The Social Media Pyramid Scam

(The Real Agenda News) Social media personalities generated more than $4 billion in one year for large social media pyramid scam users.

A pyramid scheme or as I prefer to call it, pyramid scam, is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments for enrolling others into the scheme scam, rather than supplying investments or sale of products or services.

Social media are a hidden, nonetheless an out-in-the-open version of a pyramid scam. You’ll see what I mean soon.

It recruits members – other businesses or individuals – with the promise that they will make money, by “helping divulge” their personalities or commercial activities as long as they increase the number of LIKES, SHARES and FOLLOWERS.

It seems only natural that if an individual is a very talented person or if this product or service is on-demand, he will have a growing number of LIKES, SHARES and FOLLOWERS. However, it’s been revealed that people are able to pay marketing companies or hackers to literally produce thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of fake LIKES, SHARES and FOLLOWERS for a specific social media user.

It is common to find articles online that not only promote buying or producing followers but also that call this practice legitimate in some instances. In other words, it is not what the individual social media user offers that attracts LIKES, SHARES and FOLLOWERS.

If you still don’t understand why or how social media are pyramid scams, let’s go into another corner of the fraud.

Perhaps the clearest example of a pyramid scam is the fact that a very small group of people get away with the cash while alleging that they are spreading the wealth in the form of a product or a service.

Social media owners and thousands of people who see these tools as a positive rather than a negative would argue that they provide a platform for millions of people to make themselves, their products or their services known to the world and that they do so “for free”.

Everyone knows that there is no free lunch, so the money that circulates around social media platforms exists and it is going into someone’s pocket.

I am not talking about the average swimsuit model who makes a few hundred thousand dollars a year for endorsing a shampoo brand and for posting photos of it on her social media. I am talking about serious money.

Now, many people would say that the previous scenario is a contradiction to my first argument, that no one but the owners makes money.in the social media pyramid scam. It’s not. Let me explain further.

Another particularity of the social media pyramid scam is that both owners and first users enjoy the fruit of the novelty of the pyramid scheme. But this bounty of positive results only lasts for as long as the scam is a novelty, or in the case of social media, until the scam is exposed.

Cult of personality business model

If you want to know the proportion of the social media pyramid scam, take a look at this.

While the average social media pyramid scam user is a mortal bottom feeder, and while the average user may get a few thousand dollars a month from selling his product or service, social media personalities generated more than $4 billion in one year for large social media pyramid scam users; those who have cash to pay them to endorse their product or service.

How do they make all this money? They make it on the back of mindless consumers who cannot stop clicking those LIKE or SHARE buttons on social media posts.

How difficult is it to click LIKE or SHARE buttons, you may ask? Not too difficult, but that is not the point.

The issue is how much time do bottom feeders – consumers – waste clicking or reading about the lives of others and how unproductive they become while doing that.

There is no free lunch, remember?

Social media owners lure compulsive consumers with all kinds of bait so they LIKE, SHARE or FOLLOW people or companies.

Why do social media pyramid scammers and famous brands use bait?

“Most everyday brands find it difficult to naturally enter lifestyle conversations because they lack credibility in those spaces,” says Claudia Page, VP, Head of Creator Partnerships at Crowdtap.

While social media personalities make over $4 billion for their sponsors, how much would these so-called personalities make for themselves?

Earning power depends on who they are, as that determines how much they can charge brands.

Your average fitness guru can charge around $4,000 per post and about $20,000 per ad campaign.

Those amounts will of course also depend on how many followers the person who was turned into bait has in their social media accounts. Hence the importance of having buying followers.

Seven million subscribers would land anyone a substantive $300,000 contract with Youtube, a Google company.

That makes Youtube the most lucrative source for personalities.

Paying someone $300,000 for a video campaign is peanuts compared to the money generated to social media pyramid scams via advertising.

Before getting into those numbers, it is relevant to ask at this point how much of all that money do the consumers get?

You are also making them money but in exchange for what?

Nothing.

So who are the big winners in the social media scam?

If you think making $300,000 for a 30-second video clip is exaggerated or that getting paid $20,000 for an advertising campaign is absurd, wait until you see how much social media pyramid owners make.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. These are the real winners of the social media pyramid scam.

There are 467 million users on LinkedIn, 330 million users on Twitter, 2 billion on Facebook, 500 million on Instagram, 158 million users on Snapchat.

All of these companies are publicly traded so investors, serious investors such as those who created these social media platforms and who still hold the majority of their shares stand to gain boatloads of money from it.

The wonder, if I may use that term, of social media pyramid scams is that there is no product to sell because the product to be sold is YOU, the bottom feeder, consumer of other people’s lives.

“The real transaction here isn’t you receiving enjoyment in the form of a free temporary distraction created by a media company at great expense, but rather, that media company renting your eyeballs to its advertisers,” says author Greg McFarlane. And guess what, you are not receiving your share of the pie for it.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Facebook made around $6 per user in 2012. Facebook reported having 2 billion users in the third quarter of 2017, so let’s low ball its profit for last year by multiplying $6,00 times 2 billion.

