Posts from ‘December, 2008’

Stowe Boyd over at /Message writes a nice post questioning some Twitter metrics and analysis being thrown around.
I have suggested for a longtime that to ‘get’ Twitter you need to follow 100 people at least, for several weeks. This cursory recitation of stats suggests that there are thousands of users out there happily communing with [...]

Sometimes all I do in work is state the obvious. I synthesise data, turn it into a story and the result is stating the obvious.
But this is what is necessary. People tend to ignore the obvious. It’s too obvious. If it is obvious, how could it be compelling? But sometimes ignoring the obvious means ignoring [...]

Every evening you will see taxis lined up at the end of Chelsea Bridge in London. It is not a taxi rank, the drivers are visiting a van selling coffee, tea and burgers. The question is whether they are there for the food and drink, or to participate in a micro-community. I think the latter, [...]

Recently, I left this rental car back to Enterprise and reported some axle vibration. The attendant wrote the details on the windscreen with a temporary marker. No heavyweight computer system or detailed clipboard form.

At some point someone (the mechanic) should update the mechanical history of the car in Enterprise’s database. But it’s not necessary at [...]

One thing I’ve seen bubbling up in various research studies is the notion of “Social Obligation”. Here’s an example:
“I received a friend request on Facebook from a guy called Tom. He’s a friend of a good friend of mine but I don’t really know him. To be honest, I’m not sure I like him, and [...]

Messy reality 1: Perceived effort outweighs perceived benefit
I’m on Twitter, have been for ages, and have lots of friends and followers. The problem is that out of the 30 people I care about most in the world, only 1 is on Twitter. Out of those 30, almost all use personal email everyday, are online, and [...]