A Short History of Sex and Marriage and Work in America

Americans are concerned about the decline of marriage and the decline of American power. But many of them are wrong about the cause. Conservatives in particular seem to think the problem is too much sex. If you're a progressive, you're likely oversexed. And if you're a law student from Georgetown with an interest in health and policy issues, well then you must be wildly and completely oversexed.

Here's where I admit to being a progressive. At least when it comes to sex.

I tend to think sex is normal and natural and the reason my hormones started to rage wildly out of control when I was just a teen is because someone or something was trying to get me to have sex.

I suspect it's because through human history, it actually made a lot sense from an "evolutionary" (and if you don't like that word, substitute "human survival") perspective for girls who had gone through puberty to start having sex. After all, there were tigers and bears and maruaders and Vikings and all kinds of things out there that made having sex young, and popping off a few children before one of those things got you, a pretty smart thing for the survival of humans.

But then, we started farming. And while life got less exciting, more people survived. And because we weren't moving around so much, we found we could have still more children and they might even survive. (Because we didn't have to carry them somewhere new when the bears or moose came since the bears rarely came and the moose we could eat, especially in Alaska.) But the children still often died, so it was good to have many and it was good to start young.

But then the farms got full and more of us moved into towns and cities and the men got work in factories. And unlike farming, it became harder to just keep adding mouths to feed when the amount men made at the factory didn't increase just because the family got bigger. So people started looking for ways families could avoid having a baby each year that didn't depend on the woman dying in childbirth and over time, they tried out nature (not very reliable), early withdrawal (also not reliable), prayer (totally not reliable), until finally someone came up with methods like the birth control pill that really worked.

And when women and men and teens figured out that they could have sex without having babies it opened up a whole new world. Teens didn't need to marry young. And women, with fewer children, could spend more energy and time polishing their houses and looking at advertisements for toilet bowl cleaners, kitchen floor cleaners, lady part cleaners, all brought to them by men from Madison Avenue. And the houses got bigger. Meanwhile, men kept working. And a lot of people bought nicer homes and then two cars. And then women decided they didn't like cleaning all that much. But they all had a lot of sex because the women weren't pregnant all the time and they weren't exhausted from all the chores it took to raise lots of kids.

And then some of those women chose to work. (The poor ones were already working.)  A lot of women had support-type jobs and some women even built real careers and Helen Gurley Brown said that that you could even have sex if you weren't married. And for a short while, things were looking great. And both men and women enjoyed the sex.

But then a terrible thing happened. The factory jobs and logging jobs and fishing jobs that the men once had and which paid most of the bills, started to decline. Real wages went down. Benefits went away. The fishing went bad. Most of the trees were already cut down. And the factory jobs moved overseas. And the support jobs women had, which a lot of people thought were "extra," ended up paying the bills.

And then some men realized the jobs they were getting couldn't support a family and so they quit asking women to marry them. But they still had sex. And some women decided it didn't make sense to marry a man for support when the man was angry and couldn't support a family so they didn't get married. But because they were human they still had sex.

And while some men liked not having to marry to have sex, and other men liked having sex with their wives, other men panicked. And they looked around and the thing that they saw was that while they were getting increasingly unhappy and underpaid at work, women were going to school, getting better jobs, and having sex. And sometimes babies. And meanwhile people were living longer and there was the added stress of a lot more old people, and many of these old men were using drugs like Cialis and Viagra (which women subsidized through their insurance premiums and their Medicare taxes) and because none of this had happened before women could have sex without babies, women having sex must be the problem.

And so instead of looking at all the broader social and economic changes happening all around - globalization, technology changes, dwindling natural resources, longer lifespans, increased competition, financial shenanigans, growing income inequality, some men focused on sex. The reason young people weren't getting married anymore couldn't be that it didn't make sense given new economic realities, it was because women were having too much sex. The reason women were raising children without men wasn't because men didn't have good jobs, it was because there was too much sex. And the reason American men felt less powerful wasn't because low wages and unfunded, unwon wars are depressing, it's because women are having sex. And if teens and women would quit having so much sex, things could be as they once were.

And so the men decided they would punish women for having sex. They excluded birth control from insurance plans. (While still making sure the $40-a-pill Viagra they love would be subsidized.) And they made sure that when a woman had an unplanned pregnancy, she'd be too shamed and too poor to to do anything but have another baby she couldn't afford. And they decided that pregnancy shouldn't be a protected condition because after all they're not socialists. And they cut benefits for the women who had children but couldn't afford to feed them because they didn't want anyone to say that they're commies.

