Joe's Jottings

Author: Joe

  • Social Search = global groupthink?

    GoogleA few days ago I came acrossthis item in Google’s blog – looking at what they call ‘Social Search.  This is a set of applications being developed by Google to allow image content that you and your social circle (as set up through your Google account) have posted on image sharing sites such as Flickr in searches returned by Google Images.    So the idea is that you do a search on particular images using Google Images, and prominently featured in the results set would be images that your friends have posted up on these other sites.  I assume that eventually this sort of thing will spread out to encompass other sites of user generated content – Facebook, MySpace, personal blogs, etc.  Of course, this would require some cooperation between the companies running these sites and clearly there would be financial issues involved, but technically it’s not that difficult.

    At first glance social search looks like a very cool concept.  After all, we tend to ask our friends and colleagues for advice and guidance on where to buy things or find them online.  We take their advice on what web sites are reliable, we are likely to at least look at films or books recommended by people who know our tastes, and so on.  If it did become possible to pull together information about searches carried out by groups of friends, and include information posted or recommended by our friends in search results in a prioritised manner, then the results would probably be more immediately relevant to us, and would also be at least partially validated – rather than the results being the equivalent of a cold call, they’d be closer to a personal introduction.

    However, it struck me that there’s a potential downside to this approach, especially the more integrated in to the overall search results the ‘personally linked’ social search results become.  There is a phenomenon well known in management consultancy circles called ‘Groupthink’.  It’s what happens when you get a group of people who’re closely linked in some way – members of the same close knit team or department, for example.  What can happen during decision making and problem solving sessions is that the group may come to decisions based upon internal politics and ‘norms’, rather than objective facts that are presented to them.  This effect has been seen to be responsible for poor decision making in a wide range of situations.  It struck me that there is a good chance of this effect becoming evident in search results should the ‘Social Search’ really take off. 

    For example, if someone in a social grouping is particularly ‘active’ online then their comments and recommendations might turn out to have a larger impact than other folks who’re less active online but possibly more informed about issues.  The overall effect would therefore to bias such social network search results towards the people with the largest online profile rather than those results that are possibly more accurate.  Such individuals would thus become opinion leaders and formers in particular social groups, and advertisers could easily seek out these higher profile individuals to sell directly to them, working on the principle that they will sell to their circle of contacts either directly by recommendation or indirectly through the results of social search.

    Slightly disturbing.  Whilst influencing small groups of people it’s not the end of the world, but how long before we get a situation similar to that in the Phillip Dick short story ‘The Mold of Yancy’, where the behaviour of a whole civilisation was influenced by the tastes and preferences of one man?  Far fetched?  Perhaps not.

  • Can money buy happiness?

    My answer to this question has always been ‘No, but it makes misery feel pretty good.’  However, according to a recent session at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the answer might be ‘Yes’…or then again it might be ‘No’.  I’m not entirely sure about the answer, partially because I know very few wealthy people at a level at which they’ll share their innermost secrets with me.  You know, the sort of things you worry about at 3am when you can’t sleep, when the ticking of the clock becomes the passing of your life and you wonder whether you’ll still be sane in the morning.  Of course, most of the time you do get to 7am in one piece.  I suppose that there is a part of me that really hopes that wealthy people are miserable on occasion – a quick burst of Schadenfreude on my part.

    A similar story is that of the so called ‘King of the Chavs’, Michael Carroll, who won almost £10 millions on the UK national Lottery in teh early 2000s.  After a colourful story, Carroll is now broke again and claiming £42 a week dole.  From what he says it sounds like he enjoyed the money, spent it and will now enjoy being back on the dole.  I have to say that whilst I might not agree with his lifestyle, his rather laid back transition from rich to poor reminds me of the the joke ‘I spent most of the money on wine, women and song and wasted the rest.’

    The main thing that seemed to emerge from the Davos session was that happiness is really hard to define, and given that it’s hard to measure something unless you know what it is, I guess that when even the richest and smartest folks on the planet  aren’t sure then any thoughts we have are just as valid. 

    I’ve always wanted enough money to basically keep the bank manager off my back and have a secure environment for me and my family.  Not needing to worry about spending money is nice as well.  Exactly how much money makes you happy is, I guess, a relative thing; I can probably safely assume that I’d be happy with an awful lot less money than Bill Gates, for example!  Apart from personal security and comfort, the main thing that appeals to me about having extra money is what you can do with it to impact on the lives of those around me.  I’d love to have what is often called ‘Fuck You’ money – the amount of money that you feel you require to allow you to say ‘Fuck you’ to bank manager, employer or anyone else!