Only in 2017, assuming that Facebook’s profit per user remained at 2012 levels, means that the company made $12 billion. If you are a Facebook user, congratulate yourself, you were successfully commoditized.

These are the numbers for one social network, perhaps the preeminent social network, for one year.

How about Twitter? Well, although the bird saw its revenue fall for a while, ts revenue went from $17.9 million in 2011 to $717 million in 2017, according to Statista.

If we add the number of users from all social media platforms cited above and multiply it by an average of $4,5 per individual, you are looking at an astronomical $15,750,000,000 in total revenue only in 2017.

It is important to remember that millions of social media users are repeat offenders. In other words, they have multiple profiles on those platforms and in many cases multiple profiles on one single platform. Again, congratulations to all of you commodities.

By the way, the same scam used by social media pyramid networks is used by the television and news industries – we do not place ads on our website.

Perhaps the television and news industries have the excuse of delivering the occasional funny TV series or interesting magazine article, but other than that, it is the same scam: commoditization of humans.

The commoditization of human beings is not exclusive to social network pyramid scams, television networks or newspapers. It is also used by the pharmaceutical industry, for example. The difference is that instead of counting revenue on a per-user basis, pharmaceutical companies count it as per injected subject.

In the 20th century, people lived in a physical consumption plantation. In the 21st century, they live in a digital consumption plantation.

The worst of all of this is that there are generations of kids who are born – no exaggeration – believing they can be rich and famous Youtubers or Snapchat personalities just because they can record a video from the comfort of their basement.

Sadly, many of them will get partly famous and make a few thousand dollars because who can resist watching a prank on Youtube or LIKING, SHARING and FOLLOWING someone showing off his brand new Lamborghini?

Nothing good, all bad?

Am I a heretic when it comes to technology or social media pyramid scams? Yes, although they do have some positives. I do have social media accounts for the purpose of publishing my articles and sharing the occasional photo with my relatives.

It is in publishing that I believe that social media platforms fulfill its most important role. News and information were democratized with the arrival of social media, even though that wasn’t its original purpose.

It is the democratization of information and the empowerment that comes with it that prompted governments and social media pyramid scam owners to publicly censor users; for the betterment of collective, of course.

Do you believe that? Plantation owners and their puppet politicians say they care for the very same people they commoditize?

Isn’t that a noble cause?

As in most cases, the power to use social media platforms for your benefit is YOURS to take.

It is all about clicking, liking, sharing and following consciously.

So please, if you found this and other of our articles beneficial to you, LIKE and SHARE this post and FOLLOW this publication.

“When human beings become commodities, as they have over the past two to three decades with the changing values of Western civilization, we begin to use human beings for purposes other than those purposes for which they are created.”

Dr. Theresa Deisher, PhD

The post The Social Media Pyramid Scam appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Investors Now Value A $20 Billion Company Based On Its "Energy & Spirituality"

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

About twelve years ago, at the height of the real estate boom in the United States, banks began issuing what became known as NINJA loans.

You’ve probably heard the term before– NINJA stood for No Income, Job, or Assets.

These were the famed ‘no money down’ loans at low, teaser interest rates given to borrowers with pitiful credit and little hope of being able to make the payments.

One of the best examples of this absurdity was the case of Johnny Moon, a bankrupt, homeless man in Florida with no job history who was able to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy real estate.

Unsurprisingly, the market eventually crashed, dragging down the entire financial system with it.

Looking back it’s so obvious. I mean… duh… who would possibly think it was a good idea to give no money down loans to homeless, jobless, assetless borrowers?

Or the infamous ‘stated income’ loans, where the lender doesn’t bother to verify anything the borrower says (so the borrower can just make up their income and asset levels).

But back then, even some of the most conservative banks were doing it.

And hard core, seasoned financial professionals packaged all these toxic loans together into enormous, AAA-rated financial securities that were incredibly popular among institutional investors.

It’s not like these were stupid people. Bankers, brokers, investors, real estate professionals… many of them were incredibly astute.

But everyone was making so much money that they didn’t want to see the obvious truth. And the entire financial system paid the price for it.

Candidly, there are a number of similar signs today.

Snapchat is a great example.

The sexting social media app that’s so popular with pedophiles young people released rather disappointing quarterly results yesterday.

User growth is falling. Revenue growth is falling. And the company is hemorrhaging cash.

Snapchat has negative free cash flow. It has negative operating cash flow.

It has lost a total of $4.3 billion of its shareholders’ money since the company was founded in 2011– and more than $3 billion (nearly 70%) of that total loss is from this year alone.

In other words, the rate at which Snapchat is losing money… is INCREASING. Quickly.

Meanwhile the company continues to shower its employees with generous stock options despite its prodigious losses, ultimately forcing investors to suffer the consequences.