And for awhile they felt good about things. The women weren't doing well, and the kids weren't doing well, and that must mean things would soon get better for men because men would be needed more, which must mean someday they would make more money and feel more powerful again and maybe we could go back to the days when a powerful man (except for the priests who for property-rights reasons and cultural reasons seemed to prefer little boys) could have sex with as many women as he wanted and pay for only the babies that were born to his wife. And if all worked out, he might someday have a house like the really big one in Downton Abbey where all the women upstairs look really good and the ones downstairs quite often look slutty and tired but some will still have sex with you because you're rich. Or better yet, a man might be like Rush Blowhard or The Newt and just swap out the lady of the house for a younger one when The Lady starts getting a little dowdy or sick.

And the conservative men smiled, feeling hopeful once again.

Facebook: Is the Business Model Working?

I spend time on Facebook. It's a great way to stay in touch with a broader circle of friends.

I also have enjoyed talking about Facebook with friends in the industry. My background is in marketing so one of the questions I like to ask is: Does Facebook advertising work for you?

The reason I ask is because I'm starting to get the feeling that Facebook marketing is a bit like real estate before the bubble burst. Everyone's talking about Facebook. Everyone believes that that marketing opportunities on Facebook have to be enormously valuable - otherwise why would everyone else be talking about it? Also, the price is going up (every day, it seems like I read about a new, higher valuation for Facebook.)

What I never hear (or so rarely it's almost never) is that the ads - what people actually pay for - are working from a marketing perspective. In fact, what I often hear about is how the ads compare to Google, and so far, the results aren't promising. But what's even more interesting to me is that this admission that Facebook advertising isn't working is almost always followed by some sort of self-flagellation that essentially boils down to: "Yeah, our Facebook ads aren't working, but it's clearly working for other people - we just haven't figured it out." The only exception to this is a tech-savvy, marketing-savvy friend who runs a hugely profitable, industry-leading company and who has enough confidence to say (privately, anyway), "It's a complete bust."

In this context, it's interesting to visit the Facebook site and see what types of ads Facebook itself points to as successful case studies. Strictly from a "Really, are these the best examples to demonstrate positive business results?" perspective, the case studies are lame.

Where Facebook does add value is by making it easier for people to share enthusiasm for products they enjoy. If people love your product, they can share the word fast. (Twitter also adds a lot of value here.) I've gotten tips on restaurants, products, and places from my friends on Facebook. And I've worked in a business where Facebook was a catapult to huge growth. But in all of these cases, valuable as Facebook was - no revenue from me or any of my friends flowed to Facebook - unless you want to count the ads that appeared to the sides of our conversation - which no one I know ever seems to click. The conversation happens on Facebook, but how much can you charge for conversation?

Here's my hypothesis: Facebook advertising (and therefore its overall revenue model) doesn't work nearly well enough to justify the company's valuation. Companies are spending money on Facebook now, still searching for a formula that works, but many of them are disappointed. Most companies think it's their own fault that they haven't figured out a compelling way for Facebook to add value to the bottom line and so they're continuing to spend. And because Facebook isn't a public company, it doesn't face scrutiny on how dollars are flowing in a way that makes it easy for anyone on the outside to figure out.

This hasn't become a high profile issue yet for Facebook because it's still early and Facebook's growth continues to astound.

But it will. And I think it's just a matter of time.

Guest Post: Innovation - Giving Birth to a Startup

Monica's note: Today's guest post was written by Mike Harrington, cofounder of Valve and Picnik. Mike is my husband. He and Darrin Massena started Picnik just over four years ago. Enjoy!

People often ask me where the idea for a startup comes from. Well, in the case of Picnik, it starts by having a brilliant friend I love working with, some free time and an active imagination.

Darrin and I started in the summer of 2005 with no specific idea other than to do something interesting with Flash. We believed Flash was going to be an interesting emerging platform and that it would be interesting to write an app that ran on all browsers and platforms without the hassles of browser compatibility. Beyond that, we didn’t really have a specific product idea.

We brainstormed through a lot of different ideas, from better wifi hotspots, a flash based PowerPoint-like product or a Visio, and lots of other ideas. Each idea fell by the wayside because it was a) not fun enough or b) when we googled the idea it was clear that someone had already tried it and failed. In early December of 2005, we hit on the idea of doing a photo editor in Flash. It seemed like a great idea. It was fun, consumer focused (we didn’t think enterprise software would be as fun) and Flash seemed like a great platform for a photo editor.

