Yes that’s me. Its the only freaking reason I *cling* to the Republican party. (you know, like guns and religion) . . . other than the religion of economics, I’m pretty much have nothing in common with the party of G.W. Its about now I’m ready to seek out Ron Paul and his Libertarian buddies (yes, I know he is actually in the Republican party, but I believe Paul is just doing some recon work before going back) but than again, the dude is way too much of social conservative for me anyways.

So this $1trillion bailout has me torn to pieces. Being against the bailout seems to be the most bi-partisan thing to happen during this election year. So there is Krugman on the left putting in his two cents. And bunch of really old white guys from red states I really don’t ever plan to visit conspiring to stage a revolt against GW.

Here is basically how I look at it (don’t scream at me, I know I’m super simplifying what is actually happening). The Republicans is gonna take my money (through a combination of taxes I already paid and mostly through general interest rate increases) and give it to irresponsible banks run by employees making (and made) 10x more than I do in exchange for bunch of over-valued assets. And then the Democrats is gonna turn around take my money too and use it to help pay off the monthly mortgage payments of bunch of dumbass flippers who never paid enough attention in college to learned how to calculate net present value.

I hate them both. My sense of justice can’t take this country any more.

Yes, I know that the worst thing that can happen is for the bailout to NOT get passed, in which case it will probably hit my pockets books even more. But I do have the RIGHT to be a little pissed off. Why can’t we just revoke the citizenship of these people that are not contributing positively to the GDP and send them off to Australia or something? (didnt the brits used to do that?). Let them try to flip worthless huts in the middle of the Great Victorian Desert instead (the bankers can spend their days “structuring” credit default swaps denominated in camel dungs)

Man I’m pissed. Gonna go short me some financials & treasuries just to have something to root against.

The social graph . . . the silver bullet for all things previously haven’t worked online. Seems like for the last 3 month, everyone has been recycling dot-bomb ideas, adding a “social graph” angle . . . and calling it the next great thing. Here is the deal. . social graph will ultimately be an important part of the formula for building the next great web application BUT its not a panacea for an idea that never worked in the first place. Understanding user behavior and context will still be the fundamental first step to creating the next killer app.

Buried in the various posts of the week, is this little gem on Venture Beat on eBay’s experiments with merging the social graph and e-commerce that anyone (entrepreneurs, pm’s etc) experimenting with the social graph need to take note.

One interesting exploration is whether and how social connections between friends (the so-called “social graph”) can enhance seller trust ratings and thus facilitate purchases on eBay. EBay’s first exploration — or the “first inning,” as Mancini described it — was playing with Facebook apps. It built one, called eBay Marketplace, which lets you see what your friends are buying on eBay. This is somewhat similar to Facebook’s own Beacon advertising program. Note, eBay was an early Beacon experimenter. The company concluded that people want to keep social and commerce activities separate.

What eBay has discovered. . . (and BTW Facebook learned the same thing too from Beacon) is that social recommendation does not spur an impulse purchase from another user. Extrapolating even more broadly, social recommendations do not cause a passive user to become an active user. One area where this data point could help predict success is in the display advertising targeting technology. Social graph based display advertising targeting companies (too many to mention) will not have the success that many think they will . . . display is still a passive medium . . . it will never be like search an active medium.

But is it true that “people want to keep social and commerce activities separate”? That is part I think eBay had it wrong. Its too broad of a hypothesis.

I believe where social graph will have the largest impact is when users are already taking an pro-active stance (for example, all kinds of “search” like activities) and the social graph based recommendations and applets can act as a catalyst to improve conversion. For example, Amazon’s recommendation system generates between 10-20% of its e-commerce revenue (based on common research analyst estimates) so in that context, when an user is already take a proactive action, recommendations can be very valuable. Social Graph applications is just another method for segmenting like-minded users . . . collaborative filtering gets to the same end just through a different mean (ie from actual purchase behavior) . . . so anything that improves the targeting and relevancy of recommendation would in theory improve conversion (and prove valuable) to the end user.

I, as a user, don’t necessarily need to know that Joe, my best friend, just bought a pair of Ted Bakers 2 seconds ago. What I do care about is when I eventually need to buy a pair of shoes, you remember to show me a couple pairs of Ted Bakers that I might like. Simple, certainly not ground breaking (. . . hell, collaborative filtering could already be far more relevant than social graph based recommendations . . . ) but doesn’t mean social graph could not be a small but important part of the inevitable march towards the next generation of web applications.