*michael parekh on IT*

ON THE JOYS OF MUSIC ONLINE

REPEAT

As usual, Bob Lefsetz nails it about the state and fate of the music business, and the video business over time, as it relates to online:

"I'm not saying music SHOULD be free, just that it is. 
Record label saber-rattling has only resulted in driving music acquisition further underground, to the point where it's impossible to eradicate the free consumption of tunes.  Are you going to eliminate AIM transfers? RapidShare? 
How about outlawing P2P?  Well, now movies are being distributed legitimately via P2P, so that's no solution... 
The ONLY hope is to create a solution so enticing that people would rather pay than steal.  It's possible, after all, bottled water is being sold by the truckload even though water is essentially free from the tap and discarded empty bottles are anything but green.  But the public has been convinced they need their Fiji.  And the purveyor has even managed to mount a PR campaign saying THEY ARE green."

He and others have been making this point for a long time, but sometimes it just bears repeating.

Bob goes one better and describes the new way music geeks, and many ordinary mortals find joy in managing music got online:

"Turns out you can now buy a compilation on iTunes.  But I wasn't looking for it.  I haven't played my Fat Mattress album for nigh on forty years.  But today I saw it listed in this blog and I remembered, I had to download it.
Along with Thunderclap Newman's "Hollywood Dream", Ry Cooder's debut, a couple of Spirit albums...  Shit I didn't need, most of which I own on vinyl, but stuff that was worth adding to my digital collection.
And it used to be that you spent all afternoon alphabetizing your albums.  Now, it's aligning your iTunes library.  Are the titles correct?  I need to eliminate duplicates.  Let me check the timings... This is record collector fun.
And after deleting the 56k versions of Al Kooper's "You Never Know Who Your Friends Are" for their new, shiny 192k replacements, I started working on the Fat Mattress album.  There was one track that I absolutely loved...  What was it?  "Mr. Moonshine"?

And ends with this punchline:

"Music, when done right, cannot be described."

Amen, Brother.

ON DISNEY'S PUZZLING ONLINE MOVE

BUY vs. BUILD

This Wall Street Journal article lays out one of the most perplexing things about how established companies, leaders in their industries, behave with an incumbent's mind-set.  Titled, "Fans resist end of Virtual Disneyland", the piece explains:

"For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy. Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult, thanks to the wrath of obsessive fans of Disney's theme parks.

Virtual Magic Kingdom

This screen allows Virtual Magic Kingdom's gamers to build an  avatar they can play with.

In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Disneyland in 2005, Walt Disney launched a free online game called Virtual Magic Kingdom whose look and layout mimics Disneyland's. Users created avatars and explored the online park's various regions, such as Tomorrowland and Main Street; chatted with other users; and participated in online promotions that crossed over into real-life activities at the company's resorts in California and Florida.

Disney's notoriously obsessive fans got deeply into this. Using their online personas, fans of Virtual Magic Kingdom -- VMK to aficionados -- accumulated points by playing games and completing tasks inside the world. These points could then be used to buy in-game objects like animated hats, pins and furniture to decorate their virtual private rooms. Points could also be accumulated in the real world through purchases of Disney movie DVDs and the like.

When players tired of the online world, they could keep playing VMK as they visited Disney's theme parks. There, they could go on scavenger hunts tailored specifically to them -- and use their rewards to purchase special Virtual Magic Kingdom items that increased their status among fellow gamers.

On Wednesday night, however, Disney plans to throw everyone out of VMK and lock the gates -- erasing their online profiles, lives and collections of virtual trinkets and real estate. Disney says it never intended the 50th-anniversary promotion to run this long, but money is also a factor: Virtual Magic Kingdom is free, and full access to Disney's other online game sites -- like Club Penguin and Toontown -- costs as much as $9.95 a month in the case of Toontown."

The closing apparently has raised hue and cry from some Disney faithful, both online and off.  The 18 month promotional experiment did however manage to garner quite a few "sticky eyeballs", as we say in the online business:

"The situation shows how sticky things can get when free, nonrevenue-generating gimmicks blossom into hits. In 2006, Disney boasted that one million avatars had been created inside VMK, though the company declines to say how many users the site actually has (individuals can create multiple characters). The site, which operates from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. Pacific time, still boasts a few thousand daily users."

Couple of remarkable takeaways from this little quote.

1.  Disney managed to get a million folks to translate their off-line affinity for Disney parks into some online activity.  It fizzled in growing users from there  of course, since the whole thing was designed just as a short-term "promotion" for the perennial off-line properties.

