Are Facebook’s New live videos effective?

This article discusses the effectiveness of Facebook’s new live videos that it has been pushing recently. Essentially, the live video shows up like anything else on your Facebook news feed, but you are able to see what is going on in the moment with whoever/whatever is live streaming the video. It is being used to encourage more interactions between Facebook pages and their audiences, allowing them to ask questions and feel more connected in general.

However, many are feeling that this is becoming too much, as Facebook has been trying to push this product heavily using a lot of notifications that many Facebook users are complaining about. At the same time, Facebook currently isn’t really offering an option to stop all of these notifications for an individual user.

While I see this as a new way to communicate that has the potential of catching on and being very effective, Facebook is obviously pushing it too much and pushing away previously satisfied users. At the same time, Facebook is aware of this but they also know the amount of money that this is currently bringing in, and the potential it has once more companies’ pages start using it. I think that while this is a relatively innovative way to connect users to many of their favorite people and companies, it has been implemented slightly poorly. There is a difference between getting the word out about a service, and doing it to the point that it makes the product of Facebook as a whole less attractive for users and I think Facebook may have hit that point.

What do you think about this new “way to connect” on Facebook?

Have you had the problem of excessive notifications?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/technology/facebook-live-annoying-and-intrusive-seems-to-be-paying-off.html?ref=business

This Is the Job Market We've Been Hoping for All These Years

What does an ideal American job market look like in 2016? According to this article it would look something like this: The U.S. would steadily add jobs, wages would gradually rise, and the labor force would increase. Surprisingly, this happens to be the reality revealed in the March job numbers. Of course, there are still problems in the economy. Measures of economic output have been quite weak in comparison to measures of the job market. In the longer term, incomes for working-class Americans have not seen great growth over the last couple of decades. While these problems still exist, the damage left by the recession eight years ago for the labor market is almost fully healed. In fact, over the last four months, the size of the United States labor force has risen by 1.92 million, the strongest since the boom time of early 2000. In addition, the unemployment rate has been incredibly stable lately, stagnating between 4.9 and 5.1 percent for eight consecutive months. The gradual pace of growth in average hourly earnings means the Federal Reserve will feel comfortable sticking with a cautious, slow path of raising interest rates, rather than get any ideas that a huge outbreak of inflation is on the way. There are still many problems that the economy must face, but the most recent numbers on the labor market show that the economy is heading in the right direction.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/upshot/this-is-the-job-market-weve-been-hoping-for-all-these-years.html?ref=economy 

A New Future for Fabric

The small private company located in New Hampshire, Warwick Mills, has survived the global competition in the textile industry by maintaining and developing innovative specialized fabrics that are used in gloves for industrial workers or body armor for the military. The company just joined the Defense Department in a $320 million project to bring the American textile industry into the new age. What sets them apart is technology. The plan involves putting tiny semiconductors and sensors into fabrics that can see, hear, and communicate. This development has the potential to change the game. The project represents a new frontier for The Internet of Things-putting sensors and computing in all kinds of objects to measure and monitor. The success of this new program, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, will be measured by creation of jobs as well as technology. The project holds the hope of reversing the decline of textile jobs in America. It holds the goals to create 50,000 jobs in ten years across all kinds of industries.

NY Times, 4/1/16, Steve Lohr

Karlie Kloss's New Coding Camp For Girls

Two years ago, model Karlie Kloss enrolled in Flatiron School's two-week pre-college coding course and fell in love with the ever growing industrial leading language of coding.  She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to underwrite 21 Kode with Karlie scholarships so other young women could take the same two-week pre-college coding course at Flatiron that had kicked off her own programming education. In today's fast paced society, coding is becoming one of the most sought after skills to acquire and what big companies look for in potential candidates for an array of jobs in and out of tech. 

Flatiron's class enrollment has been equally split between male and female students for over three years. The tech industry itself, of course, struggles with a gender imbalance.  "We're very big believers that a diversity of opinion through background creates the most engaging place for people to learn," says Flatiron dean and cofounder, Avi Flombaum. "The more perspectives there are, the more backgrounds people come from, the more life experiences that are different creates a really amazing environment for people to grow together in ways they would never be able to grow if they were surrounded by people just like them."


