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14 Simple Ways to Get Considerably More Done

Jeff Haden — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:57:12 +0000

Car Sharing: Future Looks Bright, Even with Some Cloudy Legal Issues

Brad Tuttle — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:24:27 +0000

There’s just no stopping the sharing. Despite recent legal challenges to certain “peer-to-peer” car-sharing services, the range of sharing options keeps on expanding, making it easier and easier for consumers to skip taxis, traditional car rentals—and car ownership in general. Last week was quite the roller coaster ride for peer-to-peer car sharing service RelayRides. First, the company, which arranges for drivers to borrow cars owned by other members for $5 to $20 per hour, announced it had purchased a car sharing competitor called Wheelz. The move not only expands the reach of RelayRides, it opens up the possibility of incorporating the Wheelz technology known as DriveBox, which allows cars to be rented and driven away via app—no swapping of car keys required. As the company eliminates hassles and attracts more renters and car owners to participate, the potential for the business model soars, as explained in Fortune: “Our vision isn’t to stop at the car rental market,” says RelayRides CEO Andre Haddad. “It’s really to help disrupt the concept of car ownership by enabling people to rent cars whenever they need them and access [cars] on a need-basis rather than having to buy one.” The company’s lofty goal is to be able to offer a RelayRides car within a ten-minute walk of 100 million Americans by the end of 2015. That goal may be slightly harder to achieve thanks to the second bit of big RelayRides news that took place last week. As Haddad related in a blog post, RelayRides suspended all operations in New York state as of Thursday because Department of Financial Services “believes there is noncompliance with certain unique aspects of NY insurance law.” (MORE: Peak Traffic Ticket Season Is Here: Police Pushed to Give More Seat Belt Citations) The Wall Street Journal reported last week that SideCar, a ride-sharing app, likewise was forced to suspend its service in New York City after a judge indicated SideCar drivers were essentially operating taxis or car services without a license — which is illegal. Officials in other cities have

Gambling on Tumblr: Marissa Mayer’s Billion-Dollar Bet to Make Yahoo Cool

Sam Gustin — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:53 +0000

What’s the price of “cool”? For Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, the number appears to be $1.1 billion. That’s how much cash Yahoo plans to pay for New York-based social blogging platform Tumblr, according to multiple reports. Yahoo’s board approved the transaction on Sunday, and an announcement is expected Monday, according to AllThingsD. Although $1.1 billion seems like a massive amount to pay for a company that generated only $13 million in revenue last year, it’s not hard to see Mayer’s logic: Tumblr has become a cultural phenomenon with over 100 million intensely loyal users reading and posting on over 100 million blogs each month. That said, the deal carries risks for both companies. Tumblr is extremely popular with the highly-coveted 18-to-24 year-old demographic. The question is whether Tumblr can burnish Yahoo’s image with younger users, some of whom weren’t even born when Jerry Yang and David Filo founded the company in 1994. (MORE: Report: Yahoo Board Approves Billion-Dollar Tumblr Deal) For many users, Tumblr’s independence and casual approach to generating revenue have been part of what made the site popular. For years, Tumblr founder David Karp resisted plastering ads on the site. But Yahoo, a public company, will face pressure to “monetize” Tumblr, and if Mayer acts too aggressively, she could alienate the site’s users, who feel a deep sense of community and ownership in the network. Already, many Tumblr users are less than thrilled about the Yahoo deal: When TIME wrote about the impending offer on Friday, hundreds of Tumblr users took to the comments section to voice their objections. In short, for many users, the question is not whether Tumblr will make Yahoo cool, but whether Yahoo will suck the coolness out of Tumblr, as my colleague Harry McCracken observed. That sentiment was captured by TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, who told one of her colleagues that if Yahoo buys Tumblr, she will “seriously consider” moving her blog to another platform. “I don’t know exactly why, but my Tumblr is a part of my identity,” Tsotsis said. ”And for whatever reason, I don’t want to