Snapchat’s shares took a big tumble yesterday after releasing its underwhelming quarterly report, and the share price is down more than 50% since it’s IPO.

Gee, what a surprise– a massively loss-making company that treats its investors like doormats has turned out to be a bad investment! How could anyone have possibly anticipated this?!?!

And Snapchat isn’t alone.

Another high-flying company that fits this mold is WeWork. If you’re not familiar, WeWork basically subleases short-term office space to other businesses at terms as short as one month.

So if you’re a new startup needing some short-term, non-committal office space…

… or flexible access to a conference room to meet clients…

… or even just a professional address to receive mail.

… that’s essentially what WeWork provides.

It’s important to note that WeWork doesn’t actually own any real estate.

It signs long-term leases, and then sub-leases the space through short-term contracts, which creates a LOT of risk for the company (and its investors).

You might be thinking– that sounds familiar, aren’t there a number of companies already doing that? It seems a lot like Regus’s business model (another company that provides flexible-lease office space).

Yes. It’s like… exactly… what Regus’s business model is.

The big difference is that WeWork is one of the most expensive private companies in the world, with a valuation of $20 billion.

By comparison, the parent company of Regus (IWG) is worth $2 billion (90% LESS than WeWork) despite having 3x as much revenue and 5x as much office space.

It also goes without saying that WeWork has negative cashflow… while Regus is profitable. But that’s apparently an irrelevant detail given that WeWork is worth TEN TIMES as much as Regus.

How can WeWork possibly justify such an enormous valuation?

The CEO/co-founder’s rationale is simple: “Our valuation and size today are much more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue.”

Yes I’m serious: that is a direct quote.

We are living in a world where serious financial professionals are investing in loser companies based on “energy and spirituality,” not profit, plan, or cashflow.

(As an aside, WeWork’s CEO is so energetic and spiritual that he’s personally sold $100 million worth of his own shares to buy a number of luxury homes.)

It’s not exactly the same as giving FIVE no-money down loans to a homeless guy. But it’s pretty close.

And this is precisely the sort of nonsense you always see at the top of a market.

Granted, it could keep going like this for YEARS. And it could become even more ridiculous.

No one knows precisely what will happen next, or when. And I acknowledge that I’m always early.

But I do believe that for anyone willing to do a little bit of homework and look beyond what’s sexy and sensational, there are plenty of better options out there.

As an example, we have a number of subscribers earning 5%+ on loan investments they’ve made which are fully backed at a 2:1 margin by gold and silver.

Others are making 12% to 13.5% on other asset-backed loans. We discuss some of these investments here.

They’re not sexy or sensational. There’s no hyped-up CEO promising to change the world, or major headlines on CNBC.

They’re just steady, safe investments… pretty boring by comparison.

But I’ll take safe and boring over a risky loser any day of the week.

Do you have a Plan B?

Hot Mic Hilarity Ensues When $SNAP CEO Evan Spiegel Gives Snarky Answer During Earnings Call

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

While Snap, Inc. ($SNAP) shares bleed out following a huge miss - currently down over 11 percent, a hilarious hot-mic moment happened during their earnings call.

When pressed by Wall St. analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG for more details on their push notification policy, CEO Evan Spiegel gave a convoluted and snarky answer - dodging the question and then telling the analyst to "go for a google" resulting in BTIG"s Brandon Ross exclaiming (loudly) "I didn"t even understand his response!"

 

Full exchange here: 

Listen to $SNAP co-founder Evan Spiegel answer our question on whether @Snapchat is "growth hacking" from Q2 call https://t.co/v0dTsunCGW

— Rich Greenfield (@RichBTIG) August 11, 2017

Reactions: 

 

Agree with Mr. Wonderful $SNAP CEO is a jack-ass! Cocky lil punk and and he"s the last person on earth who needs to be cocky right now

— traderstewie (@traderstewie) August 11, 2017

Definitely the best thing for CEOs to do when shares are falling 17% is to sound annoyed that people don"t "understand" his company. https://t.co/N9yS2VkFey

— Shira Ovide (@ShiraOvide) August 10, 2017

Same arrogant approach to IR out of $SNAP as last Q. No commentary in the letter, and prob no media calls either. https://t.co/aVqJ0ZBarn

— Jim Prosser ???? (@jimprosser) August 10, 2017

Transcript of the exchange:

Rich Greenfield, analyst at BTIG:

"I"ve got two questions for Evan. Evan, on your first investor call and actually Imran [Khan, Snap chief strategy officer] just mentioned it earlier as well, you have both spoken about how others use growth hacking to inflate [daily active users] and how it really hurts .... the platform"s relationship with users. Yet we definitely, over the past quarter, begun to see push notifications from Snapchat, essentially alerting us to: "One of our friends or one of our connections has published a story, would you like to go see it?"

