Data Review: Housing Prices by Region versus Median Household Income in the USA

Housing affordability remains a key issue in the USA right now, with home ownership declining to levels not seen since the 1960s. 

Let's take a look at housing prices over time and compare a chart of the median household income over time. One is rising significantly while the other is falling. These are two factors that may help explain the fall in home ownership rates. 

The median home price is split by geographic region. As you can see, if the housing bubble burst in 2008, you'd be hard pressed to see that reflected in prices. Housing prices are now higher than they were during the peak of the "bubble." It appears that the FED has done an excellent job re-inflating home asset values. 

Data courtesy of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 

Next we can look at real median household income. Asset prices are easier to inflate than salaries. Household incomes are at levels from 1997. Americans have the nearly same real median household income as 20 years ago.

Data courtesy of St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Fitbit Blaze & the Need for Speed

Fitbit recently announced it's newest product line, a smartwatch deemed the 'Blaze'. Similar to the Apple Watch in looks, the Blaze touts 5 days of battery life and a strict focus on fitness features. CEO James Park talked up the "style" of the watch and wants Blaze owners to have a simplified user experience. Not only does it look like an Apple Watch, the CEO is starting to sound like an Apple executive.  Investors were left unimpressed with the product and the words, the stock has shed over 30% since the announcement.

                   The Apple Watch                                 vs.                                   The Fitbit Blaze

According to investors, the two years of resources Fitbit spent developing the Blaze may have been better used elsewhere. Though consumers seem to have a different opinion than investors. The watch went on to win multiple awards at the CES show it was unveiled at. Now valued at 30 times earnings, investors are expecting bigger and better than just the Blaze. I believe current worries about Fitbits future lie not with the Blaze, but with two other things.

Before going into what needs to be improved. I need to clarify that I am bullish on the Fitbit's future and the future of wearables in general. Here is what I think Fitbit does have going well for it right now.... 

1. The brand name and beneficial network effects of controlling 85% market share.
2. Increasing use of Fitbit in corporate wellness programs
3. The social appeal (Challenges, Forums)
4.. Potential monetization of user health data analysis... the $50 per year Fitness Premium is moving in this direction.
5. Growth of overall wearable markets (The pie continues to grow)


Now, there are plenty of quick software improvements that will make existing customers more involved. Here are the two improvement areas that Fitbit investors should be more concerned and excited about...

1. The slow pace of software enhancements
2. The lack of lineup refresh. 

CEO James Park has touted that Fitbit has never had a bad quarter, indeed the 8 year old company has consistently turned a profit and has little to no debt. That cannot be said for plenty of other companies that had IPOs in 2015. And it is a great foundation for the company to build on, but moving forward the company needs to move faster, and the insistent on maintaining profitability in the short term may be holding the company back and allowing competitors to catch up. Apple, Under Armour, Microsoft and others that have expanded into the wearables market all have deeper pockets. Growth is key to maintaining the edge for Fitbit. Fitness trackers are not a fad, people do truly love quantifying their workouts. As the current leader in market share, Fitbit needs to continue improving and continue innovating or else others will quickly catch up.

Software should be a #1 priority for Fitbit. The company does have a forum entirely dedicated to new software Feature Requests. Browsing through the posts, you can quickly spot posts by customers who love their Fitbit, but want it to be able to tell them even more. Some requests are listed below.


- Additional challenges beyond steps and daily challenges. Something like adding in a 1 hour workout challenge, or a monthly calorie challenge etc...

- Better sleep analysis, possibly combining sleep with heart rate analysis to gain additional understanding of our sleep patterns. A better user interface.

- Adding exercises like push-ups/situps and cycling
- Idle Alert to buzz you when you've been inactive for a certain period (post has been up since 2013)
- Alarms that can wake you up naturally based on your sleep pattern (post has been up since 2013)

Even very a simple addition like adding new clock faces have been left untouched. What are software engineers doing at the company?

Additionally, I think Fitbit should be investigating the potential for bands that can track heart rate or blood pressure. The heart rate monitor is not as accurate as it needs to be, as recent class action lawsuits show. Bands with sensors would help incorporate even greater levels of accuracy.

There are plenty of ways for Fitbit to keep moving forward. An emphasis on software and an entire lineup refresh with better sensors is monumentally important. The current challenge feature, the ability to add friends and communicate about your workouts throughout the day is a major differentiator from other fitness trackers. Investing in hardware is important, but the ecosystem of Fitbit needs to be greatly expanded and utilized much more effectively to fend off competition. A moat needs to be built to keep users from jumping ship so easily if cheaper competitors exist.

Ultimately, I think Fitbit is a buy at it's current level of $17-$18. They clearly had a great holiday season, backed up by being the #1 downloaded App on the Apple App Store over Christmas. The company is off to a fast start, but now it needs to put it all together.

