Liberty

That's 25M visitors, not users. Google+ is an open site, so you don't have to be a member to view content unlike FB which does not let you in unless you sign up. This does not mean Google plus has 25M accounts. Actually, they're probably at over 25M unique users by now since the invites haven't been closed. Last solid number I saw was 18M users and that was more than a week ago. I think the journalist just uses the wrong terms, in this case. They often do that.

Wow, it's almost like a parody!

I have an uncle in Longueuil, been there a few times. Malheureusement, il ne semble pas y avoir beaucoup de gens qui s'intéressent à l'investissement au Québec... I see so many people mismanaging their money and making what Buffett would call unforced mistakes.

Liberty are you from Montreal? BeerBaron Nope. Closer to Ottawa. Are you in MTL? I was born in Laval...

My guess is people are selling stocks that are seen as 'risky' pretty indiscriminately these days..

The transition to a more mainstream user base will be interesting to watch, and it could go either way. But I think GOOG did the right thing with the launch. If they had opened it to everybody from the start, including brands, twitter feed auto-republishes, etc, it would have been a huge mess of spam and short updates that nobody cares about. Instead, they seeded it with the 20k+ google employees, who then invited people they knew and journalist/important bloggers/known influencers. This got them tons of coverage, and what everybody saw when they first joined was more thoughtful posts and lots of comments (rather than short "today I went to the dentist. lol" updates). This is very important, because getting culture right matters, and it's very hard to change once it's set. On twitter I have 7k followers, and I follow back a fair number. But my feed is mostly just people linking to somewhere, with lots of spam, and it's hard to reach just a sub-set of that 7k. On facebook, my problem is that half of my "friends" are people from work (Anglophones), another part is family and friends (Francophone), and another part is people I vaguely knew at one time. There's nothing I want (or can) post to all these people, and it's a major pain to set up groups and have others reciprocate with groups, etc, so I locked my wall and deleted all my updates. I only use FB as an address book for private messages now. On G+, every time I log on there are interesting posts and stories because I follow a bunch of interesting people (like on twitter, except they can write more than 140 characters and I can easily see what others responded to the original post),and if I want to post something it's dead easy to make sure only people I want to write to will get it. Seems like a big improvement.

I don't understand all the technical stuff, but it seems like good news just based on this:

You can. It's just not a fundamental part of the architecture like in G+, it's not as easy to use, and it's not used as much by actual users.

I'm on it and think it's very well made. And because of the asymmetric follow (like Twitter), it doesn't matter as much if your friends aren't all on it at first. You can follow a bunch of interesting people (I follow many Google engineers, journalists, scientists, etc) and still have a very full stream, and over time more real-world acquaintances will surely join (they can't all be early adopters who get in invite-only, right?). One interesting thing I've noticed is that on G+ the average public post will get many more comments and +1s than on Facebook, despite the smaller overall size of the audience, and it will also be more elaborate (more text, more pictures). This points to a high level of engagement, which is a good sign. I also see a lot of people do public hangouts (video chats with up to 10 people) and comment on how great they are.

Names are funny. If you become successful, almost whatever you pick (within reason) will end up sounding good. People can't help making associations like that...

Growing faster than the others was almost a given (barring a catastrophic launch) because they have a bigger existing user base, BUT, it is still very impressive for an invite-only social network that hasn't even launched publicly yet and that still has un-announced features. That rate of growth won't hold for very long, but all these users are sure to create a lot of value for GOOG even if they don't catch up to facebook any time soon.. One thing is for sure, they definitely have gotten many million dollars worth of free publicity over the past month, as G+ has been discussed everywhere repeatedly.

http://mashable.com/2011/08/02/android-market-share/

Lol, I guess Windows shouldn't be considered either...

Business side article: http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/it-infrastructure/231002655?cid=sem_edit_WST&wc=4

I've never been a big fan of L either. It's on my watchlist, but I kind of consider it to have a similar model to BRK, FFH, LUK, and MKL, and I'd probably buy any one of those before L, even if L tends to almost always be cheaper (at least compared to book value). I don't like the assets are much, and I don't like the management as much as the others, so it's an easy choice...

Well said.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In my case, he could have said exactly the opposite of what he said but with the same tone and it would have bothered me just as much. Maybe it's just me, though, I can only speak for myself.

I said nothing about the content of your comment or whether I agree with it or not. I simply pointed out - and maybe you don't see it - that the form can be problematic on this forum. I have no interest in getting further into this, though, so I'll drop it.

Another rough day for EBIX on the secondary market, but this time on average volume (for a change). They are releasing their Q2 next week (conf call on Tuesday). I'll be curious to hear about the new Singapore strategy and about the pace of buybacks since our last update.

That's why people accuse you of trolling. You don't say what you mean, you just keep trying to play these oversimplified political "gotcha" games in condescending tones. Cut the artifices and speak plainly and in good faith and you'll get a better reception here.

http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20110801/BUSINESS02/707279924&template=mobileart

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-01/berkshire-mortgage-venture-weighs-acquisitions-after-hiring-finance-chief.html The new Berkadia CFO, Randy Jenson, was president and co- founder of private equity firm Ranch Capital LLC where he spent nine years overseeing about $2 billion of investments in financial services, energy and real estate and other industries. He’s a former chief executive officer of banking and lending at New York-based Leucadia. Buffett, the world’s third-richest man, said in May that the commercial property market was showing signs of strength. Non-distressed buildings in six major markets have recovered more than half of their post-peak losses, Moody’s Investors Service said in a June 22 statement. “The country’s expanding, the activity is expanding, households are expanding,” Buffett, 80, said in the May 1 interview. “Prices have been pretty strong if you start looking at particularly apartment buildings, but even shopping malls.”

More good news about Chrome: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/31/google-chrome-popular-web-browser They mention that the goal was to help other browsers improve faster, no doubt because the faster the web is, and the more secure it is, the more pages people will look at, and the more money google will make (via searches, adsense on other sites, etc). It's a bit like Android. Even non-Android products have been affected by it, mostly in ways that are positive for Google. Even non-Chrome browsers have been affected by it...

Tentative deal? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-31/white-house-republicans-said-to-reach-tentative-deal-on-u-s-debt-ceiling.html

Yahoo Finance's "Key Statistics" section has short interest (on the lower right). f.ex. http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT