Category Archives: Technology

A Key Influencer?

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I am all for self-promotion.  After all, if you don't promote yourself, no one will.  But along those lines, there are certain terms and phrases that generally you need to have given to you.  If I were to say I was famous, most of you would laugh at me.  I am not famous by any measure of success.  I might be known, or well known, within certain spheres for this or that, but I am not famous.

Which brings me to this morning's email.  I was pinged by someone who wanted to follow my defunct twitter feed.  It still amazes me how many people want to follow my twitter feed, considering I haven't posted anything is quite some time, and officially closed the site more than a year ago.  So imagine my surprise when this individual's bio included the words "a key influencer."

A what?  Key influencer of what?  Could you maybe influence my budget?  No?  How about getting me more people to help with the sesquicentennial?   Could you influence the vendors I deal with to cut me a break on costs?  Yes, I didn't think so.  So tell me again how you can be a "key influencer?"  You might just as well call yourself God for all the influence you have.

Many will argue that social media is the way of the future.  I am not sure that this is the case.  To me social media is another way of saying mass marketing disguised as personal recommendations for a product.  After all, those have always been the best marketing tools, but to describe yourself as a key influencer, when 1) I have never heard of you (35,000 twitter fans is not a market base) and 2) You cannot influence those things that are important to me, is a little grandiose and well, self aggrandizing. I might just as well say I am famous.  It garners the same reaction.

Tell me they are not gouging

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Unless you live and work in the same building, or are independently wealthy, you cannot help but notice that the price of gas has gone up significantly in the last couple of weeks, even more so than during the unrest in Middle East, or even during the initial invasions of Iraq in 2003.

The experts are saying it is an issue of demand.  Drivers are demanding more gas.  And yet other experts, pointing to increased use of fuel efficient vehicles and radical changes in driving patterns in general say it is speculators driving up the price.  But who is speculating and what are they speculating on?

Recent reports have the price of oil dropping through $90 a barrel, normally the main driver of high gas prices.  In fact, oil has not exceeded $100 a barrel since the unrest in Libya began.  Other commodity items are similarly declining.  So who is speculating?

It will not come as a surprise that the oil companies themselves are already out in front of this with advertisements that portray them as the good guys, investing in new technologies, communities, and mom and apple pie. Yet it will not come as a surprise when they announce yet new record profits at the end of the quarter, driven by gas prices over $4 a gallon.  And yet no one can prove they are gouging, or price fixing, despite every station having the same price, and moving in lockstep when the new truck load arrives.

Clearly the United States needs to find a solution to the problem.  But the average American does not have the ability to cut back much more because of the poor design and zoning decisions that have been made over the last 100 years.  Most people cannot afford to live where they work, nor are they in control of the traffic that they have to wrestle with on a daily basis.  So until I see some real change, I cannot think that the oil companies are doing anything but gouging.  And I will not easily change my mind on this.