GameCrush Offers Male Gamers a Social Life

The most popular people at the annual E3 video game conference in Los Angeles last month weren't the creators of Nintendo's 3D handheld device or Microsoft's (MSFT) controller-free system, Kinect. They were, instead, the duo of Amber Syr and Gina Tran, two 21-year-old women who walked the showroom dressed in matching tight black short-shorts and tank tops that read "Play Me." Syr and Tran are "PlayDates" on GameCrush.com, a new Web site that offers predominantly male gamers a chance to do something many of them may not otherwise do: meet women. While playing video games.
The site, created by Bay Area friends Eric Strasser, 40, David Good, 35, and Anees Iqbal, 37, is part social network, part adult dating site, plus a heavy dose of Grand Theft Auto. There are now more than 1,000 registered GameCrush users, known as "Players," who can choose from a roster of more than 5,000 PlayDates, a mainly female constituency they can chat up through Instant Messenger or Web cam while gaming. (The registration process occurs online, without screening. However, all Players and PlayDates must be at least 18 years old.) PlayDates select whether they are "Dirty" or "Flirty," though Strasser says this function might change before the site comes out of private beta testing.
Financially, GameCrush resembles a familiar, old-fashioned business model. In the beta version, gamers pay $4 for 10 minutes of playing with a companion on the Xbox Live system. They pay $4 for six minutes of playing online versions of casual games such as Battleship or Connect Four. (The online version charges an additional 60 cents for every extra minute.) GameCrush intends to split profits with the PlayDates, though Strasser says the pricing structure may change before the launch later this month.
Syr first discovered GameCrush by Googling "get paid to play video games." In a good week, she makes up to $150. Syr—who lists herself as "flirty"—says guys have been respectful. "Every now and then I'll have someone ask...," she says without elaborating. "I don't do the more risqué things."
Some people do. Strasser contends that GameCrush isn't a porn site for gamers. Only a small percentage of the women play "dirty games," he says. "You find yourself talking more about games—it's not just, 'You have a nice chest!' " Still, that happens. GameCrush does not monitor users' interactions. Its slogan: "Be a Player.

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New York Fed Survey Shows Credit Gap for Small Business

Small businesses in the New York area show "unabated demand" for loans and "widespread reports of unmet credit needs," according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Of the 59 percent of businesses responding to the poll that applied for credit in the first half of 2010, only half got any loan approval at all, and three quarters said their full borrowing needs were not met. (The PDF of the report is available here.)
The online poll, which surveyed 426 small businesses in New York and neighboring states in June and July, adds some useful data points to what has become a central question of the recovery: Why has borrowing declined among small businesses? The volume of outstanding loans to small businesses has dropped by $45 billion, or about 6 percent, since 2008, according to data from bank regulatory filings.
The New York Fed survey suggests that the contraction isn't driven by lack of demand from borrowers. Deteriorating business conditions for applicants may play a role. Two-thirds of business polled reported that their sales declined since 2008. Companies that successfully got credit tended to be more established, showed sales growth through the recession, or were able to use their profits to fund their businesses in 2008.
While the health of businesses influenced whether or not they succeeded in getting loans, it didn't influence whether or not they applied for credit. "High sales performers and businesses that were having either stagnant sales or declining sales applied at roughly similar rates," says Claire Kramer, a senior analyst at the New York Fed's Community Affairs group, who co-authored the report. That finding, the report says, "casts doubt on suggestions that smaller, younger, financially weakened, or underperforming firms are drivers of credit demand."
The forms of credit with the highest approval rates were financing for vehicles and equipment (63 percent of applicants were approved) and personal credit cards (46 percent approved). The forms that were approved least often were applications for business loans (20 percent approved) and new business credit lines (27 percent approved). Companies that had obtained credit successfully in 2008 were not any more likely to be approved, the survey found.
The survey concludes that the "second look" reviews that some banks have started, along with technical assistance for businesses, could help more applicants become viable borrowers.
The New York Fed's findings about credit demand contradict other survey evidence, including from the National Federation of Independent Business, that suggests lending is down because businesses don't want to borrow. The NFIB's latest monthly member survey said that 91 percent of respondents reported that their credit needs were met, including 53 percent that were not interested in borrowing.
The survey, along with an earlier one from the Atlanta Fed, adds to the limited set of data about small business lending. The New York Fed plans to release a second report based on the same data in early 2011, and similar surveys are planned by other Federal Reserve Banks, including Boston and Cleveland, says Jeffrey Smith, a spokesman for the New York Fed.

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The CEO Revolving Door

Call it, if you will, my Jerry Maguire moment.
Last year I switched on a television in my hotel room and found commentators gleefully advancing the idea that Vikram Pandit might shortly be run out of the chief executive's suite at Citigroup (C). Pandit had taken the helm during Citi's historic slide in 2008, and now he had become a lightning rod for critics in Congress. Many thought Citi's problems exceeded Pandit's ability to solve them. The press was dismissing him as "the most powerless powerful man on Wall Street," and conjectured that his board was only keeping him for the moment because they couldn't find anybody else to take the job.
Normally this might mean an exciting opportunity for my firm. My colleagues and I recruit chief executives for companies that need them. Our business thrives when companies need help assessing the effectiveness of their leadership or finding new leadership. The more challenging the assignment—bringing in a new leader in the midst of a crisis, for example—the more essential we are.
But I, too, was a relatively new chief executive. I hadn't held my company's top spot for much longer than Pandit had his. And I found the melee over his tenure discouraging. Pandit had ascended to Citi's highest position in December 2007 after leading an investigation into the bank's enormous losses in the subprime mortgage market. Now he was lobbying to keep his job. "I don't want to leave," Pandit had insisted to the press, "until the job is done."
Is this, I wondered, what it has come to? A talented engineer and financier reportedly hired at a cost of $165 million, promoted to chief executive, then just over a year later reduced to begging for more time to do his job. The potential waste was troubling.

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