Republicans Seem to Be Out of Economic Ideas — Here Are Two Suggestions

Rana Foroohar — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:14 +0000

If you think about thrift as a moral quality, it’s easy to understand why Republicans have gotten things so wrong in terms of macro-economic policy over the last few years. Austerity, after all, has a folksy and intuitive appeal, the idea being that you can’t cure debt with more debt. No household could – and why shouldn’t the government be run like a stable household, never borrowing what it can’t repay quickly and easily? Of course, we know why not: Keynes explained the reason in his General Theory, and pretty much every modern leader who has tried to fight rising debt with austerity since then, from Herbert Hoover to the modern technocrats of Greece and Italy, has failed. The Germans, like many American conservatives, are still enamored of austerity. It appeals their sense of thrift and fairness; but having spent time recently in Germany, I can see that, as in the U.S., this approach has also become a moral issue. The fact that so many European nations are trying to cut public spending all at once is clearly the reason that Europe is now officially in the longest recession since the creation of the Eurozone. But belief in austerity persists because there’s a certain grim moral justice in the idea that debtor nations should pay for their crimes with deep, painful forced cuts. (MORE: The Mystery of the Incredible Shrinking Budget Deficit) Justice aside, austerity is a failed economic concept, a realization that is having major short-term ramifications in Europe (as I’ll be exploring in more detail in an upcoming TIME magazine story). But it may also have a longer-term impact on the 2014 Congressional and 2016 presidential elections in the U.S. For some time now, conservative economic policy has revolved around two tideas: the supposed need to slash government budgets in order to cut the deficit, and the notion that tax cuts will spur growth (a.k.a., trickle down economics). But as we’ve seen in headlines over the last week, the deficit is coming down fast, not because of cuts, but

How Much Will a Legal Marijuana Habit Cost You?

Brad Tuttle — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:01 +0000

If you’re an average pot smoker in Colorado—paying average prices for average-quality marijuana—you can expect to spend around $650 on weed next year. A study conducted by the Colorado Futures Center at Colorado State University aimed to get to the bottom of how much the state can expect to collect in tax revenues now that marijuana is legal. By doing a little extra math, we can get a rough estimate for what the average marijuana enthusiast will spend annually as well. Researchers estimate that in 2014, 642,772 Colorado residents, or about 12.5% of the state population, will take advantage of pot’s newly legal status. Analysts assumed each person would smoke or otherwise “use” 3.53 ounces of marijuana annually, for a total of 2,268,985 ounces (about 142,000 pounds) per year. All of these numbers may be underestimated, because they’re based on data compiled when recreational marijuana was illegal. In fact, there are so many unknowns in the realm of legal non-medicinal pot that all of this math has a crude back-of-the-napkin quality to it. In any event, using the study’s numbers, the average marijuana enthusiast can expect to pay a retail price of $185 per ounce next year. Multiply that times 3.53 ounces—which no one can buy at once, mind you, because there’s a one-ounce purchase maximum for residents—and the total comes to $653 annually spent on pot. (MORE: This Exists: Medical Marijuana for Pets) How much the individual actually winds up spending on marijuana will depend on several factors, most obviously the quality (and price) of the pot and how much one smokes. Researchers used the crowdsourcing site PriceofWeed.com to get the $185-per-ounce figure. As of early April, an ounce of marijuana was averaging $206 on the black market, and because the price is expected to drop once pot is legal, the study landed on $185. If the smoker is opting for higher-quality, $300-per-ounce marijuana, his annual pot bill would top $1,000. That’s for someone smoking the average of 3.53 ounces per year. A heavy smoker who goes with $300-per-ounce

U.S. Gas Prices Up 11 Cents Over Past 2 Weeks

Associated Press — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:53:26 +0000

(CAMARILLO, Calif.) — The average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 11 cents over the past two weeks. The Lundberg Survey of fuel prices released Sunday says the price of a gallon of regular is $3.66. Midgrade costs an average of $3.84 a gallon, and premium is $3.98. Diesel held steady at $3.93 gallon. Of the cities surveyed in the lower 48 states, Tucson, Ariz., has the nation’s lowest average price for gas at $3.18. Minneapolis has the highest at $4.27. In California, the lowest average price was $3.94 in Fresno. The highest was in San Francisco at $4.07. The average statewide for a gallon of regular was $4.03, up 18 cents.