    Whether I’ll ever get to having that amount of money available to me is debatable.  I may hit the jackpot with something I do – or, if I can ever be bothered to buy a ticket, I may win the lottery.  But until then I’ll just have to work on the principle that money may not buy me happiness, but it’s a better bet than being poor.

  • What happened to the Stiff Upper Lip?

    In separate interviews, we heard today that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had openly cried when discussing the death of his daughter in a media interview, and we also found Spinmeister Supreme Alastair Campbell losing his composure during another, rather mild, TV interview.  And we’re not talking about losing his composure in a ‘throwing the lapel mike to the ground, stamping on it and cursing the interviewer’ way – it was a tearful breakdown as he defended Tony Blair. 

    I quite like men (and women) to show their emotional side; I think it shows them to be human, and it takes a big person to demonstrate true emotions in public.  But this sudden outburst of emotion and angst from leading politicians makes me rather uneasy – let’s just say that the making public of these episodes so soon after Peter Andre broke down on Sky News, and only a day or so after John Terry was apparently in tears after losing his job and allegedly paying his ex-girlfriend several hundreds of thousands of pounds to not tell her story seems to indicate either a sudden outbreak of male emotional awareness or a cynical use of the media to garner sympathy.

    And I’m afraid that I’m going for the latter.  Whilst it’s perfectly understandable for anyone to cry and break down in extremis, I’m afraid that there are times when I don’t expect to see it.  This is particularly the case with Campbell; the war is history now and tears shed at this stage seem to be tears for Blair and himself rather than the human tragedy of the war.  Feeling sorry for one’s self and blubbing in public like this is just not what I expect to see from a man who has spent much of his professional life spinning the truth about political decisions.  It just comes over as a cynical ploy to garner sympathy and support, especially with the Chilcot Inquiry and the forthcoming General Election. 

    What has happened to the stiff upper lip; crying and publically displaying emotion may have become more acceptable but this doesn’t mean it’s compulsory.  I want my political leaders to be strong in public – if they want to have emotional outbursts then I’m afraid I expect them to happen in private.  Part of the job of leadership is to be aware of the emotional impact of what you’re doing, and deal with it.  If you’re involved in a decision to go to war, then crying about it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a high ‘EQ’ – it might just mean that your initial views of what war was like were immature and the reality shocked you.

    So.  To all my leaders.  Lead.  Look strong in public. Look like you know what the heck you’re doing.  Please don’t turn on the waterworks because if you do I’m likely to think you’re looking for sympathy or my vote.

  • The Way of the Weasel

    weaselThere is a super book by Scott Adams, creator of ‘Dilbert’, called ‘The Way of the Weasel’.  In a semi-lighthearted manner it deals with the less honourable methods that people in the workplace have of ‘weaseling out’ of difficult situations.  Well, it’s good to see that our elected representatives here in the UK have managed to achieve a level of Weaseldom that would be hard pressed to match even if you were a fully paid up member of the family Mustelidae.

    I refer, of course, to the gentlemen from the Labour Party – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine – who are facing charges of false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 which they vigorously deny.  (We shouldn’t forget the Tory peer, lord Hanningfield, who faces similar charges – however, he has had at least the sense of honour to resign from his position as leader of Essex Council in order to defend himself against the charges which he also denies.) 

    This is hopefully the ‘final act’ of the UK Parliament’s Expenses Scandal that has now dominated political life for nigh on a year.  But what have these three fellows done that makes me spend 500 words of prose on them this Sunday?  Well, their lawyers have raised the possibility that they may be able to yet again dodge any consequences of their alleged actions, even at this stage, by making use of the 1689 Bill of Rights – in particular the portion that deals with Parliamentary Privilege.  Parliamentary Privilege is best known as the legal process that protects an MP from being sued for libel or slander when speaking within the House of Commons on potentially delicate issues.  However, it has wider application, as we’re seeing here.  The position being adopted by the Labour MPs is that they feel that the whole issue should be dealt with as being a breach of the rules of the House surrounding expenses, and as such shouldn’t actually be an issue for criminal law at all but should be dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege rules.  

