Pointless babble and other trivia
Saturday, August 15, 2009 at 07:22AM 
A few items I enjoyed reading this past week and thought you might like'm too.
A recent study of Twitter by Pear Analytics showed the highest use was "pointless babble." Stephen Abrams labeled his blog entry about this "From the Duh! Department." My take-away: it's not who you follow, but how well you can filter that determines if Twitter is useful to you.
If you enjoy political satire and animation, add Mark Fiore to your GoogleReader. His latest, Reform Madness, cracked me up!
Check out "SchoolKid Laptops: How Portugal's Doing it Right" by Rob Salkowitz. Not only are the kids getting laptops, but Internet access as well. Paid for by 3G licensing sales. US GDP per capita: $46,859. Portugal GDP per capita: $22,677. What's wrong with this picture? Oh, educators, how we gonna filter that EVDO Internet access?
That Committed Sardine, Ian Jukes, lists 24 Things About to Become Extinct. I am glad that both librarians and I did not make the list, but if the predictions are true I will certainly miss ash trees. But not dial-up Internet access. (Funny moment in the movie The Proposal when Sandra Bullock's character is startled by the sound of a modem establishing a connection. Sort of took me back...)
Buffy Hamilton at the Unquiet Library shares one of those "a startling but dubious fact every 30 seconds" videos that have become de rigeur at the beginning of all conference and back-to-school opening sessions. (I blame Karl Fisch for starting this.) This one was released end of last month:
It took only a couple minutes to find this was produced by Erik Qualman (AKA equalman), but I have yet to find his bibliography for the sources of his "facts." Anybody, anybody?
Finally, the Geezer Online collected a few stupid uses of social networking sites and titled the blog entry, "Natural selection at work and play." My favorite:
Then yesterday we came across, the following diatribe posted by a young woman to Facebook: "OMG I HATE MY JOB!! My boss is a total pervvy wanker always making me do s**t stuff just to piss me off!! WANKER!" Oops, she had apparently forgotten that she was still in her probationary period, AND had "friended" her boss, so this immediately attracted his attention. The ensuing loss of employment was surprising only to her.
Coming soon, The Darwin Awards for social networking???
Have a lovely weekend...
Reader Comments (11)
The following are all linked off of the following web address http://socialnomics.net/
Huge Thanks to These Outstanding Sources
Below are the sources I used to compile this video. Keep your feedback/questions/challenges coming as it will collectively make video #2 that much better – you know leverage this whole “social” thing. Thanks to all below:
Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Info highlighted on Trendsspotting Blog
Source: Huffington Post
Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka
Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document
Facebook Stat: Mashable
iPhone Stat: Apple
Source: Facebook
Source: TechCrunch
Source: comScore
Source: U.S. Department of Education Study
Source: Attempting to relocate
Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Note: 80% will use social networks in their assessment. 95% will use LinkedIn in their assessment. When we revise the Video needs to be updated changing “their” to “a” primary tool need to see if we bump 80% to 95%
Source: Inside Facebook Blog
Source: Twitter & World Population Data
Source: Attempting to relocate
Source: Metro Newspaper
Opinion, not a statistic
Source: TGDaily
Source: www.wikipedia.org - calculated based on # articles per language category
Source: China Internet Information Center, Technorati, Wikipedia
Source: ClickZ Stats SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
Opinion, not a statistic
Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
Source: TechCrunchThis says 4 weeks so I may have been a little off here as my source at Facebook had said 2 weeks adjusted above
Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
Source: Universal McCann’s Social Media Research Wave 3
Opinion, not a statistic
Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (actually 90% now – updated above but video still shows 78%)
Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing 2007
Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing 2007
Source: Starcom USA-TiVo
Source: Nielsen
Source: Solutions Research Group
Source: Henry Blodget Silicon Alley Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-sales-now-a-shocking-35-of-book-sales-when-kindle-version-available-2009-5
Source: Yahoo Finance
Opinion from Socialnomics
Source: Facebook
If anyone sees any inaccuracies or has better source information please let me know!
@ Doug
Some interesting stuff to sift through. Love the embedded video.
Unless a more recent comparison has been done, the original work that compared Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of article inaccuracies actual found a mistake rate of 3% for Britannica and 4% for Wikipedia. Still quite good, but Wikipedia detractors might jump on the statement that Wikipedia is more accurate than Britannica. I can dig out the name of that comparison, if needed.
Re the "social media revolution" video: It's not just that the "facts" and stats are not sourced, but that they often seem meaningless. Just because there are more people on one kind of media than another, doesn't make that media inherently better or even more able to deliver whatever it is this video is pushing. Marketing? Sales? Networking? I couldn't watch the whole thing, so I'm not sure there's a point beyond "social networking is a big deal" with the implication that you're lame if you're not tweeting/faceooking/blogging/whater-ing.
Now the Mark Fiore video was spot on. Short, to the point, and hilarious. Does he have one on social media? I'll go look...
Here we go! I knew he'd have something to counter that "revolution" nonsense...
http://www.markfiore.com/political/technology
Doug,
You're such an interesting blend of information and entertainment! I think that, more than anything is what keeps the Blue Skunk Blog on my RSS feeder; I never know if I'm going to get a nugget of highly useful information, or a hilarious, gut busting story. The one about the woman who complained about her boss and then got fired made me chuckle out loud, and I think the social media Darwin Awards are just begging to be written! Anyone?.... Anyone?...
Thanks always, for sharing.
Janice Robertson
This site is really useful for us, it contains many informative messages, thank u so much
interesting information and useful video, thank u so much
this is really very information, thanks
Thanks, Martha. My faith in pudits is restored!
Doug
Hi Susan,
I've always said that 87% of all statistics are made up!
If your source of this number is handy, I'm sure BlueSkunk readers and I would like knowing it!
Thanks,
Doug
Hi Ninja,
Yeah. And earlier one of these video had the oft quoted observation that everyone will have X number of jobs/careers in the future. Here was my response:
http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2007/9/9/how-many-jobs-have-you-had.html
Glad you like Fiore. His site has an RSS feed.
Doug
Hi Janice,
It's comments like yours that keep me writing (along with some weird obsession, I suppose.)
All the best,
Doug
I'd like to declare fridays as Pointless Post Day, it's the Casual Friday for Social Media!
See my declaration below:
http://www.theyippie.com/TheYippie.com_/The_Yippie/Entries/2009/8/31_Yipsdom_of_the_Day.html