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The End of Wall Street? Nah, It’s Just Flushing Away Its Detritus

I love Andy Kessler’s writing and highly recommend his book, The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor.

His no bullshit style shines through in his take on the current Wall Street situation:

So now Wall Street consolidates. Should you care? Not even for an instant. I spent 20+ years on Wall Street, competing against scores and scores of firms, always wondering what they all really did. E.F. Hutton. Shearson, Drexel. Heck, I even worked for PaineWebber in my early days (daze?) on the Street. All gone. And nobody misses them.

Silicon Valley And The CreditCrunch: Hambrecht Says No Worries

Om Malik has a great session with Bill Hambrecht, tech investment banker extraordinaire, in which they discuss what the current financial fall out means for Silicon Valley and the tech industry.

I was expecting to find him deeply worried; instead he was amazingly optimistic and, most importantly, wholly confident in the Silicon Valley way of life. Disruption will always prevail, he said, despite the current crisis, the rise of China and any of our backward government policies.

“I don’t think it will  have much of an impact on Silicon Valley as an operating entity,” he remarked when I asked him how the current crisis would affect Silicon Valley. “What is going to be interesting is what happens to the underwriting/IPO market.” In other words, fewer underwriters will be focus on tech companies — unless they’re really big, he said. In other words, it’s just like old times, like back when he started H&Q.

You can watch the full interview below:

What’s the KeyPoint of a Facebook Application?

The KeyPoint Credit Union is reported by Jim Bruene to be the first financial institution to launch full-fledged account access through Facebook.

The application, which was developed by MShift, Inc, provides one-click access to account balance information for KeyPoint CU users. The app stands at 6 daily active users, which is 40% of the Facebook members who have installed it – so it has a whopping 15 person install base.

Checking out your balance on the site you most frequent is useful, but it’s not a gobsmackingly good experience you want to evangelize to all your Facebook friends, nor is it an engaging utility you cannot do with out. Widgets are great – for example, Wesabe has launched an account balance Mac widget which streams real time balance updates.

However, banking and other enterprise applications on Facebook and other social networks need to go beyond replicating the experience of web solutions. They need to focus on their audience as users, not as banking customers — what engages them, why would they be excited by your app — think brand recognition, think deep engagement and then think again — are you putting up an app because you can or do you have a purpose in mind. In many respects the enterprise Facebook apptivity is analogous to the early corporate approach to virtual worlds – “Woohoo, board members, we have a presence in Second Life…errrm”.

I am sure that Facebook and similar platforms will be an awesome playground for business, but on their users terms.