Curating the Internet: Business, leadership, and management micro-summaries for September 4, 2019

remlaps-lite (76)in #rsslog • 5 years ago (edited)

Facebook and Youtube hiding popularity metrics; Overlooked forces may insulate the US economy from recessions; As bitcoin gains market share, analysts claim that bitcoin dominance is forever; A survey on buying "fix-it-up" homes; A Steem photo-essay from a visit to an Alpaca farm


Straight from my RSS feed	Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

pixabay license: source.

It looks like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube want to kill the popularity metrics they invented - Facebook has already removed visibility of "like" counts on Instagram, and confirms that it's considering the same for Facebook. Users would still see their own "Like" count, but others would just see that one of their friends, "and others" have liked a post. Meanwhile, Youtube is set to stop showing exact subscriber counts later this month. The companies are apparently making these changes out of concern for the mental health of their users, hoping to take some of the digital one-upsmanship out of social media.

Are Overlooked Forces Shielding the US from Severe Economic Downturns? - Harvard's James L. Heskett suggests that the degree to which the US economy is independent from the rest of the world, along with technology and culture changes during the last 50 years may have combined to reduce the propensity for recessions in the American economy. In particular, he notes that the service industry is less cyclical than others, and that the level of inventories in the US market has dropped by more than 50% since 1950 because of improvements in communications and distribution channels.

Bitcoin Dominance Hits 70% as Keiser Warns Altcoins ‘Not Coming Back’ - Bitcoin's market capitalization has now risen to 70.5% of the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization. This is its highest level since March of 2017, before the run-up to $20,000. Some market analysts, including Max Keiser and Peter Brandt, are claiming that this represents the end of the line for altcoins. What do you think about altcoins? "Don't throw good money after bad" or "Buy when there's blood in the streets"?

The dirty secret about most ‘fixer uppers’ - According to a new survey, most purchasers of do-it-yourself (DIY) "fixer uppers" wound up spending as much as, or more than, buyers of move-in ready homes. The survey covered 1,069 homeowners who spent an average of $250,000 on their purchases. DIY buyers spent an average of $50,000 less on their homes, but then spent that amount - or more - on renovations. More than 40% of DIY buyers spent at least $76,000 on renovations, and 40% also said they wouldn't buy their current home again. This finding may merit additional credibility because it appears to go against the interest of the survey's sponsor, Porch.com, a company that makes money by connecting home-owners and contractors.

STEEM Visiting Alpaca Farm - In this post, @greddyforce describes his family visit to a Estonian Alpaca farm. According to the post, the farm is like a mini-zoo, and the Alpaca fur is softer than most soft carpets. The post includes a number of photos of Alpacas and goats. (A beneficiary setting of 10% has been assigned to this post for @greddyforce.)

In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.

Beneficiaries

Burn rewards - @null - 5%
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