Wondering despite Imran"s comment earlier, has your philosophy on growth begun to change? And then two, time spent on Snapchat and Instagram based on the recent comments from Instagram seems like it"s fairly similar. But there"s a very — my sense is there"s very little direct messaging that happens on Instagram, implying that most of their time spent is actually content consumption. When you think about Snapchat"s 30 minutes of usage per day, how much of that is actually Stories, including Discover, versus basically communications? Thanks.

Spiegel:

Yeah. So on the first question; we"ve been sending notifications like that for Stories for friends since 2014, so I"m not sure why you"re just seeing that now. On the "time spent" stuff, I think time spent is definitely interesting metric because unlike daily active[users], time spent is zero sum.

So for us, in Q2, we saw over 40 minutes spent per day for users under 25, and over 20 minutes per day for users over 25. So I think that"s some strong growth for us on the time spent side.

We don"t break out Stories versus communication, but I think the important thing is we"ve done a very good job innovating around monetizing communication. I think historically, that"s been challenging for folks. So, you know, we"re really excited about the way we"ve monetized communication with our creative tools.

Greenfield:

So maybe just to be clear: What exactly is the "growth hacking" that others do? If you sending push notifications is not "growth hacking," what are others doing that you consider to be growth hacking and not real DAU growth?

Spiegel:

Yeah, so I think there are plenty of examples online [laughs] if you want to go for a Google. But I think the most important thing for us is that when we"re telling you about content on a service that is really highly relevant to you and from your very close friends. And I think people, as they become more aligned on push notifications to sort of relax the standards there, and I think it"s important for our business.

Greenfield:

Thank you.

Operator:

Our next question is from Mark Mahaney with RBC ...

Brandon Ross, BTIG analyst (loudly on hot mic):

I didn"t even understand his response!"

More vague answers

The hot-mic exchange was just one part of an overall frustrating call for analysts and investors looking for answers.

Via CNBC:

While the exchange was certainly one of the more heated during the quarterly call, there were several instances where analysts asked for more guidance on new products like Snap Maps or advertising tools, only to be met with vague responses that it was still "early days."

The disconnect between Snap and Wall Street made it into Friday"s analyst coverage.

"Snap"s unwillingness to provide Street guidance will continue to be a disservice to shareholders as estimates continue to fluctuate wildly and it introduces unneeded uncertainty into results," Jefferies analyst Brian Fitzgerald wrote in a note.

The disjunction between Snap and Wall Street comes in spite of Snap"s so-called secret weapon, Khan, a former star analyst and investment banker. The finance veteran helped lead Alibaba"s massive IPO — subject to its own skepticism from investors at the time— and was one of the first analysts to become an authoritative commentator on internet media businesses like Facebook.

Snap, like many competitive tech start-ups, has been secretive about its products and operations. But some commentators perceived Spiegel"s response as arrogant.

Spiegel, if he has any game, was certainly not on it during the call.

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“Want to See My D***?” — School Cop Who Sexted Children Gets No Charges

Hudson, FL — A career police officer, who spent nearly two decades in the line of duty in New York, is now one of the latest school resource officers to be fired for inappropriate relationships with children under his supervision.

Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputy Corporal Milton Arroyo was fired last week, after investigators said he used police computer systems to find personal information about individuals for his own personal reasons, and he broke police department policies involving social media and minors, with students at a local school.

Detectives said Arroyo was “dancing on that fine line” between what is legal and what is illegal, when it was discovered he had been propositioning minor schoolchildren for “sexting” on Snapchat.

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For example, instead of asking a girl to show him her breasts—which would have been a felony—Arroyo reportedly asked her only to show him her bra. That simple distinction kept him from being charged with child sex crimes. Instead, he only lost his job.

SRO fired

OFFICER FIRED: A Pasco County school resource officer was fired for social media contact with students. We expect more details from the sheriff in this press conference: http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/266466179-story

Posted by FOX 13 News – Tampa Bay on Friday, July 7, 2017

Arroyo was the school resource officer for Fivay High School in Hudson, Florida. In April, a parent approached the school alleging an inappropriate social media relationship between Arroyo and her daughter. Here are just a few of the inappropriate comments investigators claim Arroyo made to students:

“Unzip her sweatshirt” “send a picture of her bra” “Why don’t you go into the bathroom and take a picture?” “How old of a guy would you date?” and “Wanna see my ‘d’?”

WFLA News Channel 8 reported that Arroyo “also asked a female student to perform a sex act and admitted to having a dream about having sex with the student.”

Arroyo is one of the latest school resource officers to be caught—either intentionally or unintentionally—engaging in inappropriate, unethical, illegal and immoral activities with kids and teenagers.

READ MORE:  Congress Passes Bill to Throw Parents of Sexting Teens in Jail for 15 Years

Police sexual misconduct is so common that more than 1,000 officers have had their licenses revoked in just the last six years for it — nearly half of them involve underage victims.

Unfortunately, even if the officer is caught “red-handed,” very little in the way of punishment takes place. In a case from May, a Texas school resource officer, who was reportedly having sex with a middle schooler in the school’s girls’ bathroom, not only avoided jail time, but was given a short probation and may be able to return to duty after his probation period ends.

