The Future Place Blog

Business Social Networks

The Economist has an interesting article this week looking at social networks for businessmen, focusing on LinkedIn and Xing. The Economist points out that with the rise in executive redundancies, LinkedIn has seen a growth in people looking to improve the resumes (CVs).

The article probably focuses a bit too much on just LinkedIn and Xing, but it is nevertheless interesting.

One my interests in these networks is that they are in opposition to traditional structures. Business social networks will tend to give the greatest leverage to those who post the best material and those who work the hardest at networking, which may not be true in companies and professional organisations.

Who know, self-organising networks may be more important than organisations such as CASRO and ESOMAR.

Abuse of Science

The New Scientist has a scary report that two people have been found guilty of murder in India on the basis of brain scanning technology. The technique used is called brain electrical oscillations signature (BEOS). The claim of the authorities is that BEOS can tell the whether a scanned brain ‘remembers’ facts.

The process appears to be that the investigator reads out the details of the crime, and if the suspect was there, key bits of their brain ‘light up’. They further claim that they can tell the difference between memories created by being there and memories created by reading or hearing about the crime.

This story raises concerns on so many levels. At present, this approach is about as scientific as using a ducking stool! None of the technology has been validated, and the general scientific opinion seems to be it could not work.

At least, when market researchers looked at using neuroscience in market research, it was relatively harmless, as opposed to this shocking case in India.

However, another question arises about what society should do at some point in the future, if this sort of technology ever became possible?

TNS grocery videoblog still leading the way

For a while now TNS have been posting a 4-weekly video-blog on YouTube looking at the UK grocery sector. In many ways it would be easy to attack the style of the blog. However, that misses the point. TNS are doing and most people aren't. They will be learning by it and I am sure it will be better in the future.

The blog above has some really interesting information about the UK, including the flight of UK consumers to the value stores (such as Liddl and Aldi) and a supermarket inflation rate of 9% (twice the Government's figure for the whole economy).

Selling plane tickets on eBay

The Economist reports on an interesting experiment by US airline JetBlue to sell 300 tickets via eBay. Whilst this move was more about marketing than commerce, it is a useful reminder that companies are being challenged to come up with alternative ways of charging for their services.

Whilst most people who bought the tickets got a bargain, some people allowed the momentum of the auction to cause them to pay more than they would have paid at the JetBlue site.

Different ways of being Free

Chris Anderson's (author of The Long Tail) is working on his new idea Free and has an interesting post about different business models that he thinks fits the description of Free. So far he has listed three and is asking for suggestions for more.

Hi three models are:

1) Buy X and get Y free model, for example free razor, but you buy the blades

2) The paid for by advertising model, for example some TV and Google

3) Most people get it for free, but some buy the premium service, model, for example Craigslist

The two that occur to me as possible extras are:
a) Keep losing money until somebody buys you, for example YouTube
b) Rely on donations and guilt, for example some shareware

Working your style when presenting

When thinking about better presentations it is essential to match the style of the presentation to the style of the performer. The clips below show this principle being applied to a great song "The first time ever I saw your face" by Ewan McColl.

Roberta Flack has produced perhaps the best known version, with a wide range of notes and high passion. Other people who have done very similar versions include Celine Dion and George Michael.

Alison Moyet, by contrast, has produced something equally powerful, but very much in her style.

Perhaps the most re-styled version is the one by Johnny Cash. Note how he as reworked the material to fit his style. At no stage does he fail to hit the high notes, because has has removed them, and made much greater use of silence.

Too often in Market Research we see a PowerPoint deck produced without thought as to who is presenting. It is well known that no two presenters will present the same way, which means that usually the slides should change if the presenter changes. In some cases the changes may be subtle, slight more or fewer builds, but in some cases the changes will be substantial.