2.  Disney actually had off-line operating hours for an online site, which presumably can be accessed 24/7, from anywhere in the world.

Some of these questions popped into my mind reading this saga:

1. How much does it cost to keep the site running?  How does that cost compare to other promotional initiatives by Disney for it's off-line properties that last for years or indefinitely?

2. What are the pros and cons of moving the site from it's marketing/promotional departments, to the operational side?  What if this were turned over to some in-house employees with a "start-up mentality", and ask them to see how something like this could be turned into a sustainable virtual presence of Disney's real-world properties?  Could it be morphed into being both a permanent promotional and an entertaining  online property in it's own right?  And of course, could that be turned into a profitable operation in the long-term?

3.  Would an effort like this cost anywhere near the $700 million it cost Disney to buy Club Penguin last year from outside entrepreneurs with the right "startup mentality"?

4. Or is buying third-party online properties, the only real strategy for a leading incumbent like Disney to get it's online game?

I'm sure there are some questions and issues I'm missing in why closing the promotional site and not doing anything else with the latent opportunity is a real good idea.  Just saying.

ON AN EVIL WALL STREET JOURNAL POLICY

DISSING CUSTOMERS

Fair warning dear readers, this post is a bit of a mini-rant. 

The subject is a long-standing policy of the Wall Street Journal to restrict it'spaying online subscribers from being logged into the online WSJ on multiple computers.  By long-standing, I mean long before Rupert Murdoch acquired the WSJ's parent, Dow Jones.

If you're an online WSJ subscriber, you know what I mean.  You get a screen on one of your computers, that looks like this:

Obviously, most of their paying subscribers are guilty of the first point here, having multiple browser windows open using the same log-in information.

Here's a news flash, WSJ,

This is 2008. 

Most web users access the web through multiple tabs in multiple browsers via multiple computers, cellphones, and other web appliances in a household.

And this is a trend that is only going more mainstream faster than your strongest wishes to the contrary.

Please stop asking your customers to remember  to close every browser tab on every one of their computers displaying your precious content, as they go through their busy day.  Please stop adding this seemingly minor, but hugely inconvenient point of friction in their accessing something they've fully paid for.

And please, please don't make your customers take time out of their frenetic lives to call your toll-free number to fix a problem that really only exists in the minds of your accountants.  In fact, get them to run the numbers again, this time WITH the cost of toll-free support and customer aggravation balanced against whatever incremental revenue you think you may get by continuing this policy.

But if you still insist on restricting the number of windows open with the WSJ, then ask for a supplemental fee. 

Some folks might pay it, many will not.
But it' shows more respect for your paying customers than unilaterally denying them access for something they're paying for.

I know you're trying to stop piracy of your content and preserve the subscription pay wall that is increasingly becoming the exception rather than the rule amongst your peers.  Figure out other technical solutions that can achieve the goal of restricting pirated passwords without impinging on the normal usage by paying customers.

For the record, I'm one of your biggest fans and longest standing customers.  I have multiple WSJ subscriptions, both online and for home delivery, for multiple locations and for multiple members of my family.
I even pay you a separate subscription fee to access the WSJ online via Amazon's Kindle.

So I'll probably pay a multiple browser fee if you deign to charge it, but you'll definitely get it with incremental resentment.

And I know I'm not the typical WSJ subscriber, but this policy of restricting access on multiple browsers and computers for all your paying online subscribers is archaic, and petty, not to mention penny wise and pound foolish.

You've been chipping away at the good-will I've had towards your product, service and brand for decades, every time this inane and utterly inconvenient screen pops up on one of my computers.

This policy is the definition of "Evil" in the Google sense of the word, in my humble opinion.

I know I'm not the first of your customers to complain about this issue, and certainly won't be your last (See this TechCrunch post on this issue from earlier this year).

Please do the right thing here.  And listen to your customers.

Rant over.  We now go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

P.S.  Please pardon any typos above.  TypePad spell checker is down.

ON LATENT SOCIAL NETWORKS IN TODAY'S ONLINE APPS

NEW VEINS OF GOLD

Fred Wilson has a post on a recent trend bringing social networking features to online financial investing:

"A big theme at TechCrunch 40 was social/web financial services. Mint and Cake launched there and Mint came away with the top prize.

To many, it seemed that these two companies were the first movers in their respective market spaces. But that is far from the case. In the case of Mint, there are at least three services already in the market, Wesabe (which Union Square Ventures is an investor in), Geezeo, and Buxfer.