Flombaum believes that teaching students how to express themselves through code is key to keeping students especially young people engaged. "Showing them that they can generate music with code allows them to clone or copy their favorite artist, to put a little of their own personality and their own opinions to it," he says. "When they do actually build apps, we allow them to pick a project and pick a place where they want to improve the world and contribute ways in which they are expressing themselves, not us. We’re giving them the tool set or the vocabulary with which to model a phenomenon or project or concept. Code really becomes the medium, and the end result becomes what they are more interested in."

"Karlie is just an amazing voice to show young women they can be so many more things: They don’t have to make myopic or binary choices about being into fashion or being into science, or being a programmer or being an artist," Flombaum says. "Karlie Kloss could be doing a million other things with her time, but this is what she is choosing, this is a message she's communicating to the world: that women can do whatever they want, that they're capable, and all they need is a little inspiration to reach out and look for something more."

Karlie isn't trying to expose this gender imbalance in the tech industry rather she wants to provide the launch pad for women to express their creative sides in a industry with endless possibilities. While the tech industry remains hugely male dominated, I think over time we'll see more women take leading roles and create and collaborate to create apps that'll help shape the way society functions. All these changes will have positive profound effects on the economy.

Link: http://www.fastcompany.com/3058403/most-creative-people/behind-the-scenes-at-karlie-klosss-new-coding-camp-for-girls

Home Price Index Continues to Climb

     The housing market has continued to grow according to a New York Times article with recent data showing growth in the beginning of 2016. Specifically the home price index rose 5.7 percent from a year earlier. The article also notes that the rise in the home price index is related to increased employment and income of Americans which has increased demand for homes, most notable in metro areas. While buyers are demanding more homes, sellers are more reluctant because it is harder to find a better home at a cheaper price. Along with a relatively low supply of homes for sell this has made homes available for sell low. The article is optimistic that because of increasing economic growth overall in the U.S, Americans will become more confident in the market and more homes will become on sale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/economy/home-price-index-continued-steady-climb-in-january.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FUnited%20States%20Economy&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

$15-an-Hour Minimum Wage in California? Plan Has Some Worried

     A common trend in the world of economics is the fine balance between the benefits versus the costs in certain policies and actions. In order to attain a goal, sometimes decision makers need to know that there will be negative consequences to their plans, yet ideally, the positive factors will outweigh the negative. In a real world, case study example, we can see how the state of California will react to an increase in the minimum wage. Currently, the wage is $10 per hour, however in the New York Times article by Noam Scheiber and Ian Lovett, they describe the outlined plan that the state unveiled to act as an "economic guinea pig" and raise the minimum wage to $15 over the next years, or by 2022 in the end result.
     I enjoyed this article, not only due to its relevance of the material we are currently studying in class, but also for the way it candidly spoke about both the pros and the cons of raising the minimum wage in a state like CA where the cost of living is rather high and there are income disparities between the very rich and the very poor. On one hand, the article points that the change could lead to a higher living standard for the citizens in the cities since, as a legislator pointed out, this action is "a matter of economic justice.” On the other hand, however, there are significant consequences including a personal story that the article mentions that a local restaurant owner, Craig Sharton, had to close his business on Mondays and Tuesdays since he could not afford to pay his employees when the wage already rose from $9-$10. Furthermore, the authors mention that the higher wage would cause more unemployment in cities like LA and San Diego versus San Francisco and Fresno. In the end, even though it might be ideal and help workers to have higher wages, it is also important to balance the outcome.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/business/economy/15-hour-minimum-wage-in-california-plan-has-some-worried.html?ref=economy

Yellen Outsources U.S. Monetary Policy to the Financial Markets

This article talks about how the fed has outsourced monetary policy to the financial markets which may not be a bad thing for numerous reasons. The fed has scaled back the number of interest rate increases they expect to carry out this year after investors did the same. This is because speculation can cause numerous trends that may be harmful for the economy. Yellen said the downgrading of rate expectations in the market had led to lower bond yields, providing the economy with needed support in the face of weaker growth overseas. The Fed’s experience over the last six months also shows how difficult it can be for the central bank to align investors’ view of optimal monetary policy with that of its own. Yellen commented on the relationship between the central bank and the financial markets highly praising them.  She said that “This mechanism serves as an important ‘automatic stabilizer’ for the economy,” The final decision that the fed chairman makes will be highly dependent upon how the investors in the financial market respond to changes in the economy.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-30/yellen-outsources-u-s-monetary-policy-to-the-financial-markets