Recently, we were reminiscing about the early days and Darrin dug up the email that captured our brainstorming and was used as the spec for our new business. The photo is of the whiteboard from that day. While we didn’t follow the letter of our new plan, we did follow it in spirit. It’s fun to look back at that now that Picnik has grown from a crazy little idea and two guys into a really cool photo editor and a super creative and fun team that I enjoy working with every day.

-mike

---

From: Darrin Massena
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 10:56 PM
To: Harrington, Mike; Massena, Darrin
Subject: Internet Photo Editing

OK, OK, this is it man. Our long term business goal: OWN THE INTERNET PHOTO EDITING MARKET. I think we can do this.

THE MARKET
What is the internet photo editing market? Any site/service that people upload images to. Any site that hosts photos. Photo storage/sharing/management sites (Flickr et al), social networks, blogs, personal web sites, personal gallery sites, forums and groups for starters. More and more people are uploading unedited photos from their camera phones directly to the internet. Wifi-enabled cameras also allow direct-to-service uploads. New sites and services that make use of photos are popping up all over the place. Photos are becoming an internet data type as common as text.

THE PROBLEM
There is no ability to manipulate photos once they are online. People have to download them, bring them into a photo editor (which they must buy/maintain/upgrade), and somehow upload them again. That sucks. Especially for little tweaks like to sharpen an image, or crop it, or to zoom in on part of it. The overhead is so high that most people just don’t bother even though they know the photos they’re printing/sharing could look better and wish they did. To some degree this must be hindering photo sharing sites, amongst others, because their user satisfaction levels aren’t as high as they could be.

OUR SOLUTION
A wholly-online photo editor, provided in (at least) two forms. Standalone, as an online application we provide direct to end-users. And integrated, as a seamless part of any site whose users benefit from being able to manipulate images. Our standalone photo editing service is so complete and powerful that people will pay to use it. They’ll prefer it over the offline tools they have today. The integrated service will work so seamlessly and be integrated so easily that any photo-using site/service will be happy to pay for the value it adds to their site/service; they’ll attract additional users who will spend more time on the site and be happier with their results.

THE COMPETITION
Established companies with photo editing products. Established companies have to overcome two major hurdles to address this market (in addition to realizing it is a market!). First they must write an online photo editing application. There will be no quick ports of existing applications; most code will have to be from scratch. Second, they must implement their code to work as a seamlessly integrated service in a 3rd party site. Not only is this more work, but it is a new mindset for the established players. Their present mindset is more about how they can create a vertically integrated application and service of their own, not how can they add value to a 3rd party.

Upstarts like ourselves, possibly as outgrowths of photo sharing sites. Competition against an independent startup comes down to our ability to execute on our standalone and integrated services as well as our marketing of them. As far as I can see nobody has any kind of lead on us so it is a good bet we will be first and even if we are not first we will be best!

Each photo sharing site that develops an adequate photo editing solution in-house might mean one less customer for our integrated service but a) our standalone service might still make customers out of some of their customers due to its superior interface and capabilities, and b) if even one major photo sharing site adds significant editing capability (presumably proprietary) they’ll fuel their competitor’s desire for our integrated service.

GETTING THERE
There are many avenues we can take. Here’s one possibility that appeals to me.

1. create v1 of the standalone service w/ a minimal devil-horn level of features (i.e. not a serious photo editing tool)
2. launch it using the viral marketing strategy (“Make funny pictures of your friends!”). Build an audience, build credibility.
3. start implementing more serious photo editing features and the ability for the photo editor to be seamlessly integrated into 3rd party sites
4. send our biz-dev folks out to make deals with sites that can be satisfied with basic set of photo editing features
5. launch our v2 standalone service when we have a credible set of photo editing features
6. add features and customers forever and rake in the dough

THOUGHTS
This could be really BIG ($-wise). Our timing is right. We’re at the intersection of demand (mass use of online photos) and capability (Flash 8 supports the first level of functionality we need). Flash 8.5/9 will take us to the next level. If Canvas becomes widespread and is hardware accelerated we can move to that. If WPF becomes widespread we can move to that and boost our functionality/performance even further.