The social investing market is even more crowded with dozens of companies trying to become "a social Bloomberg".

The twist that Cake brings to the social investing field is that they use real transactions to build your profile by accessing your online trading accounts."

The "social Bloomberg" quest is something I've long been on the lookout for, for over a decade now, starting in the "Web 1.0" age.  It's been a particular focus, since I've had a chance to closely watch how Bloomberg became Bloomberg on the global financial scene.

Most of the current companies though seem to be focused more on the trading prowess of it's members, which to my eye is a long way from what made Bloomberg really successful.

The real Bloomberg service has always started with the content and tools around almost every type of investment vehicle imaginable.  And then the communities that built ad-hoc around these content and tool hubs became the major icing on the cake.

And then of course, the thing that really makes Bloomberg Bloomberg is it's impressive subscription-driven business model, where each terminal can bring in over $1000/month.

Nothing  like that is likely to happen on a consumer-driven social Bloomberg.  But it could still be financially interesting.

If anything, it's almost something Yahoo! Finance, the leading online financial destination, could do if they selectively added social networking features to it's venerable service.  Yahoo! Finance already has one of the densest collection of financial content and tools, with one of the highest following by mainstream users.

As many of us might imagine, social networking features can be useful in a whole host of prosaic, online applications. 

A good example of this is Xobni, another startup that made it's debut at the TechCrunch40 conference last week.  Here's how TechCrunch's Duncan Riley described the company:

"Xobni creates a profile of all the interactions you have with your contacts. It appears to be a plugin for your email client - sits on the right-hand side of the client as you browse your email. Gives context to each message that you view; you can browse your messaging history with people, see their portrait, look at connected people (social networking), import calendar openings into email text, search your email by people and keywords. Xobni automatically extracts phone and email contacts from email messages.

You can also view upcoming appointments, to-do items, and a “stay in touch” area (a list of people who used to email you but haven’t in awhile - the “ex-girlfriend” feature).

Currently available for Microsoft Outlook, others soon.

Main points: view threaded conversations, find attachments, use email’s social network, and search email and people."

Yahoo! President Sue Decker recently commented that Yahoo! Mail had the potential to be a social network, a la Facebook and others. 

Presumably Microsoft will soon wake up to the opportunities it has to do the same with it's global Outlook franchise.  They even have Ray Ozzie has their chief technologist, who brought us the original social networks with Notes (later Lotus Notes), and then with Groove.  It's pretty extraordinary to me for some time now that they've not yet tried to leverage the latent social networks opportunity within their Outlook franchise.

Companies like Xobni point the way to these opportunities across other email platforms.  Today's news that Google is updating it's popular Gmail application, is yet another opportunity to do the same.  Indeed, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington recently reported that Google is preparing a broader offensive against social networks like Facebook on November 5th.

So the opportunity to leverage existing online applications, be they in email, or verticals like Finance, is one of the next near-term Holy Grails of the Web 2.0 trend.  We'll see if they bear fruit.

ON AIRLINES LOST ON LOST & FOUND

CUSTOMER DIS-SERVICE

As readers may know from my posts the last couple of days, I've been down to the Caribbean for the 2007 World Cup Cricket matches. 

Upon finally reaching home after a long travel day this Sunday, I realized that my camera bag was not in my backpack. 

It quickly hit me where I'd left it.   

It was on the American Eagle flight 5087 Sunday, from Nevis to San Juan.  The flight was over half hour late coming in from Nevis, and we had only 30 minutes or so to clear immigration and customs in San Juan, and transfer our checked bags onto a flight into Newark airport. 

I remember taking the camera bag out of the backpack boarding the Nevis flight, so that the backpack would fit the smaller overhead compartments on the American Eagle plane.  And of course, I forgot to grab the camera in the rush to connect with the next flight.

I relay all these details, because most reasonable people would assume there would be two ways to quickly connect with an airline on a piece of luggage left on one of their planes.

The first would be a centralized, national "Lost & Found" toll-free number.  If that weren't available, one would expect to find "Lost & Found" in the phone menu when calling any of the toll-free numbers.

The other would be to be able to the airline's website and quickly find a "Lost & Found" tab where one could dash off an email with the specific details, so that the airline could quickly follow up.

Well, as I write this, I've been on hold for over 40 minutes trying to reach the LOCAL Baggage claim cum Lost & Found department in San Juan.

