“Negative advertising isn’t about changing minds; it’s about altering the composition of the voter pool on Election Day by turning moderate voters into non-voters…

“There is a vigorous academic debate over whether negative advertising depresses or increases voter turnout. I suspect it does both, depressing turnout among moderates and independents while stimulating it at the ideological extremes. In that process, what has changed is the composition of the turnout rather than its overall level.”

“…risk-taking is regarded as a badge of honor. Ideas are disposable: if one doesn’t work, you quickly move on to another. Timing matters. You make your own luck.”

Interestingly, it looks like the gender ratio has started to become more balanced (but is still a site largely made up of female users). 

Kickstarter, et al. are clear winners with this. Their business model should soon allow individuals/companies to offer equity and turn supporters into investors. Entrepreneurs get increased access to capital, and the act should enable individual investors to invest in startup/small companies that previously were limited to accredited investors.

Critics are concerned about fraud and investor abuse. Both have always been present and always a concern, and we’ll see if this increases the issue or not. The bigger question will be whether the trade off is a net positive or negative.

Other views:

Forbes

Huffington Post

Fortune

CNET

US News & World Report

Wall Street Journal

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism issues a report of the state of the news media each year, and its out. The report highlights that digital news consumption is dominating growth (no surprise there) and revenue (along with cable TV), in addition to the following points:

• Growth of mobile is key. 27% of consumers get news on their mobile devices, and many of them go straight to the source with content providers’ apps, rather than search or recommendations.
• Social media as a news driver isn’t quite as important as people think.
• News audiences for the three traditional broadcast TV networks actually grew 4.5% - the first time in a decade. Cable news grew a little too. Pew believes that both of these trends will be short-lived.
• The number of news outlets transition to digital subscription could jump as much as 66% from the current 150 to somewhere around 250 in 2012. This is “a matter of survival.”
• And as digital advertising and marketing is able to mine data and target customers better and better, news outlets are going to have to deal with issues of consumers’ privacy more and more. They haven’t thought enough about this quite yet.

Check it out.

“…there’s a strong case to be made that corporate America’s fetish for cost-cutting has gone too far.”

The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki takes a look at the Japanese fashion chain Uniqlo, and argues that retailers that invest in their employees (both in training and in numbers) are often much more successful than those that focus on cost-cutting and leanness.