The Quantified Self: Mapping Personal Location Data

Putting two days of foursquare data on a map. Visualizing my commute to and from work.

Photo Post #5: Positano, Italy

                                                          The Beach                                                                Positano, Italy. Summer 2015  © Chris Besserer

Improving the User Experience on Twitter

For the first time in quite a while, I logged onto my Twitter Account. Let me clarify, nothing special has drawn me back to the app, I'm back simply because I wanted to see if the company had made any product improvements since the last time tweeted. Which turns out, was May of 2015. After a few minutes digging into the platform, I was left severely underwhelmed with any new changes (or lack thereof).

Before going into further details on what I think needs to change, I will make a quick disclaimer and say I have been bearish on Twitter for before, my previous posts on the matter can be found here and here and here. In my view, the company is continuing its trend in the wrong direction. Below I will detail just a few minor changes that the twitter team could implement to make a difference.

1. The "Noise" and Increased Personalization

One of the first things that stood out to me is how much junk there is on twitter. There are plenty of interesting people and accounts out there that I want to "follow" but I also don't want to see 100 tweets from them about the avocado they had for lunch. My timeline, granted I only follow some 200+ people, was filled with junk that I could care less about. Twitter should be able to solve this for me. If I want to follow the Wired Account, I should be able to without being bombarded by 100 tweets that I am uninterested in, only to sift through and find the one thing that I am. Say I have an interest in Renewable Energy, well then I may only want to see Wired articles about new technologies in renewable energy, not about new video games or movies. A different example would be if I was someone into the NFL or Fantasy Football and wanted to follow Adam Schefter. His account has around 30,000 tweets, and once you follow his account, your feed will be clogged with his tweets. As a member since 2006, his tweet total of 30,000 puts him at an average of 15 tweets a day. If you follow 200 people like him, you are looking at 3,000 tweets PER DAY that you will have to sort through. If you are only interested in 10% of what is being said, that leaves 2,700 garbage tweets to find the 300 you actually want to see. 

So there is a classification of tweets. Let's break it down.
1. Tweets that are useful to everyone.
2. Tweets that are useful to me and only me
3. Tweets that are useful to others but not me

For instance, if I am a Jets fan, I may only want to see his tweets related to my team, or if I have Tom Brady on my fantasy team, only put through a tweet about him, save me the tweets on the rest. Cowboy fans may want to see tweets related to their team but don't care about the New York Jets. We both should be able to follow the same account and not have to look through tweets we don't care about. Changing this can benefit Twitter by making the platform more user friendly. When accounts tend to tweet hundreds of times a day, my reaction is to unfollow them just to clear away the junk. But this defeats the purpose of Twitter. Shifting through the "noise" out there and allowing me to personalize my twitter feed content would allow me to follow more people without being overloaded with the unimportant information that I have no interest in.

2. Search your Timeline & Create your Own History

Twitter should do a much better job allowing me to go back in time and see my past tweets. Not only that, there should be milestones and other important tweets that will stand out to me... Twitter is attempting this with the "pin your tweet" idea. So you can choose to have a tweet pinned to your front page. When someone visits your profile they will see that tweet first before your most recent tweet, even if you pin something from 2010. One thing I actually enjoyed was going through my old tweets. This allowed me to reminisce on memories I may have previously forgotten about. It was as if the tweet has forever minted a memory for me, the tweet itself brought back recognition of an experience or time in my life. However, others were embarrassing and I deleted a couple hundred useless tweets. There should be an option to turn a tweet private, similar to how Facebook allows users to post something to a private audience. Twitter should implement something similar, where users are be able to determine if the tweet is viewable only to themselves, or only to certain viewers. I wanted to keep my old tweets for myself but I also didn't want my followers to see them. Yes, you can make your account private, but that still allows your current followers to see the tweets. More personalization and security over the tweets is a necessary step for Twitter. 

3. Moments

This new feature is a step in the right direction and needs to be a continued push for Twitter. I don't have much to say about this. The interface needs improvement, but overall an emphasis on a "what is happening now" page that moves beyond just trending hashtags is positive. 

Twitter's New Moments Feature

Conclusion: 

The bottom line is, Twitter has to start improving quickly or it risks being overrun by the Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat crowd. There is nothing proprietary about Twitter over any other social media service. 140 characters has run its course, no one cares anymore. Right now, the Twitter platform still benefits from celebrities and newscasters posting information to Twitter, and making a big splash when something silly/stupid goes up. If that's the only reason your platform has traction, something isn't right. Left uncorrected, this could spell doom for Twitter. Celebrities and Newscasters are already moving to Instagram and Snapchat. What's to stop everyone else?