The American Airlines rep on the national toll-free number said that I would need to contact EACH of the baggage claim AND Lost & Found phone numbers at EACH of the locations where I thought I might have left the item.  I'm looking at a list of over 4 telephone numbers.  And have just managed to dial one so far.

While I was waiting, I thought I'd go online and check out the American Airlines website and see if there was an option to connect online on this issue.  After scrounging around for over 20 minutes, I found no area on the web-site that relates to Lost & Found.

I next typed in that phrase in the search box at AA.com, and got the following results.  Essentially a listing of those three words in every published document on the site.  Take a look at it and see if it's at all helpful.

Most likely, I'll be writing off the Nikon D40, the super zoom lens, along with a handful of high-performance memory cards.  About a $2500 write-off. 

More importantly, I'll of course lose all the pictures taken on this trip, which of course are not easily replaceable.

This is the second time this year, I've had this kind of an experience with items left on an American Airlines flight.  A few weeks ago, my wife left a winter coat on an American Airlines Business Class flight, where the attendant forgot to return the coat upon landing that they normally offer to hang up.  In that case as well, she was rushing to catch a tight connection, due to a delay on the originating flight.

There too, we spent the better part of a week calling AND visiting the Baggage Claim and Lost & Found phone numbers in four cities (it was a complicated itinerary).  In each case, the person on the phone, or at the Baggage Claim office in person, seemed generally eager to pass the hot potato of a customer request for help onto the next link in the travel chain.

That coat too was a write-off.

In both cases, I knew exactly on WHICH flight the item had been left behind. 

In both cases, there was a high likelihood that the items would be recovered in the normal cleaning and preparation for the next flight. 

In both cases, one would expect those items to be forwarded to a lost and found area. 

In both cases, one would expect a easy way for passengers who discover the loss, to quickly and easily connect with the said item without having to call half a dozen representatives of the airline all over the country.

I'm a long-time Platinum flyer on American Airlines.  And this post is not to single out this carrier.  I would expect to have a similarly frustrating experience getting centralized help on Lost and Found on most of the other carriers.

I guess the reason for this post is to publicly reflect on how the blindingly obvious customer service solutions (in hindsight of course), are never, ever implemented by the companies that otherwise fight tooth and nail for your business.

ON A GOOGLE E-BOOK TEASE

A BOOK TOO FAR?

Although the Sunday Times in the UK  kicks it off with a provocative title ("Google plots e-books coup"), the article offers disappointingly more sizzle than steak.

There's a fair bit of discussion around the piece on Techmeme.

The whole piece seems to be based around this quote by a Google source:

"Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, said: “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.”

The article is constructed with a series of teaser assertions like:

"GOOGLE and some of the world’s top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple’s iPod has done for music."

Reading that, one would expect a service that delivered via an elegant fusion of hardware and software.  But here's the next sentence:

"The internet search giant is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry."

Oh, maybe they mean Google and some of the world's top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple's ITUNES has done for music".

The rest of the piece is a re-hash of some of the efforts to bring e-books to mainstream audiences in the past and present, with a laundry list of folks that have announced intentions to do in the present like Sony and Amazon, not to mention folks like Microsoft and the New York Times.

I would welcome a mainstream thrust by Google into the e-books area.  Like so many book-loving geeks, it is a holy grail quest that I have been excited for so many years.

But a successful effort is going to involve not just a fusion of technology online and off, but a win-win combination of value for mainstream readers with a reasonable business model for publishers.

Efforts to date to bring books online on gadgets like Sony's recent Reader have been disappointing in both the selection and the pricing for the books, which tends to be the same as what the price for a physical book (here are some representative reviews on Sony's efforts last year from the David Pogue of the New York Times and PC Magazine, as well as this detailed one by Jake Richter last month).

Of course, e-books promise tons of convenience, but often at the cost of really expensive hardware, that have poor readability and battery life.

So what did I find the promising about the Sunday article?

Well, this statement by the Google spokesperson did strike me as a bit new:

"You may just want to rent a travel guide for the holiday..."

A rental model, driven either by a monthly subscription or an a la carte approach may be of interest. But this could easily become a mishmash of interminable price lists that a reader has to sort through just to get a listing of cool sights to check out on that next trip to Ulan Bator.

Don't get me wrong.  I'll be among the first to line up for a cool e-book product and/or service.  We've just all been disappointed too many times thus far though, for me to hold my breath each time I see an article like this.

ON CABLE-TELCO "TURF WARS"

NO CIGAR

The New York Times has an article noting the ongoing "turf wars" between the cable and telco industries, in the race to provide more broadband services to mainstream customers. 

