predictions of your own?  Put them in the comments section below.  Happy New Year.

A few things are nagging at my brain about the state of the media.  I feel like I just need to throw them all out on a piece of pixels and see what comes out the other end.

• The TV, Radio and Print industries are all getting killed since your traditional big spending advertisers (Automotive, Retail and Financials) have hit skid row.
• People are moving from print version of newspapers to online, which is causing a further cutback in the need for local reporters.
• Radio networks are becoming more consolidated.
• It’s become easier and less expensive for TV news organizations to re-purpose their video content on their web property.
• Talk radio stations can take their exclusive content, turn it into podcasts, and extend its reach.
• Sports writers are guests on radio shows.  Radio guys are doing TV.  And TV Web sites have written content.
• The rise of blogs gives more voice to independent writers and amateur broadcasters.
• The general; distrust of the American media drives more people to seek out alternative media and new voices that are not tied to corporations.

In the end, it feels like there are not enough ad dollars to support 4 local TV stations, a bunch of radio stations and 2 local newspapers.  But they are all covering the same stories, just through a different medium and slightly different lens.

To me, it seems like a natural evoultion would be for TV stations to absorb newspaper writers, and then further consolidate with radio stations.  We could see broadcasting brands develop locally around political perspective or area of excellence.  One station may focus on business and economy, while one focused on social issues.  But the stories would be covered expertly and distributed by video and text.  Teams of reporters could work together to produce short form 30,000 foot overviews and long form, deep dives.

I just think a perfect storm has developed, and media is going to have to change.  There’s less money than before, greater ways to publish, and an audience with more ways to consume the same data.  This leads me to believe media could change significantly very rapidly.

Like I prefaced in the beginning of this, I can’t figure it out for sure, but am certain something has to change.  Do you have any ideas?

I’ll remind everyone that I have no musical ability, and my tastes are rarely shared by others.  With that said, I think the new CD from Keane, Perfect Symmetry,  is going to take them from their current status of “Someone I have heard of and kind of like,” to “Total World Domination.” Check it out on Rhapsody or your mp3 download of choice.  I’m on my 3rd run through the CD.  Good stuff.

From Yahoo:

“A Nigerian Muslim court Monday detained an 84-year-old Islamic preacher with 86 wives after he failed to heed a call by local leaders to divorce all but four of them…..The authorities charged Mohammed Bello with “insulting religious creed” and “unlawful marriages” after local chiefs and Muslim leaders gave him until September 7 to comply with Islamic sharia law, which allows a man to have no more than four wives at a time.”

I see it now – “Elimina-wife.”  82 eliminations to get to the remianing 4.  Endless possibilities on an International stage here….  

 Funny clip from Google News.  Notice who the headline is slamming.

I really like what Hulu is doing.  If you haven’t checked it out, go to the site and play around one evening.  It really seems to be run by some smart folks.  

So, I’m not picking on them for launching a promotional TV schedule with graphics that display the wrong calendar dates.  It just shows that no one is perfect, so if you are going to launch something on your web site, it’s never a bad idea to have someone review it.  That way your boss doesn’t have the chance receive a snarky email froma “colleague” that asks why the creative team can’t read a calendar.   

So i won’t be one of those people who pretends to know how the new Google browser, aka Chrome, will affect the stock prices of Google and Microsoft, or what it means to Mozilla and the Open Source Community.

But I think it’s fair to say that the launch of Chrome fundamentally changes the landscape of the how the tech industry will operate.  I mean, you have to be curious about what the Google Browser will look like, and how they will integrate Docs, Calendar, mail, etc….

Now, contrary to the Open Source guys, I won’t be saying that a Google Browser is a Microsoft killer.  For example, as much as I love Google Docs for collaborating on a shared whiteboard, as an actual device for building a real document, it’s fairly useless.  So while there will be a lot of anti-MSFT sentiment that will put Chrome on a pedestal, I’ll test it out with an objective mind.

But my point is, Chrome will be a game changer on the tech environment one way or the other.  After years of people saying, “Google will kill Microsoft when they release a browser,” they will finally have to deliver.  So mark this date as a critical moment in technology.  Chrome either rocks (like Gmail), is ok (like Docs), or becomes irrelevant (like Froogle).  Test it out and see what you think.

I’m starting a new category, covering some interesting tactics the Presidential campaigns are using when it comes to technology or social media marketing.  Here’s the latest email I received from the Obama camp:

People keep asking me if we’re really going to announce Barack’s VP directly to our supporters. 
The answer is yes. 
Let me be very clear. You are the ones who built this campaign, and
Barack wants you to be the first to know who will join him in leading
our movement for change.

So, if you haven’t signed up to receive an email or a text message, sign up now. Or you can text VP to 62262 from your mobile phone. 
Make sure to forward this message to your friends and let them know about this special opportunity.

Thanks,

That’s a pretty neat gimmick.  I don’t know if it means that if you text the campaign, they will call you later to ask for money.  But it’s a neat way to use text messaging to communicate directly to their base.

Here’s a debate some friends and I stumbled into. We were looking for ways that a bad economy could help us correct behaviors that lead to better long-term decisions. For example, if gas is expensive, we start looking at alternative sources of energy, or public transportation.

So in an economy where it costs us more money to drive places, where we have less money for disposable income, and more expensive food costs, we will have to change some spending habits. The question became, will we get healthier.

One argument is that with ridiculous gas prices, I’m more likely to walk to the stores that I need to buy things from. I may start walking to the bus stop and riding it to work. With less disposable income, the average American group of friends might skip a movie or night at the bar to go shoot hoops at the park, thinking that the $100 they would spend together on beers could be used more wisely.

But I can see the flip side as well. Depressed people may skip a night meeting up with friends in order to buy a $5 bottle of wine and never leave their couch. The $8 a pound they spent on turkey could be replaced with $.25 Top Ramen and $1.99 bologna. People could take an attitude of “This sucks, I’m going to sit at home and sulk.”

So I don’t know. I’d like to think that people will move to more urban centers, congregate at parks and places of shared interest, walk and bike places they normally drive, and feel like when all else that they can’t control fails, they can at least take care of themselves. Thoughts?