Has Quitting Facebook Been Gaining Steam?

There are some permabears who believe that moods drive people's action. According to this school, negative mood prompts people to cloister or become less open.

And in spotting few instances of people deactivating their Facebook accounts, such permabears declare a generalized trend towards social insulation.


Unfortunately this is simply not true or could be discerned as a fallacy of composition (making mountain of an anthill).

The chart from Nielsen/Marketingcharts.com shows that Facebook has been generating most of the recent gains among social media outfit in the US last March. In addition, the gains of Facebook has surged (and not collapsed) in spite of the 2008 crisis.

Where Facebook has reached more than 400 million members worldwide, see Facebook's statistics here, it would be natural for some among the huge number of people to become discontented enough to prompt them to quit for one reason or another.

But the point is to see whether trends in membership are NET positive or negative. The generalized net positive gains, so far, debunks the negative social mood outlook.

Anyway ABC News has an interesting article about Quitting Facebook.

Sports Globalization: NBA Goes Emerging Markets!

Last January, the widely followed US National Basketball Association (NBA) formed its overseas arm, NBA China, to expand its basketball league to cover at China.

This from NBA, ``Five strategic partners will invest $253 million to acquire 11% of the company in preferred equity. The strategic partners are an elite group of exceptionally prominent and successful entities: ESPN, a division of The Walt Disney Company, Bank of China Group Investment, Legend Holdings Limited, Li Ka Shing Foundation and China Merchants Investments.”

We further read that the NBA plans to develop teams of professional players from about 10 cities in the coming years and help install more than 800,000 basketball goals throughout China, making the popular game even more accessible!

It doesn’t end here. NBA now plans to stretch its exposure to India!

From Steve Kyler of hoopsworld.com (highlight mine), ``[NBA Commissioner] David Stern also dropped hints that China may be the first stop of the NBA in Asia, but said he and his staff did meet with officials from India, where the NBA recently held a Basketball Without Borders stop. Stern pointed to India as an area where the NBA sees tremendous interest in basketball, and is open to exploring opportunities for the NBA to help develop the game in India. Europe may be stealing a few middle tier NBA players, but it seems the NBA is more focused on exploiting the billion fan markets of Asia.”

The Moral of NBA’s actions: FOLLOW the MONEY!

Study Says Happiness Comes From Freedom

Happiness is not mainly about wealth, it is about the freedom to make choices, that’s according to a study by Inglehart, Foa, Peterson and Welzel at the World Values Survey.

World Values Survey: Economic development leads to a shift in survival strategies

This from Robert Foa at the Financial Times (highlight mine)

``How is it that the world is getting happier? In the words of Thucydides, the secret of happiness is freedom. In each survey respondents were also asked to rate their sense of free choice in life…

``The world in which we live today is unquestionably a free one. For the first time in history, most of the world is governed democratically, the rights of women and minorities are widely acknowledged, and people, ideas and investment can cross borders. Since the study began in 1981, dozens of middle-income countries have democratised, relieving many from fear of repression: every country making a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy shows a rising sense of free choice…

World Values Survey: Socioeconomic change, growing freedom, and rising happiness: The human development path.

Implications?

Again from Mr. Roa,

``First, that the expansion of political and social freedoms over the past quarter of a century is vindicated. The open world in which we live is a fundamentally happier one. This may not surprise those who have argued in favour of a liberal global order. It will undoubtedly cause puzzlement and consternation among those who yearn for the false certainties of an earlier era.

``Second, the results may engender caution towards attempts to engineer happiness through public policy. The happy countries include social democracies such as Sweden and Denmark, and more laisser faire economies such as Australia and the US. What they have in common are not their policies but institutions: democracy, rule of law and social tolerance. People are largely capable of engineering their own happiness when given the means to do so.

``Third, the link from free choice to rising happiness suggests that the appropriate benchmark of development is not income per capita, but individual freedoms and capabilities. This is the human development perspective associated with Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate. While income and well-being are closely correlated at early stages of development, once the threat of starvation recedes, social and political freedom appears to be as important.”

If the study is anywhere near accurate what it means for us is- we can’t be "free" unless we can decide what is best for ourselves- financially, economically socially and politically.

The Socionomics of the First Philippine Olympic Gold Medal-Thank You Manny Pacquiao

``Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”-Milton Friedman (1912 –2006), an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual

The Olympic season is upon us.

What more is there than to speculate on whether the Philippines will attain or harvest its first ever dream gold medal. And I believe that the time is ripe where boxing among other sports will most likely deliver the goods. And mind you, we may be speaking of more than just one medal.

Although I had been an aficionado during the era of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, I haven’t followed the sport enough to know the chain of events since. Candidly speaking, not even much of the recent string of triumphs by our legendary Manny Pacquiao (until this article) or of the composition of our national team for the August Beijing 2008 Games.

