January 2009
8 posts
The Cassandra Crossing
Reading stuff about the financial crisis I’m generally struck by the Cassandra-esque pleas of economists and experts who saw it coming - why didn’t anyone listen to us?
On the one hand, on any issue some people are always going to be ignored and turn out to be right. On the other, here’s a post from Paul Krugman’s blog giving one specific example:
“the extreme...
Free Lunches
Here’s rock critic Frank Kogan talking about a concept he uses in his criticism, with reference to old Disco Tex track.
“For me free lunch is something—and it’s important that it’s something you like—that comes along that isn’t part of what’s sort of obviously or officially going on in the song. Music’s great for free lunches because everyone...
Sharing Is Creepy →
“Though he never names it, what Levy is really talking about here is shame. And the shame comes from something deeper than just self-exposure, though that’s certainly part of it. There’s an arrogance to sharing the details of one’s life in public with strangers - it’s the arrogance of power, the assumption that such details somehow deserve to be broadly aired. And...
Truth and Interest
Following up from that, let’s think about information, which after all is the coin of market research. As ever, apologies if I’m reinventing a well-known wheel here.
A piece of information a respondent offers - opinion, reported behaviour, etc. - has two properties. One is TRUTH - it’s either correct (what they actually do or think) or it isn’t. The other is INTEREST -...
Karma Chameleons →
Interesting post from Broadstuff detailing the problems he sees as inherent in a social capital system. He is into game theory, so he’s phrasing the issues in terms of that. I’m broadly sympathetic, though I think this particular quadrant is a little too cynical in that it seems to suggest that the “karma chameleons” (Vicar of Bray 2.0) are invariably NOT correct.
From my...
Business at the front, purgatory at the back
The discussion on my FT post about the charts got quite interesting, helping me crystallise what I was thinking about with my offhand Long Tail reference (a cheeky one, since I’ve not actually READ the Long Tail).
Chris Anderson may well cover this in the book, but the collapse of new entries in the UK charts has really brought it home to me: not only is there a long tail of niche and...
Burger King And The Politics Of Social Media... →
“Calling for transparency just because we’re Web 2.0 PR people and that’s our mantra is just dogmatic.”
Very interesting post/debate around Burger King’s social media strategy - centering on the question of whether or not it’s a good thing for a twitter account by fictional character “The King” to a) exist b) exist without attribution. As the comment I’ve...
Culture Clash
I’ve been putting together an “Intro to Social Media” presentation for various people at work. Most of them have research backgrounds rather than digital ones, so one thing I’ve had to do is outline the enormous cultural differences between the culture of market research that exists in the biz and the one that’s come into being online. For instance:
Surveys v Polls:...