One thing I like about this is the RAD Games Tools-like approach of providing a service for other sites. This is an angle not every Flash bitmap-editing tool author will consider or be able to execute on. In addition to the revenue stream we will be building relationships that will make us harder to displace.
Another service we can provide to 3rd parties: photo processing (both user-directed and automated). Shaula mentioned a service she’s used that provides photos of race participants after a race like the Seattle Marathon. They take pictures of everyone during the race. You pick your photo from their site then they send you prints in the sizes you’ve chosen. They also allow you to choose whether the race’s logo will be printed on the photo. Problem is, they don’t preview what the result will look like with the logo overlaid nor do they let you choose its positioning or which race logo to use. Such a site could insert our service after the photos have been selected and pass us the various logo options. We’d take over and let the user choose/place/size the logo, maybe add a caption, crop the photo, zoom in on a particular group of runners, draw an arrow pointing themselves out in a crowd, etc. We’d pass the composited result back to the host site and they’d take it from there. This is one small usage but I suspect if we look we can find a lot of opportunities like this.

I specifically didn’t mention above the potential inherent in allowing people to ‘upgrade’ their images to include animation, sound, and interactive elements (e.g. hover your mouse over each person in a photo to see their name) because I don’t think it is necessary to add these abilities to make serious headway toward owning this market. They would be really cool though and might break us through into something completely new.

---

From: Massena, Darrin
Sent: Sat 12/10/2005 8:47 AM
To: Harrington, Mike
Subject: Picnik

What do you think of Picnik as a code name? I really like it. Maybe even as a product name? Picnik.com is for sale. After sleeping on it I think it is really important to get and use the product's domain name. Flickr.com is just so much a better handle than somecompany.com/flickr. Especially for a first product, why confuse things by emphasizing your company over your product?

---

From: Harrington, Mike
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 9:42 AM
To: Massena, Darrin
Subject: RE: Picnik

awesome. get it!

---

*Shaula Massena is Darrin's wife. She is a former software developer.

Picnik is now the world's leading online photo editor, attracting almost 50 million visits a month.

Fast Company Post Now Up on Leadership Page

I'm dumbfounded by the Supreme Court's decision last week to expand corporate free speech "rights." The irony to me of all of this is that it's the people who trumpet the horn of security loudest who don't seem to understand the biggest threats to national security long-term.


For more, here's my post on "The Supreme Court Doesn't Understand Globalization."

And here's post from Tom Stites - whom I met this weekend at the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored City Camp and who did a post several years ago that everyone who needs a backgrounder on this issue should read.

NetHope on the Front Lines in Haiti

Last September, I posted blog to Fast Company about NetHope, an org which I've been supporting for more than two years. NetHope, which is made up of the technology leaders from 28 internetional NGOs, is now on the frontlines of getting the communications infrastructure up and running in Haiti so that member agencies (Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children, Oxfam, etc) can better coordinate the logistics of helping so many desperate people. Today CEO Bill Brindley posted an update on the work that they're doing in Haiti.

Hounding Dead People the Brinks Way

My mother died in her home at the age of 91 last January. According to her death certificate, the primary cause of death was dementia.

I recently found out that she signed a contract with Brinks Home Security many years ago that automatically renews each year. The specific service they were charging for was remote home monitoring - which I find interesting because no alarm system at her home was connected to the phone system - which means for many years there was no way for them to have been monitoring it.

A few months ago, they sent a renewal notice which reached my brother, several months after he'd contacted them to say my mother had died (which to me would suggest that she probably wouldn't pay any new charges into the future). Her credit card was no longer valid so they were looking for a new number. He didn't respond to them - he'd already told them she was gone and there was no need for their services, and that's when they renewed the service automatically and then started sending collection notices.

I've just spent the morning trying to reach a real person at Brinks in order to get the situation dealt with amicably. After going through phone tree systems that had no option pertaining to this situation (all the focus is on trying to sell someone a new system), I got hold of Tyra in Customer Loyalty. After I gave her the account number and passed the "security ID" question (not surprisingly, my mother used the family dog's name), she said that indeed my brother had contacted them last April to say my mother was dead. But now the only thing that would cancel the contract was for me to send a copy of my mother's death certificate, my driver's license, and all the documentation regarding her estate into a Customer Care Department. I said that there was no way I was going to send a copy of my license or any other important documents into a corporate bureacracy when all I'm trying to get them to do is quit hounding a dead woman for services that are no longer being provided and haven't been provided for years. I did offer to send Tyra or any specifically named person a scanned copy of the death certificate by email, and then follow up as appropriate. It soon became clear that Tyra couldn't help me and didn't seem to know any actual person who could.

