Finance Geek

The iPhone 3GS jailbreaking app Purplera1n is here, reports CNET.

Teenage hacker Geroge Hotz, who was first unlocked the iPhone, released Purplera1n yesterday in a blog post titled “I make it ra1n.“

Technicallly, this is bad news for AT&T and Apple — for AT&T (T), since people can use their jailbroken on any phone service, and for Apple (AAPL) because users won’t have to go to the app store to buy add new ones to their jailbroken phones.

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Following on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.

Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them. 

NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.

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Fourth of July weekend is a time for celebration and relaxation, but also reflection on the critical juncture our nation faces.The U.S. has been on an “unsustainable cycle of buying and spending” that cuts across all strata of society, says TJ M

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There is an article in the FT today that asks whether Facebook is a “web phenomenon on the cusp of greatness or just a social craze?”, and as we’ve discussed here before the last thing any of us needs is for it to turn out to be a fad.

I think it is just about fair to say that the debate is still open, but what is definitively the case is that Facebook’s momentum is on the increase.

First take a look at these charts (courtesy of the FT)

The graph on the left shows the traffic momentum is strong, and the pie chart on the right shows that Facebook is pretty much an all age site now (or at least all age up to retirment).

Secondly, these highlights from recently released engagement stats on FB (courtesy of Inside Facebook) tell a story of a community that is on the rise in terms of depth and richness as well as size:

• 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day (13 million did per month at the beginning of the year)
• 8 million users become fans of Pages each day (up from 2.5 million per day at the beginning of the year)
• 10 million videos are uploaded each month (up from 4 million)
• 900 million photos are uploaded to the site each month (up from 700 million)
• 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week (up from 15 million per month)
• 35 million active groups exist on the site (up from 19 million)
• 2.5 million notes created each month
• 30 million users access Facebook each month through a mobile device

Given all this, and that with a population of 240 million Facebook would be the fourth largest country in the world I’d say that Facebook should be able to lay the ‘social fad’ accusations to rest pretty soon.  Then if they could just start making money they could answer the business sustainability question….

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Online advertising’s biggest players to government: Please stay out of our business.

Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft, along with a host of other advertising, agency and marketer associations, took another step in pressing their case that the government doesn’t need to regulate the collecting of data for ad-targeting purposes by search engines, websites, advertisers and ad networks. They’ve crafted their own set of rules in the hope of heading off potential regulation in Congress.

For months, a wide-ranging group of marketers, portals, publishers and ad networks represented by industry groups — such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers — have been working on “self-regulatory principles,” which were released today. They require sites to provide prominent disclosure of who is collecting information and the ability to opt out, inform consumers of any change to a site’s privacy policy, and offer special protections for sensitive data connected to health and financial issues or children, among other things.

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Citigroup this week joined Bank of America and JPMorgan in sharply raising fees on credit cards for late payments, balance transfers and the like.The banks appear to be trying to raise rates before new consumer-protection rules go into effect. They’re als

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For this Independence Day, here are words of financial wisdom — to and from some of the Americans portrayed on US currency.

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