The Wall Street Journal is reporting, in a three-person bylined story, that GM plans to stop advertising on Facebook after its senior marketing executives decided “that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers’ car purchases.” However, while the company won’t pay for advertising on the site, they plan on continuing their content marketing activities on Facebook.

Here are the bullet points:

• GM paid $10 million to Facebook for advertising during the past year.
• GM paid agencies and others (companies other than Facebook) $30 million for the creation of content and the management of marketing activities on GM’s pages on Facebook
• Facebook provides those pages to GM for free, the same price you or I pay.
• Just to make sure you’re following this, let me repeat this another way:  GM paid 3x their Facebook advertising budget for creating the content (articles, videos, promotions, status updates, etc.) that appears on Facebook pages that are “free” to any marketer.
• GM thinks the $10 million spent on Facebook advertising is wasted, so they are pulling it.
• GM thinks it’s still worth $30 million to create and manage content on Facebook.

As you might expect, those of us at Hammock who spend time trying to explain the value of using “content” in addition to (or, in some cases, rather than) traditional types of advertising (including traditional internet advertising) to build deeper, longterm relationships with customers, find this kind of news a validation of things we’ve been saying since Mark Zuckerberg was in elementary school.

But that’s not why this is news.

It’s news because Facebook’s IPO is expected to occur in three days and the reported pricing of the IPO (when compared to the Price/Earning ratios of companies like Apple) suggests that Facebook has the potential of soon being able to, “attract 10 percent of all advertising dollars spent on the planet ‘across all media – print, billboards, radio, television, internet,” according to a Dartmouth professor quoted in an NPR story earlier today.

So here’s the rub:

If GM, the third largest advertiser in the U.S., with an overall annual advertising budget of $1.8 billion, finds that spending .05 percent of its budget is too much, what chance does Facebook have of capturing 10 percent of GM’s total advertising budget in a few years? And what chance does it have of capturing 10 percent of all advertising?

Hint: The answer is 0 percent.

But I’ve not written this post to bury Facebook, but to praise it. What they’ve done is incredible: the creation of a platform that causes a company like GM to spend $30 million in creating content just for it is miraculous — probably right up there with how much GM spends on paying lawyers and PR professionals to issue press releases each year.

The IPO price of Facebook is probably ridiculous, and that might fail. But Facebook is a success. Just like Yahoo! was in 1999.

Later: There’s always more than one side to a story. AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka says GM was never a big believer in social media, anyway.

I’m looking forward tomorrow to participating in the day-long event hosted by the Nashville Technology Council, Techville. I’ll be sharing a panel with MusicSynk’s John Pisciotta on the impact of digital media on two of Nashville’s more visible industries: music and publishing. As there are new ways that digital media and the networked marketplace change music and publishing every day, we may likely limit our remarks to those changes that occur during the next 24 hours.

The key reason to attend events like this in your hometown and region, is to meet others who are both passionate and curious about the role of technology in our businesses — those of us whose work is purely tech, and those of us whose work is, more-and-more, created, managed and distributed on tech platforms.

While some believe this is a phenomenon limited to a few zip codes in the U.S., there are some exciting things happening in cities (and small towns) around the world.

Like Nashville, for example.

There are some incredible tech-related activities taking place here (and some have to do with solving problems created here) — in giant industries that have so many challenges to solve, it’s hard to know where to begin: the management of healthcare, for example. Or, how to create new, rational approaches to the ownership and use of intellectual property. Or, how to provide the infrastructure and support that will be necessary to evolve the book industry into a digital-centric business during the next 20 years.

All three of those challenges are being addressed — in big and bold ways — in Nashville.

But then, we also have some great guitar pickers, also.

[Note: This post includes spoilers related to a 12-year old movie you'll probably never see, if you haven't already.]

With each new backwards somersault in the never-ending dive of Yahoo! into the abyss, I keep remembering the first movie I can recall that included an internet startup’s business success in the story line.

It was the Dennis Quaid film that came out in the year 2000, Frequency. It was a, hmm, science fiction, time travel, alternative history, kind of movie that revolved around the easily believable premise that Quaid’s son, as an adult in the year 2000, could use a ham radio to talk with his father who was living back in the year, 1970. Apparently, if you understand how sun spots work, you’ll find this premise very plausible (if you live in Hollywood).

Quaid’s son used this time-warping communication power to warn his fireman father that, unless he watched out, he would die in a fire the following night (convenient timing for that sun spot, no?) After that worked out, Quaid’s son told him how to keep his wife’s (the son’s mother) from being murdered. If you’ve read the most recent Stephen King novel, 11/22/63, you’ll understand why you shouldn’t go around messing with history next time you have the chance to travel back in time and fix something that needs fixing. But in the movie Frequency, everything works out just fine.

Indeed, things work out so fine in Frequency, that Quaid’s son not only saves the lives of his father and mother, he tells his dad to inform Gordo, the best friend of the son, to remember the word “Yahoo” when he grows up.

So Gordo, grows up and invests early in Yahoo! and in the year, 2000, Gordo’s Yahoo! stock has made him rich. So rich, that at the end of the film, there is a feel-good scene during which an old Dennis Quaid and his wife are playing softball and a foul ball busts the headlight of Gordo’s Mercedes — and we get to marvel at how rich Gordo is, as we see his New York vainty car tag enscribed with Yahoo 1.

It’s hard to believe today, but back in Bubble 1.0, the term “Yahoo!” didn’t just mean, Internet startup, it was the internet company that had become the pervasive pop-culture metaphor for “getting rich.”

But then…

Almost at the precise moment the film Frequency came out, the pop culture meaning of Yahoo! started a journey that would reposition the company’s brand to mean pretty much anything but getting rich. Or being smart. Or being anything, but “formerly important.”

If Frequency were to be remade, Dennis Quaid’s son would be telling his son to dump Yahoo! the day after the softball game.

In March, 2009, I wrote a blog post that collected some of my thoughts in reaction to the economic collapse we had just experienced (and are still feeling). In light of the news this week that the much-admired and rarely-wrong CEO of JPMorgan is not immune from the laws of nature and market-places, I thought back to a section of what I wrote that day:

The whole “bigger is always better” thing has now been exposed as a nice theory, but a failed reality. Why? Because all the algorithms and information technology and most brilliant programming in the world can’t overcome the bugs of greed, hubris and randomness that can best be summed up in the vernacular, “sh*t happens.” How did we get to this place where massive corporations that have enriched the investment bankers, lawyers, investors and executives who profited through merger after merger now must be rescued by taxpayers because they are “too big to fail”? If they are too big to fail, I suggest we demand back the legal and banking fees and executive bonuses, etc., that were doled out to those who made the companies “too big” in the first place.

Alas, that won’t happen. So the only thing we can do is refuse to believe the investment bankers and executives who, no doubt, will continue their mantra that bigger is better, even when it’s not.

For the rest of my life, I will believe that a company is too large when its CEO can’t explain every way it makes money, including any exotic financial instruments on which it might slap a label like “derivatives.”

A 2006 article I wrote about Jason Fried on why bigger isn't better. See note, links at the bottom of post.

[Note: The following post is intended for people who actually read what it says, not for those who don't read it, but feel the need to react to what they think it says.]

Obviously, I love internet-enabled technology and startups and am overly (obsessively?) fascinated by how the internet is changing our lives, jobs, relationships, culture and well, I could keep going. I’ve chronicled a lot of that fascination and interest on this blog for the past 12 years.

However, there are times when I wish Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet.

If there was no internet, I wouldn’t have to read things like this New York Times  clichéd story about startup companies that are (possibly) on the cusp of making it big financially (translation: like Instagram). They’ve rounded up some startups (some of which I like and use) that are already over-hyped, or that were created or funded by over-hyped individuals.

In my opinion, there are some bound-to-flop ringers in the list. (I call them Gertrude Steiners in reference to her quote about Oakland: There is no there there.)

And some on that list can’t lose unless the founders wait too long before cashing out. Hint: Dropbox.

But in my opinion, the entire premise of the story is wrong.

The companies they are pointing to may be the next big financial windfall for their creators and early investors. It’s about being the next financial big thing — the next big hit for venture-backed startups.

If that’s the definition of a “big thing,” then I prefer lots of small things that bring value to all of us — even financial rewards.

Moreover, there are several flaws in the obsession with the “next big thing” focus (startup porn, as some would describe it). Here are just a few: 1. Venture capitalists have a good record at choosing the next big thing. 2. Past success is an indicator of future success. 3. “Big things” are created by individuals who start for-profit companies for whom “exit strategies” define success, and 4. To be the next big thing, you need to create a solution to some banal or “first world” non-problem.

Let’s take those in order, in a lightening round:

1. Venture funds make big bucks: Let me point you over to the folks at the Kauffman Foundation who issued a major paper yesterday that says institutional investors should rethink the whole idea of investing in venture funds (and accept the blame for the previous failures of such funding strategies). It was written by the individuals at Kauffman who have been investing in venture funds for the past 20 years (e.g., not merely and academic exercise). They blame themselves (institutional investors) for believing the hype of VCs and declare on the press release, “After Fees and Expenses, Most Investors Will Do Better in Public Markets.” If you disagree, take it up with them, not me.

2. Past success is an indicator of future success: That’s right up there with past failure being an indicator of future failure. Frankly, failure is probably a better indicator. Does away with the hubris success can bring, at least.

3. “Big things” are created by individuals who start for-profit companies for whom “exit strategies” define success: Most of the companies listed have built their products using software platforms that were not created by for-profit companies that had exit strategies. Even when Al Gore created the internet itself, it was before he had a VC gig.

4. To be the next big thing, you need to create a solution to some banal or “first world” non-problem: Frankly, it’s embarrassing to look at the list of potential next “big things” and realize we’ve arrived at the place where a generation of entrepreneurs are devoting themselves to creating a means to find a taxi easier than, say, finding a cure for dementia.

I love the internet and technology and the people who create the cool things on this list, but being the next big thing financially for a few people is far less important than being the next thing that matters to us all.

After seeing an article like this, in order to get the sour taste out of my mouth, I click over to Kickstarter and see ideas that might be small to the world, but are big to an individuals and a few of his or her friends or fans. I love this stuff — and I love the heart and passion that goes into things that are proudly small.

Or, to get over the obsession with big, I kick the tires on ideas that may not become products, but will be approaches to software that can make it easy for me to do those things I want to do.

I love business. I love entreprneurship and innovation. I like it when people make money. But the next big thing will be bigger than making a billion dollars for a tiny group of individuals.

[Note: I go way back on this topic. In 2006, I wrote a cover story for MyBusiness magazine titled, "The Next Small Thing," that was the first (of many) national cover-story on Jason Fried. He wrote about it on the 37 Signals blog here.]

I think it’s past time for Amazon to collect and administer the payment of state sales tax. That’s especially true in states like Tennessee, where the company has clearly established nexus with its multiple distribution facilities here. (But the state gave away the store — or, at least until January, 2014, sales tax — to get those facilities.)

However, just because Amazon has never collected sales tax doesn’t mean customers are not required to pay tax on a purchase in the form of a “use” or “usage” tax.

It seems clear that Amazon is winding down its long-fought battle with states over sales tax. It was perhaps tolerable when they were small and growing and there were thousands of affiliate sites in every state. With those affiliates, they had the chance to hide behind the cloak of small business. (Affiliate sites are websites, like this one, that set up an account to enable us to grow rich from taking a cut of the sale of any items we link to on Amazon that leads to a purchase. Each year, I generate literally tens of dollars through such an arrangement.)

But now, while still small compared to Walmart, Amazon is a juggernaut.

I am not anti Amazon, as the 12 readers of this blog know. But on this issue, I am not supportive of their position.

This morning, I received the following email from Amazon that was reported to be in the works a week or so ago.

It’s another nail in the coffin of Amazon’s “no sales tax” position:

Hello from Amazon.com,

Thank you for being a loyal customer of Amazon.com LLC.  We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to provide you vast selection, low prices, fast delivery and convenience.

As you may know, Amazon.com LLC is not required to collect sales or use taxes in Tennessee.  However, the state of Tennessee requires us to provide the following notice to you:

You may owe use tax on purchases you made from Amazon.com LLC during the previous calendar year. The amount of tax you may owe is based on the total sales price of the items you purchased during the calendar year unless an exemption exists under state law or you have already paid the tax. A sale is not exempt under state law because it is made through the Internet. The total sales price of purchases you had shipped to Tennessee in 2011 was $xxx.xx. This is the amount that you may include on your Tennessee use tax return to calculate the appropriate use tax owed unless you have already paid the tax.

As purchases from Amazon.com LLC can be made through various sales channels, we have included directly below your breakdown of purchases from the various channels.

Total sales from www.amazon.com $xxx.xx
Total sales from www.endless.com $0.00
Total sales from www.myhabit.com $0.00
Total sales from www.amazonwireless.com $0.00
Total sales from www.smallparts.com $0.00

In addition, the state of Tennessee requires us to provide you with the following link that you can use to get more information and pay any taxes due:

Use Tax Page: https://apps.tn.gov/usetax
Please note the following:

• While Amazon.com LLC does not report this information directly to the state of Tennessee we are required to provide this information to you based on Tennessee Code T.C.A. § 67-6-5 (f)(3) signed into law March 23, 2012.
• This notification has been sent to all customers that had purchases delivered to Tennessee. If you are not a resident of Tennessee, the most common reason for receiving this notification is that you may have sent a gift to a recipient in the state.

For more information you may also view our Tennessee Use Tax Notification Page at:
www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200909330

Sincerely,
Customer Service

In other words, they’re from Amazon, and they’re here to help me.

This blog is where I record certain types of impressions. Typically a few people read what I write here — even then, it’s more likely to be read somewhere other than this blog (I syndicate the posts to places like Facebook and Linkedin and others use its RSS feed to read it different ways).

However, every once in a while, there’s a post in which I write something that seems to sync up with what other people are thinking about at the same time — and the traffic here actually spikes up. About a year ago, I had such a post. I titled it, “Why the White House situation room photograph is so powerful,” and apparently, it was one of the first attempts by someone to analyze what is now described as an iconic photo and perhaps is one of the most analyzed photos of the current era. (It’s so analyzed, there are conspiracy theories about it being staged.)

On the day I posted it, several major news organizations included a link to my post in their coverage, so it quickly became one of the most visited posts this blog has had during the past decade.

As Wednesday is the anniversary of the day that photo was taken, some of the research taking place is turning up that post and it’s getting another spike in visits.

More important and fascinating, however, is that people who are pictured in that room are being interviewed about what they saw and how they felt at that moment.

On Wednesday, NBC will be airing an interview with President Obama that will describe what was taking place during the photo.

I doubt he’ll use the way I described how he looked:

Obama’s crouching position (while others are erect or leaning back) is probably going to be analyzed by body-language experts, but any group of people who’ve watched a TV sporting event (and I apologize in advance for the following comparison, considering the serious nature of what they were watching), will recognize Obama’s position as that of the person in the room who in addition to being a fan, has just made a call to his bookie.

I’ve heard different versions of what was taking place on he screen and exactly what the people in the room were seeing. I look forward to hearing Obama’s account.

Over the past decade or so, the Country Music Marathon and Half Marathon has (have?) turned into a monster event for Nashville, drawing close to 30,000 runners from all over the country. With them, come family and other supporters. This morning, my daughter came home (she lives in New York) to run the marathon (and did great) and inspired me (she has that power) to do the half (I finished).

With spectators spread over the entire course, I’m guessing there were probably close to 100,000 people cheering the runners on.

Many of them held up hand-lettered signs in support of loved ones.

But for my daughter and me (who compared notes later), a special sub-set of signs were especially fun to see: The parody sign.

Here are some that she or I saw:

“You’re NOT almost there.” (At about mile 2)

“Worst Parade, Ever.”

Two people, each holding a sign. The first sign says, “How long ’til you’re done?” “Are you Finished Yet?” “Keep Going. Keep Going.” Sign next to it says: “That’s was SHE said.”

“Insert Inspirational Quote Here.”

“Run like you stole something.”

“5 Miles ’til Free Beer.”

Then, there were some very inspiring signs. My daughter’s favorite was at about 24 miles and said, “In two miles, you’re no longer a runner, you’re a marathoner.”

My favorites were the ones held by young children that said, “Mom (or Dad), You are my Hero.”

Over the weekend, the smart and successful VC Fred Wilson used the metaphor of TV shows vs. TV networks to suggest that investors (and the rest of us) sometime (often?) confuse the significance of various kinds of web-based startups.

