The Future Place Blog

Social Networks and Market Researchers

Data is coming in thick and fast on yesterday's poll about which Social Networks market researchers are using. As of 1pm today (GMT), 125 had voted and the shares were:

• FaceBook 97%
• LinkedIn 71%
• MySpace 33%
• Bebo 4%
• Orkut 3%

Note, there is a sample bias in favour of FaceBook in that the main invitation was posted via a FaceBook group. For me the big surprise so far has been the strength of LinkedIn. Although I am a member and have some contacts, I don't really use it, and perhaps I ought.

To get the latest numbers click here, then click on the view results link near the Vote button. Note that PollDaddy does not tell you how many people have voted, just how many for each option, and since it is a multi, the total votes cast is well in excess of the number of people voting. As an approximation you can use the number of people who have voted for FaceBook, as it is running at 97% at the moment.

Where are you socialising?

Here is my latest poll, and like previous polls the results will be available here and via The Big List of Market Researcher on FaceBook. Because of sample bias most people who answer my poll will be FaceBook users, but I will be interested to see which other networks they are members of.

To see earlier polls click on the links below:

The economy

Improving online surveys

What does ASAP mean

 

Another way to give a great presentation

Presentation Zen has a post about a great presentation by Bill Strickland, an exceptional person, from Pitsburgh. For me, the first 2-3 minutes are a bit slow, but stick with it. Bill Strickland has a great story to tell, and he tells it well. The presentation is 35 minuts long, but it is well worth 35 minutes of anybody's time.

This is another reminder that there is no such thing as THE right way to present, there are hundreds of great ways to present, some of right for some presenters, some are right for some audiences, some are right for some messages.

Fun poll on FaceBook

Below is a chart showing the result of a fun poll on FaceBook looking at how many alcoholic drinks people had last weekend.

For the full story visit the Virtual Surveys Blog.

Bass Railway Trips

I was in Burton-on-Trent today, visiting a client of Virtual Surveys, to talk about Social Networks.

In general I was a little concerned by the state of the town, too many closed shops and a feeling of a town which has seen better days. However, my interest was taken by a plaque by the street which talked about the brewer Bass (Burton used to have a large number of breweries and always smelled of the malting and brewing process). Around 100 years ago Bass used to commission a string of trains to take its staff on a day out. On the plaque was a picture of one such day when over 11,000 people travelled from Burton-on-Trent to Blackpool for the company's annual day out. The company not only needed to commission trains, but also trams to get their staff from their homes to the rail station.

The logistics of organising such a trip without telephones, computers, emails, mobiles etc. must have been daunting, but it was achieved every year until 1911.

Perhaps when we had communities like those we did not need online social networks, but then we also had rickets, TB, and ring worm!

UK Migration, more complex than it seems

Much of the popular press in the UK has been ranting about immigration for a couple of years now, as has been the case in a number of other European countries, particularly since the population of the countries which have joined the EU in the last few years have had more options to move. However, last night at the rugby club I hear an assertion that I felt must be wrong. The assertion was that 4 million 'British' people had left the UK, taking their money with them.

A quick bit of searching unearthed an article on the BBC which gave the most recent official figures, the article was from November and the figures are the 2006 figures (the 2007 figures will not be out until late 2008). According to the article the official figures were:

• Immigration (to the UK): 591,000.
• Emigration (from the UK): 400,000 - looks like the 4 million was a decimal place issue.
• Net migration: 191,000 moved to the UK.

The article also said that half of the 400K people who left the UK were British passport holders, which means that 200K were not, indeed 15,000 were Eastern Europeans who were leaving the UK after only staying for one year or less.

Also! Just over 80,000 of the people migrating to the UK were British, i.e. people who had previously migrated and were coming home.

In addition to the official figures there is broad agreement that there are a large number of illegal immigrants, that is people who are overstaying a visitors visa or who have been smuggled into the country, but since they are not legally here, there are no good statistics on how many there are.

When I look at the debate about immigration statistics, which are not particularly complicated, and I see the use and misuse those poor numbers are subject to, I tend to worry about whether evidence-based, quantitative decision making will ever really take hold in the UK. Are clients, researchers, and the co-creating consumer likely to treat market research data with due respect, or will they/we simply look for numbers that support our position?

Growing Research Interest in Bebo

Mario Menti has an interesting post about the recent opening up of access to Bebo's API. The way they have done it is very similar to FaceBook, making it easy to port applications across. Mario shows an example of the experimental GMI's panel management tool - which he has previously shown for FaceBook.

One interesting challenge for researches interested in Bebo is that the users (at least in the UK) tend to be younger than users of MySpace and FaceBook, which means the chance and challenge of dealing with the under 16s is greater.

Reveiw of Social Netorks

Fabernovel have a really interesting piece of analysis about Social Networks, with several case studies on SlideShare. Of particular interest are their classification and their look at the logistical issues.

Who wants only 2 hours of sleep a night?

LifeHacker has a post abut how to function on just 2 hours sleep per 24 hours. The post is based on an article in Wired magazine. The most extreme strategy they talk about is based on sleeping 20 minutes every 4 hours, or 2 hours every 24 hours.

In terms of astronauts, people engaging in 30 day kayak trips, soldiers, and rescue workers, some of these techniques may well be both useful and necessary. But for most of us, I would hope we would aim to reduce or working hours so that we had enough leisure and sleep!

Now that's a wave!

I like trying to surf, and I love Cornwall, but I think I would stay well out of the water if I saw this! This picture was on the BBC website 15th Jan 2008, the wave is just outside Penzance, right down on the Western end of England.

The report said the wave was 15m high (50ft).