There are great anecdotal examples of the daily battles fought between the two camps as installers leave competitors' facilities in a shoddy condition.  An example:

"Qwest says the (bee hive) infested box is just one of many pieces of equipment that Cox has damaged or misused. It says Cox has left wires exposed and improperly grounded cables, hazards that could disrupt phone service or hurt customers and workers. Qwest even argues that the damage is part of a plan to make it harder to sign up customers it lost to Cox.

Technicians who came to Qwest from Cox said “that their instructions were to make it as tough for Qwest to win back the customer as possible,” Mr. Pappas said."

The piece goes on to highlight similar incidents between other phone and cable companies and tries to make the following point:

"...the contest is a two-way slugfest between powerful and sophisticated companies with deep pockets and a lot more to lose. The start-ups that were born in the wake of regulatory changes have largely faded as a threat, particularly in the last year, as Bell companies bought their two biggest rivals, AT&T and MCI."

The piece also highlights the efforts the camps are going to in order to attract mainstream public support:

"Qwest is also taking its case to the news media. Mr. Pappas spent two hours last month driving around Phoenix to show a reporter the damage to Qwest’s property. The telephone boxes he visited had a few exposed wires, small unsealed holes and what Mr. Pappas said was improper grounding of Cox electrical wires to Qwest equipment."

It ends with this quote from a representative at Qwest:

“If this is not competition, then I don’t know what it is,” said Scott Simanson, vice president and general manager for Qwest’s operation in Arizona."

The subliminal message being attempted to convey is that consumers should be thankful for the competition we have today in broadband services.

I'm sorry, with the US being ranked 16th or worse globally in the provision of broadband services to mainstream customers, this strikes me as a bit hollow.  We have a long way to go for true competition, as I've noted often before.

As rancorous the daily competition between these two regulated, protected, and politically coddled camps may be, it does not take the place for true market-based competition.

And that goes for the wireless broadband "competitive" landscape as well.

ON THE FLAWS OF NINTENDO Wii AND SONY PS3

...TO THOSE WHO WAIT

Two unrelated reviews of the Nintendo's new Wii game system (Slate), and Sony's new Playstation 3 (PS3) system (New York Times), make me feel less bad about missing out on the latest bit of gadget-driven fun. 

The media in recent days has been rife with reports of eager fans waiting for days in line to get their hands on either system.

After all, to miss out on the Wii was to miss out on trying out the novel, motion-sensing wireless controllers that gave users a whole new way to interact with a game.

And to miss out on the PS3, was to miss out on the most powerful gaming computer ever designed...why it almost has super-computer powers if adapted in certain ways.

As the New York Times article by Seth Schiesel puts it:

"Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other."

Indeed, Seth goes on to praise Microsoft's XBox 360 vs. the PS3 in ways reminiscent of reviews of an Apple computer vs. a Windows one:

Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.)

Nintendo's Wii system also gets poor marks by it's reviewer Erik Sofge of Slate:

"The ugly truth is that the Wii's already-legendary motion-detection system doesn't work very well...

The Wii Remote is the most advanced motion-sensing device in the history of gaming, but in the interests of accommodating almost unlimited variables, from the size of the TV to the player's physical proportions, the Wii tosses out much of the data that are collected. Depending on what's going on in the game, only a narrow range of your physical input is converted to on-screen action. Which is why I could hit one-handed home runs without winding up or following through."

Both articles suggest that given time, each system will likely better address it's flaws through game system software updates, and better games designed by third parties.  If you're chomping at the bit for either of the systems, the respective review is recommended.

In the meantime, the reviews give those of us without these machines, a reason to feel better about waiting.  Not to mention cranking up the tried and true XBox 360.

ON YAHOO!, YOUTUBE AND MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING

COULDA, SHOULDA

There's an article in the New York Times by Saul Hansell, titled "Yahoo!'s growth being eroded by rivals", that covers the challenges the company faces in recent months, punctuated by the swooping in by Google to buy YouTube this week. 

There seem to be similar takes on Yahoo! post the Google/YouTube merger announcement yesterday.  See this piece in the LA Times, titled "In YouTube deal, Google beats Yahoo! at it's own media game" as an example.   

This wave of monday morning quarter-backing post the deal strikes this reader at least, as bit of a cheap shot.

The main thesis of the NYTimes piece seems to opportunistically beat up Yahoo! for "failing" to win the bidding for YouTube to Google, as seen in the opening line:

"As  Google whips out its fat wallet to buy the video site YouTube, it is making  Yahoo look even more out of step with the fast-changing Internet advertising market."