Anyone who has used the internet for more than five years should immediately recognize what he’s suggesting. Some things we believe will define the future — that are so disruptive they will do away with institutions that have been in place for centuries — turn out to be I Love Lucy or MySpace.

If I were to debate this topic (and I’m not), my position would be this: In this metaphor TV is “the internet.” Everything else is a TV show.

In 2008, I wrote a post that applied the TV vs. TV show metaphor to magazines.  Magazines start, magazines die, was my point. Don’t confuse a magazine’s death with the death of magazines. (I have reposted it in full at the bottom of this page.)

It’s a part of a continuous theme of this blog: There is technology (or a communications medium) and there are things that one can do with that technology (or medium). When we start suggesting that a business model is the same as the technology that enables it, we head down a path of confusing TV shows with TV networks.

As Fred knows, there is lots of money to be made from investing in internet companies that seem like TV networks, but are merely TV shows. They can be massively successful as investments (again, as he has repeatedly demonstrated). But only time will tell us if Google, or Facebook, or Twitter are today’s I Love Lucy.

But come to think of it, TV as it was when I Love Lucy first aired, is hardly around anymore.

Here is what I wrote, in full, on that post dated November 2, 2008 and titled, “Magazines start, magazines die.”:

In this week’s Advertising Age, there is an article with the headline, “Will Print Survive the Next Five Years? ” And while the author of the piece provides either/or scenarios of how the current down-market will play out, the most graphic scenario (as the headline suggests) is a Print Apocalypse where advertisers leave magazines for the web, and never return.

I have a suggestion for the author of the article.

Get Advertising Age’s president and editor-in-chief Rance Crain to tell you the story of how Advertising Age got started. He’s told me the story — and I was spellbound.

Make sure you get the specifics of the dates, times and context of its creation. You will hear about a trade publication that was created a few months after the stock market crash of 1929. That’s right, after . You’ll hear about a trade publication startup whose formative years occurred during an economic Depression in which one-out-of-four Americans was unemployed.

It is a story of audacity and passion — and creative financing.

It is a story set in a time when economists and writers were suggesting capitalism itself could soon be dead. But despite that context and those fears, it’s a story about a man who started a publication about the ball-bearings of capitalism — advertising.

But yes, magazines do die

As much Kool-Ade as I drink and serve about social media and web marketing, I am less-and-less convinced by the death-of-print crowd. Again, listen: certain publications will die. I’ve pulled the plug on some, myself. No doubt, I will again in the future.

But I’m talking about the medium , not a specific magazine title — or even category.

You know how every season on network and cable TV, there are new shows premiered and other shows cancelled. Of course you know that. That’s because you’ve experienced it every year of your entire life. On TV, they even celebrate the new (without mentioning the death of the show it replaces). Just because series get cancelled, would you ever see an article suggesting network and cable TV are going to die in five years? Even if a network dies or — as they do — a cable network bombs, would you see an article suggesting the entire medium of TV is going to soon be dead? Heck, what will we do with all those flat screen TVs we’re buying if that happens?

As I have written on this blog continuously for the past eight years, the same thing happens with magazines. Magazines get started. Magazines die. It’s the whole circle of life thing. But for some reason, those who should know better confuse the closure of a magazine with the end of an entire medium.

As much as I personally do not include print newspapers in my life, even I don’t think they’re going to completely die. Become something else, yes. But die? As for magazines, I’ve said here for a long time, news weeklies and a great number of mass-marketed magazines will die — as they have done since the beginning of magazine time. And magazines like TV Guide (the listings part) will die. And trade publications that focus on breaking news and the transactions of their industry — like Advertising Age, for example — will find that the web is a better medium than print. Some day — and I think it will be a long time from now — Advertising Age may even be a web-based only product. But I’ll bet it won’t be in the next five years.

But even as those magazines die, new, tightly focused and well produced magazines will fill the vacuum created by the departure of such publications. Next season, there will be new titles on the newsstand — or sent to you by your association, employer, favorite cause, etc.

Don’t believe me?

The Advertising Age piece was inspired by lay-offs in the print media world last week. (Note to writer: There were layoffs in every industry last week.) But guess what? In the past few weeks, 52 new magazines have been started according to Samir Husni, Mr. Magazine. And that’s up from 36 starts during the same period last year.

Some won’t make it into their second year. Just like on TV.