However, some states do seem to hold certain officers accountable. One North Carolina school resource officer who was accused of kidnapping and raping a student was allowed bond—but the bond was set at $2.5 million.

Deputy Christopher Kelly has been charged with statutory sex offense with a child, first degree sexual exploitation of a minor, second degree sexual exploitation of a minor, indecent liberties with a child, sex acts with a student, and second degree kidnapping.

In the case of Milton Arroyo, he has not been charged with any sex crimes involving children, but that may be because some of his victims are remaining silent.

Studies suggest very few victims of sexual assault ever report their crimes, and are sometimes not believed when they do turn in their perpetrators. If you are a sexual assault victim of Arroyo—who spent 20 years in New York—or you know someone who is, you are encouraged to contact the Hudson Police Department with your story.

We applaud the teenage girl who approached her mother with the inappropriate comments allegedly made by the school’s resource officer. We applaud her mother for believing her and taking those serious concerns to the school and police department. That is how change happens—when victims refuse to remain silent.

McDonalds To Hire 250,000 This Summer Via SnapChat, Spotify And Hulu

And just like that, the term Snaplicant was born, when moments ago McDonalds - which appears to have run out of "qualified" line cook and fast food job candidates (as our latest overview of the restaurant industry showed) - announced that it hopes to hire a quarter million workers this summer, of which more than half are projected to be between the ages of 16 – 24 years old, and to aid the hiring effort of these workers, for many of whom this will be their first job, MCD will use Snapchat. Hence the bolded term.

‘Snaplications,’ a term coined by McDonald’s, is a first-to-market hiring tool in the U.S. that allows job seekers to be served an ad and opportunity to begin the application process for a job at a McDonald’s restaurant through the Snapchat app. McDonald’s used a similar Snaplications execution in Australia earlier this year, and the company is also utilizing platforms including Spotify and Hulu to reach potential job seekers in a new way for the brand.

And because "new paradigm" gimmicks never cease, McDonalds is also "utilizing platforms including Spotify and Hulu to reach potential job seekers in a new way for the brand."

We wish McDonalds the best of luck: if documented indiations of young Americans" willingness to work (or not) are any indication, the world"s biggest fast food chain may have trouble filling all the open slots...

Full press release below:

McDonald’s Restaurants Expect to Hire 250,000 People this Summer

With summer around the corner, McDonald’s and its independent franchisees are gearing up to hire approximately 250,000 restaurant employees across the U.S.

More than half of the hires at company-owned restaurants are projected to be between the ages of 16 – 24 years old, and for many, it is their first job. For young job seekers, this is good news since according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than a third of teenagers will have a job between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

To aid in hiring efforts, McDonald’s is leading the way with a modern approach to recruiting – Snapchat. ‘Snaplications,’ a term coined by McDonald’s, is a first-to-market hiring tool in the U.S. that allows job seekers to be served an ad and opportunity to begin the application process for a job at a McDonald’s restaurant through the Snapchat app. McDonald’s used a similar Snaplications execution in Australia earlier this year, and the company is also utilizing platforms including Spotify and Hulu to reach potential job seekers in a new way for the brand.

“We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to find job seekers. We thought Snaplications was a great way to allow us to meet job seekers where they are – their phones,” said Jez Langhorn, Senior Director in Human Resources, McDonald’s USA. “As we see the younger generations seeking out their first jobs, we want to make them aware of the great opportunities available at McDonald’s, especially considering we’re committed to being America’s best first job.”

Starting June 13, Snapchat users nationwide may be served 10-second video ads of real restaurant employees talking about the benefits of working at McDonald’s. Viewers can then ‘swipe up’ to instantly visit the McDonald’s career webpage in Snapchat to explore the opportunities offered by McDonald’s, and apply to their local restaurants if they so choose.

McDonald’s and its independent franchisees strive to offer a work environment that sets employees up for success at McDonald’s and beyond… with education programs like Archways to Opportunity®, which gives employees in participating restaurants an opportunity to earn a high school diploma, receive upfront tuition assistance for college courses, access academic advising courses, and learn English as a second language.

Job seekers can visit McDonalds.com/careers to learn more and apply.
 

Social Media: Stick A Fork In It

Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

Let me make one thing clear before I start: It’s not that I’m saying “social media” is going away, as in no longer will be around or, will not have any use or value going forward. What I am stating is this: Everything that you’ve been told, as well as sold, about social media as it is currently argued and used, along with why the companies or platforms that supply it (i.e., the Snapchat™, Facebook™ Twitter™ et al) should be valued not just mere $Billions, but rather $10’s and $100’s of Billions is over. The signs are there for anyone paying attention...