    There’s an old joke that goes “What’s the difference between Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance?”, the answer being “About 7 years in prison.”.  The same thing applies here – the difference between the issue being dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege or under the Criminal Law is that the Parliamentary authorities are unable to send you to prison if found guilty.  I can see why this approach is popular….

    If these men are innocent of the charges, then surely the best way to prove that innocence, even at this late stage, is to go in to open court and robustly defend all aspects of their behaviour, showing the relevant paperwork, receipts, etc. and telling us in open court why their actions are legal.  For the lawyers to go the way of ‘internal process’ in this way may well be legally possible, but will leave these men forever labelled as not being willing to face the same legal process that non-Parliamentarians facing similar accusations would have had to face.  David Cameron has expressed “disgust” at the possibility, and Nick Clegg has warned of public outrage if this path is chosen. 

    Me?  Why am I not surprised. The behaviour of so many of these people has been so apalling that one has to wonder whether or not they’ve set out to destroy the whole image of representative democracy in the UK.  But that would be TOO paranoid, even for me.

    Please guys – do the honourable thing.  Stand up, say ‘Mea Culpa’ and face the music with dignity.

  • The Lost Boys of English football

    Lost_boysI’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of football is minimal, and my interest in the game is not that great either.  However, for the last couple of weeks it’s been incredibly difficult for anyone in the UK to avoid the story of John Terry, ex-England Captain, and his personal life off the soccer pitch.  It seems to be an ongoing saga in the UK over the last decade or so – varying amounts of scandal and titillation around the private lives (often played out in public) of our leading soccer players, and how those issues affect their ability to play the game they get paid handsomely to do.

    I’m not going to rehash the stories here; what triggered me to write this was overhearing an interview with Lizzie Cundy on the TV news, in which she referred to various soccer players as ‘boys’ – which immediately hit an old hot-button of mine about infantilisation in society, so here we are!

    It really does concern me to hear of young men in their twenties and early thirties being referred to as boys (and also young women in the same age range being referred to as girls, for that matter).  Apart form the patronising nature of referring to a man who earns over 100,000 a week, is a husband and a father, and holds line management responsibility in the same way that I was referred to when I was a snot-nosed kid of 8 years old trying to blow up the garden shed, there is a whole raft of cultural and behavioural issues tied up in that word ‘boy’ that is at the heart of the current fuss about the private lives of these men.

    The problem is that when you refer to someone as a ‘boy’ it comes loaded with a load of cultural associations.  And at the core is that little phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ – just how much of a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card is that phrase?  So much of the behaviour of these people is probably predicated on the fact that they think that because ‘they’re one of the boys’ they’ll get away with all sorts of nonsense because that is what is expected.  The problem is that we’re not dealing with lovable, tousle-haired little scamps who’ve kicked a football through the greenhouse window.  We’re dealing with adults who, to be blunt, have responsibilities to family, team and country.

    Their partners, managers, fans and more often than not large sections of the popular media support this attitude until situations like this involving the allegations around John terry arise; then we start the usual round of ‘It’s disgusting, it’s terrible, it’s shocking, etc.’  I heard a couple of Chelsea fans on the news saying that Terry shouldn’t have been fired because he was the best man for the job, etc.  I expected this sort of partisan support, an was incredibly gratified that Capello was able to dismiss Terry in less than 15 minutes.  Perhaps Capello is proving to be the stern, parental, father-figure to these ‘boys’ that they sorely seem to need.

    In the Peter Pan stories, ‘The Lost Boys’ were Peter Pan’s gang – they literally were little boys that had been lost by their nannies.  Like Peter, they never grew up.  In the 1980s movie ‘The Lost Boys’, the strap-line on the film poster was ‘Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun being a vampire’.  Party all night and never grow old seems to be the teenage dream still being lived by quite a few Premiership footballers.

    Perhaps we need to start addressing our own ‘Lost Boys’ in soccer and encourage them to grow up a little.  And the starting point is to refer to them as men, not boys.

  • Where next for space?

    nasa-ares-cone-cp-7563350I have to admit to being quite saddened by President Obama’s announcement cancelling the NASA project to carry out manned missions to the moon.  Perhaps it’s something to do with my age; I can remember the Apollo moon missions as a schoolboy, along with the feeling that by 2001 we might actually have a world something like that portrayed in the movie 2001.  And then Star trek couldn’t possibly be too far behind.