Yahoo Acquires Tumblr: Initial Reactions From Around the Web

Samantha Grossman — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:19:42 +0000

Tumblr seemed to be playing hard-to-get for a little while, but no longer: Yahoo has approved a $1.1 billion deal to purchase the hip social-blogging platform. According to All Things D, the tech giant’s board unanimously approved the all-cash deal on Sunday, although it won’t be officially announced until Monday. In the meantime, the news is, of course, making the rounds on the Web, and plenty of key players in the tech and business worlds are already weighing in. Here are some initial reactions: (MORE: Can Google Star Marissa Mayer Save Yahoo?) Hell no, they won’t go: Tumblr’s users are almost universally unhappy … Do a search on Tumblr for Yahoo, and you get a stream of distress, interspersed with the occasional bit of helpless resignation and some calls for activism. The voices of reluctant acceptance [usually because of the aforementioned cash situation] or anything like positivity are few and far between. No outright enthusiasm. (TechCrunch) Silver lining: It could have been AOL, guys.— Veronica De Souza (@HeyVeronica) May 19, 2013 Billion-dollar question: [Yahoo’s] last earnings report in April showed that Yahoo still has a ways to go to bring in advertising. Yahoo’s $1.07 billion revenue for the first quarter missed the very modest 2% bump that analysts had expected. Display advertising and search revenue were all down … Tumblr may transform Yahoo’s reputation among hipsters, but will Yahoo still need help on the crucial revenue front? (Quartz) Yahoo’s curse: Tumblr users, from here on out, will blame every site change on Yahoo, in the same way that Instagram users assume every new app update came straight from the desk of [Mark] Zuckerberg. But Instagram users know what Facebook is, and why they don’t want Instagram to become more like it … Yahoo, to young people, is a nearly blank slate. This is its curse, and probably not its salvation. (BuzzFeed) Important inquiry: Has anyone yet created a tumblr dedicated to startups yahoo has bought and shut down?— (@danprimack) May 19, 2013 Not so bad after all: Marissa Mayer is perfectly positioned to give Tumblr CEO David Karp

Report: Yahoo Nearing $1.1B Acquisition of Tumblr

Associated Press — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:55:06 +0000

(NEW YORK) — Yahoo may be on the verge of closing its biggest acquisition during the 10-month reign of CEO Marissa Mayer as she tries to attract more traffic and advertisers to the Internet company’s website and mobile applications. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s board of directors will meet Sunday evening to consider approving a $1.1 billion acquisition of online content-sharing site Tumblr in a deal Mayer negotiated, according to the technology news site All Things D. The story posted late Friday cited anonymous sources. If Yahoo Inc.’s board signs off, the deal could be announced Monday. (MORE: Can Google Star Marissa Mayer Save Yahoo!?) In an invitation sent Friday, Yahoo promised to unveil “something special” Monday evening in New York. The event is being held in a Times Squares lounge located about two miles from Tumblr’s headquarters. Yahoo has only said that Mayer will be on hand to unveil something related to a product. A company spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the potential Tumblr acquisition. Buying Tumblr would fulfill Mayer’s goal of reaching a wider audience on smartphones and tablet computers. Tumblr serves up a constantly changing collage of stories, photos and other digital content served up by users who are increasingly connecting to the service through its mobile applications. The service is also one of the hottest sites among teens and young adults, a demographic that Mayer, 37, thinks Yahoo needs to do a better job of reaching. If it’s completed, the Tumblr deal would be Mayer’s biggest coup — and, at the same time, the biggest risk — since she ended her 13-year career as a key executive at Google Inc. to try to snap Yahoo out of a prolonged malaise that had demoralized employees and investors alike. Since her arrival, Mayer has been focused on redesigning several Yahoo services and bringing in more mobile engineering talent, primarily by buying a series of small startups. None of those previous acquisitions have required Yahoo to dip too deeply into its bank account. Late last year,

Slices of History: Great Moments in Pizza Innovation

Brad Tuttle — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:16:21 +0000

Pizza has reached a new pinnacle. It’s available in more places, and in weirder and more wonderful varieties, than ever before. And we’re scarfing it down: The research firm Technomic estimates that Americans eat 350 slices per second, and that more than four in 10 of us now munch on pizza at least once a week. Read on for a brief look back at some of the big innovations that have helped pizza become fully ingrained in modern American dining culture.

