Category Archives: SAMPLE POSTS

[TripAdvisor, Trivago, OTAs] Thoughts on the Carnage

Trivago’s “relevance assessment dimension”, implemented in late 2016, is an algorithmic adjustment that compels hotel advertisers to improve their landing sites and booking engines if they want to rank higher in trivago’s search results.  The idea is that while the user experience starts with a room search on trivago, it extends to when she clicks off […]

[MTCH] Match Group

Online dating has easy parallels to other online social experiences that if taken too seriously can lead to dubious outcomes. A dating app is like social media in that there are lots of people broadcasting themselves, making connections, and seeking validation. You might “like” a photo on Instagram as you might right-swipe on a photo […]

IAC and MGM

There was a time, not too long ago, when an investor could treat IAC as a collection of binary early stage bets anchored by a few more mature and profitable entities. To most, IAC’s 12% passive minority stake in MGM, acquired near the COVID lows, was a weird one-off opportunistic gambit that could be marked […]

Class 1 freight rails: part 3 – Hunter Harrison, PSR, and investment implications

No analysis of the North American railroad industry would be complete without a discussion of Hunter Harrison as no single person has had a bigger impact on the operating performance of Class 1 railroads over the last 25 years. A lifelong railroader who began his career oiling railcars in the early ‘60s when he was […]

[EQIX – Equinix; INXN – Interxion] Network Effects in a Box

The “internet”, as the name implies, is a network of networks.  Scuttleblurb.com is sitting on server somewhere connected to an IP network different from the one your device is connected to and the fact that you are reading this means those two networks are communicating.  Likewise, if your internet service provider is Charter and you’d like […]