    Well, to paraphrase the old Apple advert ‘2001 wasn’t like 2001′.  The public lost interest, the 70s happened and the money ran out.  Governments felt that there were more politically and economically pressing concerns, and space flight became very much a science-driven, unmanned affair with the exception of the Shuttle.  And now we have Ares / Orion being cancelled for being over-budget, late and reliant on old technology, and one wonders whether we’re going through the same sort of thing again.

    For a President who is supposed to have vision, I’m afraid that Obama is currently looking pretty short sighted on this one. I totally appreciate that the US (like the rest of us) has some significant budgetary issues to deal with.  But the ongoing silliness of bailing out banks and large businesses does nothing for national confidence or vision.  It benefits bankers, stockholders and the wealthy.  It reminds the rest of us across the world that we’re regarded as the ‘bank of last resort’ – you can always whip the public purse for a bit more money.  Sure, we can look up to the skies, but all we’ll be seeing are the towering office blocks of the unacceptable face of capitalism that got us in to this mess.

    Now, more than any other time in the last 30 years, we need a lead from the US in terms of something with vision and the potential for achievement for all mankind.  The human race enters the 21st Century full of fear – of terrorism, economic crash, ecological disaster.   Whilst it’s definite that renewed and invigorted investment in space exploration won’t do anything immediate to resolve any of these problems, it offers the possibility of enhanced technical fixes for the future, the possibility of a unified global approach the universe beyond our atmosphere and,  probably most important of all, a sense of hope.

    We have no heroes today; we have no explorers of world renown that show that the human race is indeed made of ‘the right stuff’.  We’re expected to pay our taxes which currently go to pay for bailing out banks and repaying national debt foisted on us by feckless governments who’re trying to Govern the world of today with the attitudes of the mid-20th Century.  We have Governments mired in control-freakery, who look towards ‘wars on terror’ and ‘wars on drugs’ as means of burying large amounts of economic production that might otherwise be used in more ambitious and adventurous ways – like space exploration.

    Mars is the obvious next destination; I hope that the cancellation of Moon based projects is regarded as a facilitating move to allow more resources to be spent on Mars missions.  But my gut feel tells me that sooner or later that too will be dumped.  I understand that there are issues to deal with here on earth, but given the ability of the Governments of the world to bail out banks, develop massive and never ending weapons programmes and generally attempt to support the any number of flawed and expensive policy programmes that fail to deliver year on year, the resources are available. 

    It’s just that Governments choose not to support programmes and policies that give their people hope – and not just in space.  And that is saddening and infuriating in equal measure.

  • Engagement, pandering, patronising or exploitation?

    educationThere is nothing new in the efforts to engage pupils at school by combining what is taught in lessons with what interests them in the outside world.  In many respects it’s a good way forward – some years ago there were efforts to encourage reading in boys by basically getting them to read anything – comics, football reports, whatever – on the off-chance that they would then start reading books and improving their reading skills and general literacy.    This project was geared around encouraging children to read material that interested them, in the hope of that material being a gateway to reading other things.  It wasn’t focused on particular comics or films or ‘tie ins’ for example.

    So far so good, but when does engagement become pandering?  When does it become patronising – and, in some cases, is there an argument to be made for some aspects of this sort of outside world / education crossover actually being exploitative of children and teenagers?  For example,  developing lesson material like the one mentioned here might work very well with pupils for whom the ‘Twilight’ series is a major interest but would do absolutely nothing for others for whom it means nothing.  I have to say that I’d also be concerned about the longevity of such material in terms of it maintaining it’s interest and relevance for future years of students.  The last thing that a teacher will want is to either develop material that goes out of ‘favour’ with pupils so quickly that it needs to be revised each year.  Maintaining ‘relevance’ is about keeping educational material valid and relevant in the wider world, not in the world of this month’s media hype.

    There’s also an element of being patronising here – attempting to second guess what teenagers might be interested in is a dangerous occupation; it can easily fail and be regarded as patronising.  Education is surely not about appearing ‘cool’ to the students; surely it’s more important to put ideas and concepts over in an understandable way, that is as far as possible relevant and contemporary so as to engage pupils, but not by jumping on to whatever bandwagon is passing?

    As far as I can see, there are some topics taught that are, let’s say, eternal.  They’re the basics; the stuff that’s been taught for as long as the subject has existed.  In my experience this tends to be confined to the basics of reading, writing and numeracy.  Things like the rules of grammar, basic arithmetic and counting, even, dare I say it, things like times-tables.  The factual aspects of history and geography (without the interpretation) falls in to this category.  Whether we like it or not, any attempt to ‘engage’ pupils with these topics is almost certainly going to be met with resignation or smirks from the class.  Perhaps we need to actually get down to business here; the fact is that there are some things we need to learn to get on in life that are just hard work and need to be done.  No point in trying to make it cool, or trendy; it just needs doing.  best thing we can do is just get on with it.