5 Tech Stocks You Should Have Bought Instead of Facebook

Sam Gustin — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:58 +0000

Facebook’s intensely hyped initial public offering one year ago today was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Silicon Valley and Wall Street. After years of buildup and a valuation that had ballooned to $100 billion, ordinary investors would finally get the chance to own a slice of the hottest tech company on the planet. In the weeks leading up to the IPO, many tech experts — including some of the most prominent venture capitalists in the country — repeatedly insisted that once public, Facebook’s stock price would soar beyond the $38 per share offering price. Is it any wonder that thousands of ordinary investors clamored for a piece of the action? Easy money, right? One New York man even considered taking $25,000 from his daughter’s college fund to invest in Facebook’s IPO. “She doesn’t need this money for another eight years,” Jim Supple told the Wall Street Journal. “If it goes the Google route, I’ll be in good shape.” Google’s share price has increased by 735% since the Web search giant went public in 2004. (MORE: Shopping for Cool: Yahoo in Talks to Buy Tumblr) Luckily for Supple’s daughter Jade, he reconsidered his plan to gamble her college fund on Facebook shares. The wall-to-wall media hype, it seems, made him nervous. “I’m going to sit on the sidelines on IPO day,” Supple decided. “We’re going to have to wait until the smoke clears.” Facebook’s IPO was a disaster for regular investors. After going public at $38 per share, Facebook’s stock price quickly rose to $45 before plunging to $20. One year later, Facebook shares remain 30% below the offering price, and the company is still dealing with the fallout, including lawsuits from irate investors who feel they were duped. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but one year after Facebook’s IPO, here are five technology stocks that investors would have been better off buying. Sure, these companies have been around for longer than Facebook, and didn’t have the white-hot buzz that Facebook had at the time of its IPO. What they did have, however, were business models and financial-growth prospects

Weak Financial Literacy Scores Threaten a Global Education Movement

Dan Kadlec — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:28:31 +0000

The global movement to teach kids about money in school has produced little hard evidence that the effort is paying off. That doesn’t mean it’s all been a waste of time, or that we’ll never get the results we want. But it certainly gives doubters ammunition. In a series of financial literacy tests dating to 1997, the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy has found that young people’s understanding of personal finance has remained consistently sub-par. Given the energy put into financial education over the past decade, this is disheartening news. Meanwhile, the FINRA 2009 National Financial Capability study found that only 30% of the population can do a simple 2% calculation and has even a basic understanding of inflation and risk diversification. The 2012 wave of that study will be released soon and reportedly shows no improvement. (MORE: 4 Easy Steps to Raising Money-Smart Kids) Weak financial literacy scores have galvanized dozens of nations, thousands of nonprofits, and countless educators and policymakers in the attempt to raise the financial I.Q. of people around the world. But test scores that show no improvement are now galvanizing the opposition, which believes no amount of instruction will lead to broad improvement in the way individuals manage their money. This lack of evidence presents a huge challenge to the financial education movement if it is ever to amount to more than a bunch of disjointed initiatives funded in large part by highly conflicted banks and other financial institutions. Unfortunately, proving long-term behavior change in a fairly new area of study can be difficult. In my view, the effort is worthwhile. It simply makes no sense that people cannot learn to be better money managers. We have to keep trying and keep looking for a method that works. Young people are starting to understand that personal financial management is a skill they’ll need for a lifetime. We should give it to them. In recent testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Children and Families, Annamaria Lusardi, director of the Global Center for Financial Literacy at