The only ones (in my opinion) that have yet to grasp this are: the “experts”, fund managers, and analysts still telling, and selling its “So worth it!” drivel. Because, as I implied above: the signs are everywhere for those willing to look for themselves rather, than waiting for some “news flash” appearing in their “social feed” or “groundbreaking development” via the main stream business/financial media.

Hint: Remember when all the media went crazy touting why everyone needed to be on, and read their “expert” commentary on LinkedIn™? You know, right before its stock value suddenly plummeted facilitating the need or rescue via Microsoft™ for its very survival? It’s a point worth remembering for context.

Over the last few years I have not only taken the opposite view of what was once considered “gospel” in “The Valley” such as “the eyeballs for ads” model being the be-all, end-all metric for $Billion dollar valuations. But rather, in openly declaring such, I’ve been marked via that same congregation as a heretic for doing so. And that’s being kind.

Over the years their defence against such allegations were, of course, such things as IPO’s, stock valuations, and more. These “touchstones” at the time were touted to show why I was wrong – and they were right. Again, at the time, it all appeared or seemed irrefutable. After all, how could I question anything about what these “miracles” of tech provided, along with the near insatiable demand for their stock. For even an agnostic must surely agree, “tech” was proving and laying bare even the most skeptics’ arguments beyond the shadow of any and all doubt. However, that was when the manna-of-QE flowed freely.

Then – QE ended. And guess what else ended with it? Hint: “It’s different this time” went from holier-than-thou rhetoric to, “WTF is happening!” agnosticism. And it’s getting worse – much worse. Regardless of how many gnashing-of-teeth induced stupor one displays to the contrary.

Back in March I penned the article “Silicon Valley: From Rarified Air To Exhaust Fumes” which presented the following chart. To wit:

The reason why the above did as Rod Stewart famously stated “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” Is because of just that. As I stated in that article as to why one needed to pay attention was the following. Again, to wit:

“The issue here is that process has one key attribute: It’s the same pattern we’ve seen before, but now it’s represented in days. From IPO to today. What had once taken well over a year has morphed from months to now days.”

What truly puts the stamp of reality on what it says today, is the fact, that even as the “markets” have since (once again) risen to never before seen in history all time highs since that post some 3 months ago. The above have done nothing but either vacillate right where they stood, or worse, have lost even more value. (See “IPO to save the IPO world” Twilio’s current value for further clues.) And two of the three were supposed to be the “proof” that proved all the naysayers such as yours truly wrong. In retrospect, it seems they have done just the opposite.

But making or implying such a blasphemous statement as “social media is dead” and not arguing the same for one of this “religion’s” most cherished houses of worship without addressing it squarely would be insincere. Of course that would be the “idol” commonly known as Facebook™(FB.) And yes, I still believe (and have continually argued) FB along with social media in general – is the AOL™ equivalent of the dot-com era. Here’s why…

Remember all the fanfare they released just prior to the latest earnings report? For those having a hard time it was a statement declaring they had reached “5 million” small business advertisers. Here’s what I stated in a subsequent article. To wit:

“As of today all the estimates are that they’ll handily beat and some analysts are raising their targets. It’s very well they could, especially in today’s world of earnings reporting alchemy. However, one thing which caught my attention was the sudden touting a few weeks back that they had hit “5 Million advertisers.” Small businesses noted as the “key driver.”

“Sound great!” many are saying, and, in-truth, it is a worthy milestone. However, I see the timing as possibly a little suspect, here’s why… (I make this point for it has become near laughable how nearly all upcoming “tech” earnings reports now suddenly coincide with an ever-growing list of preceding announcements of grandiose ideas that are alluded to be right around the corner (like next week!) of flying cars, self driving trucks, rocket rides to space, virtual reality, just to name a few.)

Facebook as of late has been in the news with nothing but negative reports with a slew of horrendous acts being broadcast via their platform. e.g., Rape, kidnapping, beatings, and others. One of the concerns over all this (apart from the issue itself) was a possible backlash from potential advertisers. And who could blame them, and there lies the possible rub…

As I implied with the sudden “5 million” hoopla, what I’m asking is this: Is the addition of these stated 1 million plus new small business advertisers a replacing (therefore a diversion as to squash attention) for the potential of 1 or 2 (or more) large buyers who may have pulled ads?

In other words, if they’ve added so many “new” small business users – shouldn’t the ad revenue explode this report with all things being equal? I believe this is the metric to watch for.”

As per FB CFO Wehner: He once again reaffirmed ad growth will come down “meaningfully.”

Is that a “Wait…what?” moment, “Oh…oh?”, or combination of the two? For it just seems a little confusing on how such a statement could even be expressed (via the CFO no less) when you’re told both the “buyers” (see above “5 million” reference) of those ads, along with the users (see the only metric that’s supposed to matter e.g. 1.94 billion MAU) to view them have both increased.

But not too worry. Because in what seems to be the now “playbook” (See Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for clues) for all that is “tech”, there’s a reason why one should not pay attention to such things and focus on others. To wit:

Facebook now has a plan to eat another $350 Billion IT market.

