The Stalwart

I'm Not Dead...

And The 'Wart won't be going into extended hibernation again. But I've been travelling (today I fly to Omaha!).

To keep yourselves amused, check out 101Rating, a new directory of rating sites! Alex Kirtland of the blog usable markets is involved. Very cool.

The 'Peppers Pride' Asterisk

For awhile they talked about putting an asterisk next to Roger Maris' name in the record books. Sometimes they talk about it with Barry, cause of the roids. Some suggested that Ichiro needed one when he broke the hits record. So will we need one in thoroughbred racing?

A horse called Peppers Pride has matched the consecutive-races-won streak, 16, held by Cigar and a couple of others. So how come you've never heard of Peppers Pride? From Bloodhorse:

All of her victories have come against New Mexico-breds at distances between 5 1/2 furlongs and one mile.

In other words, all of her wins have come against seriously limited competition. So a Peppers Pride asterisk? Normally I' m against 'em, but I think in this case, it'd be clearly deserved.

Remind Me To Fly jetBlue As Much As Possible

Sitting in a Virgin America flight on the runway, listening to trippy music and seeing lots of purple. Fine enough, but getting through check-in was a total pain. Totally unlike the dedicated jetBlue terminal at JFK, which is almost* always a breeze.

Anyway, heading off to Los Angeles for work conference, and then to Omaha to check out Warren Buffett's Woodstock for capitalism courtesy of a Stalwart reader who hooked me up with a pass. Will be bloggering as much as possible, and when not doing that, also twittering (check me out).

I'll be in Omaha a couple extra days, so if there are any readers of The 'Wart who want to meet up, let me know. Any of you going to the event? Also, 'Wart readers in LA: shoot me an email.

Will be back in touch when I'm on the other side of the continent in just 5:27 according to the pilot.

Trend Alert: The Revitalization Of E-Commerce

That last post about the blog Brownstoner parlaying its readership into a seemingly successful flea market reminded me of something else I've been thinking about: The re-rise of e-commerce.

So many of the e-commerce startups back during Web 0.9 were just Amazon.com clones whose model was basically: Sell $1.00 for $.90 and hope to make it up on volume (they didn't). When most of those died (Pets.com, gardens.com, wine.com {wine.com again} and Buy.com) people stopped doing e-commerce start-ups. Now it's all digital media all the time.

But I think e-commerce is coming back, only the new startups aren't trying to replicate the Amazon.com model. You've got stuff Brooklyn-based Etsy, the community/marketplace for handmade goods, and buying clubs like Gilt Groupe (to be honest, I don't quite get what they do, but I know they do something). There are also new transactional models built on top of content -- kind of like TheKnot.com (NSDQ: KNOT) except interesting. Another one I came across based in New York is Notes on a Party, which is a content site about event planning that then points to various vendors of premium event-related goods and services. The blog TreeHugger, which has been around for awhile now, melds green content and green buying. I'm sure there are tons more.

All in all, I suspect there will be a lot more startups kind of doing the digital media thing, but exploring more transactional (or lead-genish) opportunities to make money, as opposed to purely just advertising. There's a lot of room for innovation in internet-driven commerce, and the big players like Amazon and eBay (whose core business models haven't evolved in a decade) should be wary of small upstarts that find new hooks for consumers.

Also, for that matter, the traditional internet lead-gen business will probably see a shakeup before too long, as the game of search engine/advertising arbitrage will only go on so long, before a) the arb is closed and b) there are no new categories to enter.

Another Blog Business Model: Flea Markets

Making meaningful money from blogging remains an elusive quest for most bloggers, even ones who have what might be terms "a lot" of traffic. Sure, there's ads, but that'll only take you so far.

Anyway, here's something cool: The blog Brownstoner, a popular Brooklyn-based  blog about real estate, renovating and other things that appeal to Park Slope yuppies has launched its own flea market called Brooklyn Flea. It happens every Sunday in a parking lot in Ft. Greene. The vendors it appeals to sell antiques, vintage stuff, and other things that appeal to the site's readership. And according to a friend of mine, who has a business selling vintage clothing, the opening weekends have been hot hot hot.

Not that I fall into the targeted demo at all, but I'll have to check it out and report back.

Broadband's Getting Better

Tim Lee has a sharp post up about the broadband market, and the notion that speeds and quality have just stagnated over the years. It's not true.

Organic Food Economics

Remember when Wal-Mart made a big splash by announcing its entrance into the organic food space? Not long after, it got a lot of attention for admitting, basically, that its efforts weren't going well. How did Wal-Mart miscalculate? Isn't everyone from all walks of life getting organic fever?

Maybe not. A Kansas State researcher has done some work on the economics of organic foods, and this part caught my eye:

What's more, Wileman said, is that research done at K-State shows that beef producers are competing for a mere 2 percent of a consumer's income. He said another thing to keep in mind is research showing that most growth in organic and natural food items has come from the same shoppers buying more products, not from an increase in the numbers of like-minded consumers.

Buyers of organic food have always bought a mix of conventional and organically grown items. This suggests that organic foods haven't crossed the chasm, but rather that narrow population just keeps substituting a greater percentage of their conventional food with organic. Even at organic food's rate of growth -- which is apparently quite high -- traction among the Wal-Mart set could be next to nil.

Stupid Me

I had assumed that the spike in interest in the acronym OMFG had something to do with the show Gossip Girl. Obviously, it's just a lot of people searching for the Ohio Milling & Farming Group at OMFG.org:

OMFG marshalls together the most lucrative and industrious agricultural entities from the Great Plains in an effort to safeguard our most cherished botanical arts from the rampant sterilizing industrialization of the Electronic age.

Gossip Girl Must Be Coming Back

If this Google trends chart for OMFG is to be believed:

A Tale Of Two Bloggers

When The 'Wart started, there were two of us. One of us is still here, not having really moved forward with life. The other, Vincent, is now a banker in Asia, having actually accomplished something. And he was recently quoted intelligently in a Dow Jones newswire piece about shipping consolidation:

Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd. (000700.SE), STX Pan Ocean Co. Ltd. (028670.SE), and Hyundai Merchant Marine (011200.SE) also said that they have no interest in Hapag-Lloyd. The shipping industry is being pressured by rising fuel costs and a slowdown in traffic on critical routes. Following the denials, some analysts said most players will stay focused on turning profit from existing operations, giving NOL a clear path to pursue Hapag-Lloyd. "I haven't seen any other player who seems to be signaling that they're looking to consolidate," said Vincent Fernando, an analyst at Citigroup in Hong Kong. "When there's a worry of just managing profitability with what you have now, the incentive to take on more uncertainty just doesn't make sense." Container volume between Asia and North America declined in 2007, and Fernando said the route may continue to suffer as economic growth in the U.S. dwindles.

And here's a lesson:

Analysts said consolidation among large players may not pay off in the near term, another deterrent for would-be bidders."The benefits aren't necessarily historically proven," Fernando said. After buying P&O, Maersk was forced to lower rates to keep customers and analysts said it continues to grapple with integration issues.

A point to be considered in plenty of industries beyond shipping.