Report: Yahoo! Board Approves Billion-Dollar Tumblr Deal

Sam Gustin — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:03:40 +0000

Updated May 19, 1 p.m. EST: AllThingsD reports that the Yahoo! board has unanimously approved a deal to purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion. More updates to follow. Updated May 17, 8:20 p.m. EST: Yahoo!’s board plans to meet Sunday to decide whether to approve a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for New York-based social blogging platform Tumblr, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka reported late Friday. If approved by Yahoo!’s board, the deal — which could still fall through — will be announced Monday. Earlier Friday, Yahoo! invited reporters to a “product” event in New York City on Monday at 5 p.m. Original post: Internet icon Yahoo! is in talks to buy New York-based social blogging platform Tumblr for as much as $1 billion, according to multiple reports. At that price, Tumblr would be pretty expensive, given that it reportedly only booked $13 million in revenue last year, but the deal could still make sense for Yahoo! That’s because Tumblr is extremely popular with the 18-to-24 year-old-set, precisely the demographic CEO Marissa Mayer is targeting as she attempts to turn the purple-hued Internet pioneer around following a multi-year slump. Tumblr has long been considered a major prize, so it’s no surprise that Yahoo! isn’t the only one interested in the company. Tumblr has also reportedly held talks with both Facebook and Microsoft, according to Forbes. Of course, Tumblr CEO David Karp may decide to hold out — he’s reportedly raising a new venture capital round that values the company at $1 billion. Or he may opt for a “strategic investment,” in which Yahoo! or some other big company invests in Tumblr, which would then remain independent. Tumblr has already raised $125 million at an $800 million valuation. (MORE: Marissa Mayer’s Wall Street Debut Sends Yahoo! Stock Surging) What Tumblr lacks in revenue, it makes up in “coolness.” The site has become a major destination for young urbanites to post photos, snarky comments, and other ephemera, and then share that content with others. Tumblr is also a very large and fast growing community. It had worldwide traffic of 117

Unemployment Falls in 40 U.S. States, Rises in 3

AP / Christopher S. Rugaber — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:54:22 +0000

(WASHINGTON) — Solid hiring helped lower unemployment rates in 40 U.S. states last month, the most since November. The declines show the job market is improving throughout most of the country. The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates increased in only three states: Louisiana, Tennessee and North Dakota. Rates were unchanged in seven states. California, New York and South Carolina all reported the largest unemployment rate declines in April. Each state’s rate fell by 0.4 percentage points. (MORE: U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Jump to Highest Level in 6 Weeks) The report said 30 states added jobs in April, while 18 reported fewer jobs. Nationwide, employers added 165,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5 percent. The economy has added an average of 208,000 jobs a month since November. That’s up from only 138,000 a month in the previous six months. The housing recovery is creating jobs in many states. Texas has created 41,500 construction jobs in the past year. That’s helped the state be the nation’s leader in job growth over the past year and in April. The state added 33,100 jobs last month and 326,100 jobs over the past 12 months. Texas’ unemployment rate stayed at 6.4 percent in April compared with March, but has fallen from 7 percent a year ago. New York gained 25,300 jobs in April — second most among the states — and 111,600 jobs in the past year. The job gains in April helped pushed the state’s unemployment rate down to 7.8 percent from 8.2 percent in March. Some of the decline was also because people stopped looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are actively seeking jobs. Florida added 17,000 jobs in April and 119,100 in the past year. More than half of April’s job gains were in construction. The state has gained 15,500 construction positions in the past year. Jobs in trade, transportation and utilities have grown by more than 40,000 in the past year. (VIDEO: April Jobs Report:

Give Feedback That Crosses Cultures

Harvard Business Review — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:07 +0000

Giving critical feedback is an essential part of a manager’s job. But people in Shanghai don’t provide feedback in the same way as people in Strasbourg or Stockholm, so how can do your job when you’re working across cultures? Here are three tips: Learn the new rules. Read up on the values, beliefs, and assumptions people generally hold about social interactions in this region. Observe it in action to pick up on cues, such as how direct you’re expected to be, or how important is it to save face in group settings. Customize your behavior. Don’t assume you have to “go native.” You can often create a blend of styles that’s comfortable to you and effective in the new setting. Find a cultural mentor. Look for someone who’s worked in the area, preferably for many years. She can help you craft an approach that fits you and the place you work. Adapted from “Giving Feedback Across Cultures” by Andy Molinsky. Visit Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip homepage Purchase the HBR Management Tips book

Money Talking: Is College Worth It?

Rana Foroohar — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:16:06 +0000

Should some college-bound students opt for a two-year degree at a technical school? Will an education give you a better life? Money Talking digs into the tough questions in the debate over the high cost of higher education and the mounting student debt that’s one of its byproducts. The central question: Is college worth it?