Or said differently (as in my opinion) – Zuck and crew found another narrative they believe they can spend money on and keep all the “happy” talk perpetually happy. After all – spending $Billions on companies that seem to never produce a nickel in net profit warranting that spending is what FB has come to do almost better than anyone else. See WhatsApp™, Instagram™, and more for clues. Or, if you want to think of this way: Snapchat is supposedly the Instagram killer – and how’s that business model working out? Sorry, too soon?

Isn’t it funny when it comes to anything involving “The Valley” it always seems it’s about the next big “buy” that’ll be the reason why some insane P/E or valuation will be, “So worth it!” Never the core product that is/was supposedly its raison d’être. And it’s always just around the corner, or as close as the shareholders checkbook. Funny how that works. Or shall I say, “did?”

But then again it does seem so old-fashioned to worry about things like net profits when all one needs to do is use or follow the example below as a guide for growth in the #1 metric touted via “The Valley.” To wit:

“A Russian Went Inside A Chinese Click-Farm: This Is What He Found”

Makes you wonder how much further “value” all that “Asia” growth means to advertisers going forward. But then again…

It’s different this time, no?  Especially if advertisers themselves are beginning to see the light. See P&G™ for clues.

A Russian Went Inside A Chinese Click-Farm: This Is What He Found

On the day when Snapchat erased billions of market cap from investors (and founders) accounts - as the MAUs-means-money model seems to break - we thought it worthwhile taking another glimpse into the hush-hush world of "click-farms" and the fakeness of the latest social network fads.

In 2014, we first exposed the world to the "click-farm" where nothing is what it seems, and where social networking participants spend millions of dollars to appear more important, followed, prestigious, cool, or generally "liked" than they really are. As we detailed at the time, social networking has been the "it" thing for a while: for the networks it makes perfect sense because they are merely the aggregators and distributors of terrabytes of free, third party created content affording them multi-billion dollar valuations without generating a cent in profits (just think of the upside potential in having 10 times the world"s population on any given publicly-traded network), while for users it provides the opportunity to be seen, to be evaluated or "liked" on one"s objective, impartial merits and to maybe go "viral", potentially making money in the process. Of course, the biggest draws of social networks also quickly became their biggest weaknesses, and it didn"t take long to game the weakest link: that apparent popularity based on the size of one"s following or the number of likes, which usually translates into power and/or money, is artificial and can be purchased for a price.

But it is not only sport stars with chips on their shoulder, or fading move and music gods who are willing to dish out in order to get the fake adoration and fake fans: as the AP reports, In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers. In one case, its fan tally rose to more than 2.5 million from about 10,000.

Since then there have been crackdowns (self-regulated) and also numerous "advertising metric errors," but still, as recently as March of this year, scientists at USC and Indiana University discovered up to 15% of Twitter accounts could be fake. Since Twitter currently has 319 million monthly active users, that translates to nearly 48 million bot accounts, using USC"s high-end estimate. The report goes on to say that complex bots could have shown up as humans in their model, "making even the 15% figure a conservative estimate." At 15 percent, the evaluation is far greater than Twitter"s own estimates.

In a filing with the SEC last month, Twitter said that up to 8.5 percent of all active accounts contacted Twitter"s servers "…without any discernable additional user-initiated action."

Since that equates to roughly 20 million more bot accounts than Twitter"s own assessment, that could be an issue in light of analyst concerns about user growth. In a recent research report, Nomura Instinet analysts wrote that "Twitter"s revenue growth has slowed to the mid-single digits, as the platform has struggled to attract new users over the past year…"

The research could be troubling news for Twitter, which has struggled to grow its user base in the face of growing competition from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others.

So, if they"re not human, where do all those "likes," "retweets," and "followers" lighting up your social media accounts from?

Thanks to this Russian gentleman - who visited a Chinese click farm, where they make fake ratings for mobile apps and other things like this -  we now know...

Russian man visited Chinese click farm.They make fake ratings for mobile apps and things like this.He said they have 10,000 more phones pic.twitter.com/qE96vgCCsi

— English Russia (@EnglishRussia1) May 11, 2017

      He said they have 10,000 more phones just like these.

As we concluded previously, the bottom line is simple: "The illusion of a massive following is often just that," said Tony Harris, who does social media marketing for major Hollywood movie firms, said he would love to be able to give his clients massive numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but buying them from random strangers is not very effective or ethical. And once the prevailing users of social networks grasp that one of the main driving features of the current social networking fad du jour is nothing but a big cash scam operating out of a basement in the far east, expect both Facebook and shortly thereafter, Twitter, to go the way of 6 Degrees, Friendster and MySpace, only this time the bagholders will be the public. Because "it is never different this time." The only certain thing: someone will promptly step in to replace any social network that quietly fades into the sunset.

20 Amazing Things That Happen Every Single Minute Of Every Single Day In Our Rapidly Changing World

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Our world is changing at a blinding pace that is accelerating with each passing day. 

