Welcome to 33rd edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), and me!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
This week we have thoughts on goofing off, Facebook, and company profits.
Michael on Goofing Off. I’m sure a few of you caught Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek. If you’re one of the lucky, you’ve also seen his work in the BBC version of Sherlock. The series is well-written, well-acted and well… a treat. I was fortunate enough to catch an early screening of Star Trek last week (lots of fun, especially if you aren’t looking to be overly critical) and watching Cumberbatch in action encouraged me to give Sherlock a second viewing. This cut significantly into my weekly reading and nothing came close to being as enjoyable as all revisiting all six episodes in the series. If you’re yet to catch Sherlock, it’s well worth your time. All six episodes are essentially one and a half hour feature length movies. If you’ve been working like crazy, give yourself a break and give this series a go. You won’t regret it.
Facebook IPO Winners and Losers
Howie on Facebook. First off let me be clear. I told everyone who could hear me to short the Facebook IPO…for more than a year before it went public. Here is a nice rundown of the winners and losers. What I do find interesting is how rare it is for a woman to make headlines and big dollars in big business without major ethical flaws. Sheryl Sandberg included. But quick note: Aside from the telecommuting PR flap, Yahoo! just surpassed Facebook in U.S. unique monthly visitors to take the number two spot. Go Marissa!
Amazon is Not Profitable Yet Stock Jumps 10 Percent
Gini on Profits. I was at dinner with Randy Hall (leadership coach extraordinaire) last week and he told me about an NPR story he heard about Amazon. Did you know they’re not profitable? More than $20 billion in sales and they don’t make any money. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I didn’t know this so I did some research. This TechCrunch article explains how they deal with less than two percent margins (holy cow) yet people continue to buy their stock. It’s a really interesting look in how Wall Street doesn’t always reward profitable companies.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?
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