After thanking her and hanging up politely, I decided to check into the Brinks web site a little more. Brinks - which now carries the Broadview Security name - says on their site that they have a strong commitment to "Creating Customers for Life." Through their investor-relations pages, I see that they're especially proud of just how effective their subscription programs are. Apparently, it's good business to sign up customers once and then keep charging them - through dementia, death, and beyond. Perhaps not surprisingly given that policy, their revenues for the quarter ended September 30 were up by more than 6% over the previous year.

If Brinks wants to continue to hound my mother for a service that hasn't been used for years, they're welcome to do that. If she were alive, I suspect she would find it interesting and perhaps a little amusing. Meanwhile, I would suggest that the attorney general for Oregon (where my mother lived), Washington (where I live) and many other states might want to start looking into how such contracts and payment systems affect elderly people who might have once signed up for a security or home monitoring service, but no longer need it and don't know how to make it go away. Let me know if you need any help.

Tensions and Law Enforcement

My heart goes out to the families of the police officers who were gunned down Sunday morning in Lakewood, Washington, not far from where I live. It was a terrible crime and many lives will never be the same. I feel for the officers' colleagues, especially knowing that they suffer the burden of having to be professional and reassure their own loved ones - all the while mourning for close friends and knowing that for a twist of fate, it could have been any one of them.

Many years ago, my summer job involved working dispatch during the night shift in a national park. I was the last person to talk to a patrol officer before a car stop - which also meant I was the first person to talk to the officer after a stop was made. It was a time when databases were not connected and the law enforcement officers were often seasonal rangers like myself with limited training.

Every stop was potentially life threatening. We never knew whether a car stop would involve a drunk, belligerent driver, an apologetic tourist with family in tow, or someone or something more sinister. I worked alone in a dark administration building, and felt the tension intensely. If an officer took more time than I thought they should, I could feel my heart race and I was always grateful when he or she would get on the radio and calmly communicate that the stop was done and had been routine.

Once, on a shift I happened not to be working, a car exploded just after the patrol officer had radioed in to say she was going to make a stop, and we later found out the driver had accidentally blown himself up while trying to throw a grenade out the car. That driver turned out to be on the FBI Most Wanted List and the officer involved was someone I'd come to know as a friend. I don't know how long it took her to get over it, but it's always stayed with me.

Another time I was alone and in uniform when I ran into a group of armed gun enthusiasts in the back country. Carrying guns like that in a national park was clearly illegal - and I was not an armed officer - so I assessed the situation and for whatever reason let them pass without saying a word.

Now, whenever people casually criticize police officers or belittle the pressure or tension they feel, my own gut starts to get tight. I've become the sort of person who feels it's always my job to put law enforcement at ease which sometimes means doing the dog submission equivalent of rolling over and baring my belly. A few years ago, when I was crossing over from Canada into the US and the Customs officer asked if I had anything to declare, I cried out "We've got bacon" as though it were a capital crime. It wasn't even on the list of restricted products.

Of course some people have their own strong reactions to law enforcement for entirely different reasons. In the late 80s when I worked for Microsoft as a product manager, one of my colleagues was black, and he would tell me stories about how often he was stopped because he was young and black and drove an expensive Porsche and was therefore subject to what he described as the ever present offense of "driving while black."

I also know from experience that just being out of sorts can raise suspicions and make everybody tense. Once, when I was catching a flight unexpectedly from Seattle to Nevada, I was put through intense security. The security officers pulled me aside because I was acting stangely - I was sweaty, pale, and could barely pull together a coherent sentence. I'd just found out my sister was dying and I was still in shock as I traveled down to see her for the last time. None of their questions addressed my situation and I couldn't say anything without bursting into tears, so I watched somewhat dazed as they went through everything in my bag and everything on my person. They were clearly puzzled, but couldn't find anything specific and my paperwork seemed to be in order. After what felt like an endless search, they sent me on my way. As I ran to catch my flight, I muttered a tearful thank you and I knew I'd left them wondering if there was something else they should have probed.

We''ve come a long way since the days when I worked at Crater Lake and my friend from the Word product marketing team was pulled over several times a year for merely driving an expensive car while audaciously young and black. Databases are connected, law officers have better training and people everywhere are more sensitive to issues of prejudice in matters of race and authority. Nevertheless, the system and we are still imperfect, and as I write this, the police nearby are in an intense search for the person they believe murdered four of their own.

A terrible crime has been committed, people are grieving, and a suspect is on the loose. Because we're human and fallible, all of us have a duty and responsibility to do what we can to help ease the tensions that accompany such an extraordinary situation.