Thanks to the Internet, information travels at a speed that would have been unimaginable at other times in human history, and our technological capabilities are advancing at a rate that is exponentially increasing.  What all of this means is that seismic cultural shifts that used to take decades can now be accomplished in a matter of months or even weeks. 

The following are 20 amazing facts about what happens every single minute of every single day in our rapidly changing world... 

#1 250 babies will be born, and 113 of them will be born into poverty.

#2 500 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.

#3 The Earth will travel 1,118 miles around the sun.

#4 McDonald’s will sell 4,500 hamburgers.

#5 Lightning will strike our planet about 6,000 times .

#6 28,500 trees will be cut down.

#7 51,000 applications will be downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

#8 65,000 barrels of oil will be used used.

#9 People will watch 64,444 hours of content on Netflix.

#10 120,673 pounds of edible food will be thrown away in the United States.

#11 $203,596 worth of products will be sold on Amazon.com.

#12 448,800 tweets will be posted on Twitter.

#13 527,760 photos will be shared on Snapchat.

#14 3.3 million posts will be made to Facebook.

#15 3.8 million Google searches will be conducted.

#16 5 million pounds of garbage will be generated.

#17 6 million chemical reactions will happen in each one of our cells.

#18 20.8 million messages will be sent using WhatsApp.

#19 25 million Coca-Cola products will be consumed.

#20 204 million emails will be sent.

So will all of this change lead to a wonderfully positive future for humanity, or will it result in a dystopian nightmare?  Only time will tell, but what everyone can agree on is that our world is rapidly becoming a much different place than the world that our parents and grandparents grew up in.

Snap IPO Opens At $24 - Almost Three Times The Size Of Twitter

Having priced at $17, Snap Inc. opened for trading at $24, valuing the company over $34 billion - almost three times the size of Twitter, bigger than both HP and CBS, and almost as big as Ebay.

41% jump at the open from the IPO price and extending gains to $25..

Losses greater than revenues make for "hard math to work with" for investors, George Maris, portfolio manager at Janus Capital, says on Bloomberg Television.

At this valuation, Snap is almost three times the size of Twitter ($11.5bn)

Snap sold 200 million shares at $17 each for $3.4 billion, above the initial range of $14 to $16. It was oversubscribed by ten times, according to sources.

As The FT reports, John Colley, a professor at Warwick Business School, said the company faces significant challenges competing with Facebook and Google, makes substantial losses and is suffering from slowing growth. 

“Snap Inc is benefiting from institutions and individuals being awash with cash,” he said. “The top end valuation reflects high liquidity rather than a great prospect. There is far more cash than opportunities, which means pursuit of long odds risky options such as Snapchat.”

As a reminder for those who are buying SNAP with both hands and feet...

The company reported revenue of $404.5 million in 2016 and a loss of $514.6 million for 2016, compared with revenue of $57.7 million and a loss of $372.9 million a year earlier.

Snap said it had 158 million daily active users on average in the quarter ended in December, a 48% increase from the same quarter a year before.

If only the company had lost more money!!

Snapchat is expert at burning cash. Free cash flow was $678 million last year. THAT IS MORE THAN ITS REVENUE for the year.

Cops Raid Wrong Home Then Humiliate Family By Posting Photos Of Them Handcuffed On Snapchat

New York, NY — NYPD police officers just raided the wrong home and then posted photos of the innocent family in handcuffs to Snapchat. Police claim that they were searching for a suspect in the apartment and had a warrant. However, the family does not know nor do they have any connection with the suspect. It is not clear why their house was targetted, and the NYPD has refused to answer any questions about the incident.

The two photos which later appeared on social media featured the captions “Merry Christmas Its NYPD” and “Warrant Sweeps, It’s Still A Party SMH.”

While the name of the officer and his squad was not released by the NYPD, it was confirmed that the officer was identified within the department and suspended without pay.

Kimberly Santiago, one of the victims of the raid, ended up calling 911 after the experience, and then filing a report with the police department.

“The worst part was the Snapchats. That’s what really got to me,” she told ABC, adding that, “The things that he wrote, it’s like, this what you all do? If he did that to, picture how many other families he’s done that to. And he was the only one standing there watching us.”

“Y’all know that when you came to this house, looking for the wrong person that we don’t even know. We thought he was texting on his phone. Because the whole three hours we were sitting here, he was the one standing there. We saw him on his phone, but we didn’t think an officer would do that,” she explained.

The family sat in handcuffs for three hours as police ransacked their house searching for the supposed suspect, and anything else that could justify their search and possibly land and arrest.

Resident Eric Almendarez told the New York Post that the officers entered the home in full force, with guns drawn.

“It was horrible. They broke down the door and shoved a gun in my face and told me not to look up. How are we supposed to get over that?” he said.

John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. John is currently battling cancer naturally, without any chemo or radiation, and will be working to help others through his experience, if you wish to contribute to his treatments please donate here.