Arresting Small Business Fraud

Lauren Simonds — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:00:39 +0000

It’s tough enough to grow a business without people ripping you off. Here are four simple ways to protect your business from fraud. Small business owners know that it takes lot of hard work to build a successful business. You most likely read this and other advice articles looking for ideas and inspiration to help push your business to even greater success. That’s awesome. But while you fine tune your sales pitches, marketing strategies and countless other aspects of your business, don’t forget to protect what you’ve already built. Criminals, who make their living by committing small business fraud, keep coming up with new, insidious ways to take your money. (MORE: Take Advantage of Free Resources to Grow Your Business) As Dr. Martin Bressler, a marketing and management professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, noted in an article at Small Business Computing that a single instance of loss due to fraud typically costs the business owner $190,000. We’re turning an old adage on its ear, because when it comes to small business fraud, your best offense is a good defense. Experts offer these four tips that you can easily incorporate into your business to foil scammers and crooks. 1. Compare checks to invoices: Keep a sharp eye on any incoming cashier’s or business checks you process. The checks may look real, and they might even make it past phone or online confirmation. The problem, however, is that they may not correspond with your customer’s order. That sketchy check is usually followed up by a distraught or embarrassed “customer” asking for a refund. It can take weeks for a bank to deal with a fraudulent check, which gives the perpetrator plenty of time to make a clean getaway with your money. 2. Institute a wire transfer policy: If you allow your customers to pay with wire transfers, you run the risk of having your business account cleaned out by an informed criminal. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. Ask your bank to set up a free checking account and use it only for

For JC Penney, the Right Direction May Be … Reverse

Brad Tuttle — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:00:31 +0000

JC Penney has its old CEO, Mike Ullman, in charge of the company again. Abundant sales and coupons have returned, as have brands that disappeared for a spell. In many ways, the JC Penney of old is back. Whether this is a good thing for the company remains to be seen. About month ago, within days of Ron Johnson being fired as CEO and Mike Ullman retaking his former position at the helm of JC Penney, Ullman quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying that there were no plans to bring back the old JC Penney. “I wouldn’t recommend that we go back to the way J.C. Penney was when I left,” he said. “Things change.” Still, JC Penney has essentially done a huge about-face in recent weeks, and it’s understandable why: The short-lived Johnson era, with its no-coupons stand and new focus on hip boutique brands, alienated customers and damaged sales badly. For the three-month span ending May 4, JC Penney reportedly lost $289 million, with sales decreasing 16.4% compared to a year ago — which was itself an awful period for the retailer. To bring back customers, JC Penney has been bringing back its traditional, pre-Johnson pricing and discount strategies. This week, jcpenney.com was littered with old-school discounts—for instance, 50% to 60% off patio furniture, and 30% to 40% off clothing with the St. John’s Bay label, the retailer’s exclusive brand that disappeared during the Johnson era and was brought back in March. (MORE: Splurge Surge! Luxury Spending on the Rise) Of course, there are those who view such discounts are straight-up frauds, based on artificially inflated list prices. Johnson himself would be in this camp. In January 2012, Johnson, the retail superstar who had helped turn Target and the Apple Store into huge success stories, promised to get rid of such “fake” prices and summarily slashed original prices by 40% or more. Shoppers weren’t crazy about the newly cheap list prices—because their arrival prompted the end of sales and coupons—and so in recent weeks the retailer has

Car? House? Sorry: Graduates of 2013 Are Each $35,200 in Debt

Dan Kadlec — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:59 +0000

The typical college graduate will leave campus this month owing nearly as much money as they stand to earn in their first year of full-time employment, new research shows. At a personal level, graduates toting up their private and government student loans, credit card balances, and personal debt will find the sum shocking. On average, they owe $35,200 and half say they are surprised by how much debt they have accumulated, according to a Fidelity Investments Cost-Conscious College Graduates Study. At a broader level, this debt has far-reaching implications for the economy as young people with starting pay of $44,455 spend much of it servicing debt—not buying cars and homes or beginning to save for retirement or emergencies. Some 70% of college grads have loans; many won’t pay them off for a decade. (MORE: The Myth of the Four-Year College Degree) The upshot is that young people are getting a late start building wealth. People in their late 20s to late 30s have 21% less inflation-adjusted wealth than those in the same age range 25 years ago, according to the Urban Institute. That’s partly due to the housing bust, which socked young people who had bought near the top. But student debt is a big factor. “Student loans are the second largest source of debt for today’s Americans in their late-20s to late-30s,” writes Caroline Ratcliffe of the Urban Institute in her blog. “By way of comparison, student loans were a relatively small component of debt for their counterparts in the 1980s.” Mortgages remain the largest debt source. Ratcliffe shared this view with the Federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission on May 14 as part of the Commission’s inquiry into student debt issues. She said that educating high school kids about college debt should be a priority, and added: “But teaching financial literacy at younger ages is also critical. The earlier in life a person begins to build wealth, the more time those assets have to compound and become more valuable. So the key is to teach more people to