It's natural to think of Yahoo! in the wake of the Google/YouTube acquisition, which has been a media sensation the last few days.  As an example, Fred Wilson cites it as one of the factors motivating him to sell Yahoo! shares today and sit on the sidelines.

The New York Times piece starts off with a stark, stock market driven comparison:

"Google has $11 billion in cash and a market value of $131 billion, while Yahoo has $4 billion in cash and is worth $34 billion."

It then goes on to weave together a series of suppositions, assertions, and facts to make it case.   Here's an example of a supposition:

"From video programming to social networking — areas of interest to users and advertisers alike — the company is losing its initiative."

Or is it an assertion?  Nevertheless, here's an assertion:

"Some analysts argue that Yahoo needs some bold moves to signal to investors, advertisers and customers its commitment to innovation."

And here is a fact, that likely has the most to do with Yahoo's disappointing performance in the stock market vs. Google:

"Yahoo has been stymied because its text advertising business has been largely frozen until it completes a new software system. The upgrade is more than a year late and the delay has sucked up the company’s engineering resources and prevented it from developing new advertising products. Yahoo’s system produces much less money from every page than Google, a handicap in bidding for advertising deals."

The delay on the ad system (aka Panama), is the one bit in the article that I'll agree with, and it's something I've posted on before.

All the while the drumbeat for Yahoo! to make a face-saving acquisition in the wake of the Google/YouTube deal increases, including a mention in the NY Times article.  A potential deal with Facebook has been in the air of late. 

But I'll repeat what I said the last time this possibility surfaced:

"...it's important to make sure that the needed due diligence around the long-term initiatives doesn't get short-changed by the short-term imperatives."

Wall Street cares about that before all else. 

DISCLOSURE:  I was the lead research analyst on Yahoo!'s IPO in 1996, and covered the company for much of it's history.  I am currently an investor in Yahoo! shares.

ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF DOW HIGHS

"ARE WE THERE YET?"

It's been uncomfortable watching CNBC TV the past few days, since the Dow has been flirting with new record highs since 2000 (for the record, it was 11,722.98, reached January 14 of 2000).

Not because I don't like to see the market going up (I obviously do as an investor). 

Not because I don't like to see records being broken (it's always important to note passing milestones).

Not because I don't like to see CNBC get more viewers on the back of a more mainstream story (CNBC remains my favorite TV network during market hours).

But because the CNBC crew seems to be "partying like it's '99" in recent days, especially on it's morning shows like Squawk Box and Power Lunch. 

Too much focus is on almost tick-by-tick coverage of  that one sound-bite (Dow hitting new highs), and too little on the overall context for investors.  As a case in point, look at the top few headlines this morning off it's web-site:

Market Dispatches

Dow record in sight; RIM soars Dow comes up short on new high Dow up 20, misses record by 34 Dow hits 2nd-highest close ever Stocks up despite home price decline

That's four out of five focused on the Dow, as of 11:45 am this morning (EST), while the fifth obviously is also focused on stock market directionality.

It's a classic example of how the mainstream media has a tendency to over-does a story in it's enthusiasm to cover it, be it positive or negative.

The CNBC coverage has been particularly giddy in the types of stories the network has covered in recent days. 

An example yesterday was a "Power Lunch" feature on executives taking a 4-minute, $2000, helicopter flight, ferrying themselves from their corporate jets in Teterboro, N.J., into Manhattan's East side.  The example used had executives going to a lunch at the Four Seasons.

It's a little early for all this hoop-la, especially since the broader market averages like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, are far from any kind of highs reached in 2000 or any other time.

The current record environment is restricted to the Dow, which only represents 30 stocks, and is highly sensitive to big movements in individual Dow components.  As Merrill economist David Rosenberg notes in a timely piece:

"...the average Dow stock is still down 34% from the prior high and the median is down 39%. Not only that, but consider what it means to go back to levels we last saw 6-1/2-years ago – it means no net change over a span that saw the Treasury market generated a total return that exceeded 50%.

Not only that, but take inflation into account and in real terms the Dow is still 14% shy of the old record.  And since this is still just a composite of 30 stocks, call us when the broad S&P 500 reaches the milestone - it has 14% (or 188 points) to go still."

It'd be nice if CNBC focused on the broader context and perspective for a change, for the sake of it's mainstream audience.

P.S.  I'd like to thank my friend Bill  for helping coalesce the various reactions I've had to this story this week into this post.