The online Wikipedia encyclopedia says that the Filipinos have had a disappointing record of only 5 medalists throughout the years: 2 silver-Anthony Villanueva, Featherweight in 1964 Tokyo and Mansueto Velasco, Light Flyweight in 1996 Atlanta and 3 bonzes:-José Villanueva - Bantamweight 1932 Los Angeles, Leopoldo Serantes - Light Flyweight 1988 Seoul, Roel Velasco - Light Flyweight 1992 Barcelona.

These despite some 30 world professional boxing champions past and present; the noble list of Philippine boxing greats from boxrec.com -Pedro Adigue Jr., Rene Barrientos, Bobby Berna, Rolando Bohol, Frank Cedeno, Eric Chavez, Florante Condes, Roberto Cruz, Nonito Donaire, Morris East, Flash Elorde, Luisito Espinosa, Joma Gamboa, Ceferino Garcia, Eric Jamili, Tacy Macalos, Manny Melchor, Small Montana, Rolando Navarrete, Donnie Nietes, Manny Pacquiao, Rolando Pascua, Dodie Boy Penalosa, Gerry Penalosa, Erbito Salavarria, Jesus Salud, Malcolm Tunacao, Pancho Villa, Bernabe Villacampo and Ben Villaflor.

Of course one may argue that professional boxing and amateur boxing are worlds apart. This may somehow be true but overall the incentives from the expression of social mood could be an indicator of the sport’s likely bright future.

There are 3 main factors why I think the elusive Philippine Olympic gold medal in boxing will be within reach hopefully this August at the Beijing 2008 Games:

1. Social Acceptance

Prior to Manny Pacquiao’s glory, boxing as a sport has been mostly associated with the lower levels of the social strata. Pacman overhauled this image. Today, the proliferation of boxing gyms even within the rich enclaves (yes I have seen a gym at a hotel in Ortigas) have virtually closed the gap of societal participation in the sport.

This means that with more people-regardless of the income or social class-getting connected or involved, structural support (financing, training and etc.) for the sport is expected to mount.

2. Economics of Boxing and Wider Access to Financing.

Of course boxing is not only a sport, it has become an industry.

Aside from prestige or fame, Pacman’s humongous prize earnings, plus the ancillary fees such as pay per view, advertisement or sponsorships, merchandising, appearance and others (I suspect that these have even grown more than the prized earnings) should be another incentive to draw in more participants (players, trainers, coaches, investors, financers, media coverage etc.).

Of course Pacman signifies a statistical “fat tail”, whose feat will unlikely be replicated soon. The fact that he joins the ranks of Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar de la Hoya, Roberto Duran and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in capturing championships in four weight divisions, the Pacman has become a legend in his own right and importantly one for the WORLD sports history books. What prestige!

The point is that the economics of boxing has shown its potential rewards in both tangible and intangible aspects as powerful incentives enough to attract a larger segment of participants. The Pacman model now becomes a sizeable magnet for the industry’s growth!

In contrast, in relative terms, Billiards, another sport where the Philippines have excelled internationally, has shown similar bandwith (of social acceptance and economics), but whose incentives (not included in the Olympics, lesser degree in terms of price money or fame or world audience relative to boxing) have not been as compelling enough to generate sustainability to the same level (as seen by the diminishing billiard pool outlets). Nevertheless, we are glad to see a continuing stream of supply of world billiard champions.

And this burgeoning economics of boxing has been emblematic with the sprouting of boxing gyms nationally. In short, the industry/sport now has not only garnered the social support but a wider reach or access to capitalization.

When finance greases the wheels of the industry/sport we expect a boom to follow with attendant results.

Importantly this also shows that private initiatives and not of government (in contrast to the conventional thinking) will drive the Philippines’ realization for world boxing supremacy-and our Olympic gold(s).

3. Plentiful Supply of Talents

As we earlier mentioned the Philippines has a cornucopia of boxing talents even during times when the sport was not as socially diffused as it is today. The 20+ champions (prior to Pacman regime) and 5 Olympic medals during those scarcity times are enough credentials to state of the endemic supply of champion quality boxers.

The snowballing economics fueled by social action will improve on the scale and quality of participation aside from increasing the pool of available highly qualified candidates for the championship class.

If I am not mistaken this marks the first time in Philippines sports history where we have four simultaneous incumbent world champions as of this writing, specifically Manny Pacquiao, Nonito Donaire Jr. IBF Flyweight, Gerry Penalosa WBO Bantamweight and Donnie Nietes WBO Minimumweight. This is a testament to the progressing dynamics from a booming boxing industry.

Of course in the games there will be other factors involved such as acclimatization, conditioning, the quality of opponents, judge biases and plain ol’ lady luck…among other variables.

The important thing to remember is that the greater the caliber or quality of our players emanating from the above dynamics, materially increases the odds for the realization of the long sought after gold medal/s. To my intuition, this dream could come into fruition by next month at the Beijing games.

To our Olympians (boxing and non boxing representatives), it's time to Go for Gold!