Facebook’s IPO One Year Later: Mobile Growth, Legal Headaches, and a Stalled Stock Price

Sam Gustin — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:45:44 +0000

One year ago tomorrow, social networking phenomenon Facebook went public in one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings of the last decade. Leading up to the IPO, which valued the company at a whopping $104 billion — or 100 times revenue — the hype was intense. Facebook, market prognosticators predicted, would soar in the first day of trading, generating easy gains for the investors who rushed for a piece of the action. Indeed, investor demand was so intense that Facebook boosted by 25% the amount of shares it planned to sell to the public. Finally, on the morning of May 18, after months, even years, of anticipation, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang NASDAQ’s opening bell by remote from Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California. And then all hell broke loose. Technical glitches on the NASDAQ exchange delayed the first trades for 30 hair-raising, white-knuckled minutes. After the NASDAQ commenced trading, Facebook shares jumped 13% to hit $43, only to retreat quickly to the initial offering price of $38. At that point, Facebook’s IPO underwriters, including the largest banks on Wall Street led by Morgan Stanley, stepped in and waged a furious buying battle to support the offering level. Thanks to their efforts, Facebook closed a frenetic first day of trading at $38.23, essentially flat. (MORE: Why Mobile Growth is the Key to Facebook’s Future) Although Facebook shares slowly climbed back above $30 by January of this year, momentum stalled and Facebook shares are currently bouncing around $26 per share, down more than 30% since the IPO. For Facebook, the IPO was a major success because it raised over $10 billion for the company. But for investors, Facebook’s IPO is widely considered to be one of the most disappointing public stock offerings in U.S. history. One year ago, TIME published an article examining the kind of revenue opportunities Facebook might seize upon to justify its sky-high valuation. Looking back at the list, many of those opportunities remain untapped. The company has only scratched the surface, for example, when it comes to leveraging the vast hoard of user data

The Fight for Streaming TV

Victor Luckerson — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:26:51 +0000

We can stream movies on Netflix. We can buy TV episodes on iTunes. So why, in 2013, can’t we watch live television on our smartphones, tablets and computers without a pricey cable subscription? That’s the question driving a growing number of innovators who are upending the TV status quo—designated set, $100 provider bill, dozens of channels you don’t actually want—to offer a cheaper, more accessible live-viewing experience on mobile computers. The most prominent player is Aereo, a start-up that in August began streaming live TV over the Internet in New York City for $8 per month. Its trick is a warehouse full of antennas, which digitize freely available signals from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and premium signals from partners like Bloomberg TV. Meanwhile, Intel is quietly brokering deals for a live-TV set-top box, which will launch later this year. And on May 9, Senator John McCain introduced legislation to promote à la carte cable-channel buying and protect services like Aereo. Broadcast networks and their affiliates are especially wary of this change. Every year they make a reported $3 billion from cable providers, which pay fees to retransmit their programming—a crucial revenue stream now that plummeting ratings have made it tougher to court advertisers during upfront week (which ended May 16). But major networks make nothing from Aereo, which has prompted CBS to sue the start-up for copyright infringement and Fox to threaten to go cable-only. “The survival of the programming itself would require a new business model,” says Richard Stone, legal counsel for Fox. And yet Aereo has endured those battles and plans to expand to Boston and Atlanta soon, opening the door for any number of copycats. Tellingly, CBS and Fox have started to fund Aereo alternatives that give them more control, such as Dyle and Syncbak. And ABC just announced live-streaming capabilities via its mobile app (for select cities). At this point, those moves may be the smartest options. “You’ve seen it with music. You’ve seen it with books,” says Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia. “If your product