Stupidity is contagious. It gets us all from time to time. Even respectable companies can catch it. As I do every week, let's take a look at five financial events so dumb, they might make your head spin.
1. Step off Lively
Patience doesn't appear to be much of a virtue at Google
Lively allows users to create avatars and customize online rooms. Making the most of Google's other properties, free users can also populate their rooms with frames showing Picasa snapshots and televisions screening their favorite YouTube clips. It's all coming down at year's end.
Lively may not have caught on the way that other social environments like IAC's
2. We're on a road to nowhere
CEOs of the Big Three automakers were rightfully chastised this week for taking private jets to meet with Congressional leaders. Seeking a $25 billion bailout, and they won't even fly commercial carriers? Bah! Is the corporate jet necessary? Were the CEOs chartering it to hit an AIG junket and a kegger at Freddie and Fannie after the panhandling?
I'll tell you what really irks me, though. It's not the private jets. It's any form of air travel. These are car companies, people. All three of the guys should have met up in Detroit and carpooled to Washington. Road trip, baby! If you can't stand behind your product, why fight for an outdated, overpaid, and overrated model?
3. I guess that's why they call it Target
Cheap chic retailer Target
Still, I love the name of these things. Dive sticks? It's my new favorite euphemism for falling stock prices. "My dive sticks took another beating today." Come to think of it, there's an impalement risk there, too.
4. What's not in a name?
One of this week's biggest losers has been Baidu.com
Baidu responded, booting thousands of medical advertisers who don't have licenses on file with the company. Baidu claims that online advertisers aren't required to have licenses on file, but this is all about public opinion. If consumers are wary of Baidu's advertisers or its search practices, they may take their searches elsewhere.
The shocking part is that this isn't some narrow niche. Baidu pegs the value of these advertisers at 10% to 15% of the company's revenue. Either these are really juicy keywords, or I have completely misread China's search trends.
5. It's my movie party and I'll fly if I want to
If you're an Xbox Live subscriber, there's a glaring omission in the Netflix
Sony and Netflix have apparently hit some licensing turbulence, but those same blacked out films are available to PC users as well as on every other home theater appliance that has partnered with Netflix. The problem, of course, is Microsoft
However, does Sony really think that irked Xbox users will trade in their consoles to support the conglomerate denying them their movies? I think Sony has either underestimated the intelligence of diehard gamers, or it's unaware of the royalties that it is willing to forgo to make a hollow point.
Let's beat the dumb drum:
- Last week's dumb moves.
- The previous week's dummies.
- Three weeks ago, boneheaded moves were everywhere.