    Of course, it does benefit ‘content providers’ like film companies, computer games manufacturers, etc. to get in to the field of education in this way; it’s cheap marketing to a captive audience, after all.  And it’s probably tax-deductible….

  • Bad Science? Bad Reporting? Or the bleedin’ obvious?

    I guess that I’m primed for this sort of story at the moment, having spent the last few day’s re-reading Ben Goldacre’s excellent ‘Bad Science’, but when I do read a story like this it makes, figuratively speaking, reach for my revolver.

    A study by Leeds university academics of Internet users found that 1.2% of the people in the survey were Internet addicts, and that quite a few of these were depressed.  The study goes on to say that there’s no evidence to suggest that there was a causal link, and that most Internet users have no mental health problems.  So….hold on here….but….what that says to me is that a bunch of academics have spent money in determining that:

    1. Some Internet users are addicted.
    2. Some of those Internet users are depressed.

    At the moment I could have told them that from personal experience, because this sort of bollocks really does depress me, an Internet user, thus making me an Internet user who’s also depressed….

     Why am I so peeved?  Let me count the ways, and hopefully encourage you to take this sort of research finding with as many pinches of salt as necessary.  I must say that I’m not getting at the academics involved; I know that they’re hard working folks who have to publish to survive.  Anyway…. the abstract for the paper is here.

    Apparently the online questionnaire was filled in by people who’d found it via links on Social networking sites.  Now, having an online questionnaire when you’re looking for Internet users is a good idea.  Having it linked from Social Networking sites which tend to be the preserve of the Internet’s heavy users would appear to me to skew the sampling towards that type of Internet user – not Mrs Miggins from number 46 who uses the Internet to send flowers to her sister.

    The group that was determined to be addicted tended to be younger rather than older, and also exhibited statistically significant more depressive attitudes and behaviours than the non-addicted group.  The abstract reports that the Internet Addicted group (IAs) were likely to use more sites that replaced real-life socialising – such as social networks, pornography and gambling.

    Let’s just take a step back here.  I think that we could just as easily say, based on this, that there are people within society who’re so cut off from normal social interaction for some reason that they’re depressed and that to relieve this social exclusion they turn to the online world.  And all of a sudden this study becomes much more interesting for me because it starts suggesting that our society has become so broken that people are being excluded from normal social interactions and are relying on the Internet to self-medicate.

    The BBC’s headline doesn’t help ‘Internet addiction linked to depression’ – as far as I can see, I can’t see any causal link being suggested in the abstract, or even, in reading the BBC article, on teh BBC website itself.  Sloppy reporting on top of a report that does tend to state the bleedin’ obvious.

  • Twitter – voluntary spam?

    twitter-logoIn a recent article, it’s been suggested that Twitter is becoming a major route for spammers to peddle their wares.  This seems to be a feature emerging of all social networks right now, but in today’s piece I want to focus on Twitter.  The view expressed in this article is pretty strong – probably an even more extreme position than I take with regard to spam on Twitter, but it’s worth looking at twitter from the perspective of whether we are participating in a network that is becoming more spam than good quality ham?

    As is suggested in the article above, the relationship we have with the people we follow is rather different to the relationship we have with people who email us spam – on the whole the folks who send us wonderful offers of Viagra and millions of dollars on the Beserabian national lottery are unknown to us (and probably to any other human being on the planet).  With Twitter, we’ve actually accepted the folks we follow as followers, and when one of those followers does transgress our own definition of ‘spam’ and send us a message we regard as inappropriate, as well as it being annoying there’s also a sense of betrayal of trust to a greater or lesser degree.

    When we interact with people on twitter, there are two relationships involved; people follow us, and we may follow then.  We only see their content if we choose to follow them.  This is why I’m extremely careful in who i do follow.  But even then, if someone who normally posts sensible stuff posts a couple of sales messages over a few days I’m not going to break my heart about it – I get more upset by people who ‘flood’ twitter with lots of posts one after each other or who repeat posts at frequent intervals.  Such content is much more intrusive, in my opinion.  They tend to be the ones who’re more likely to get put off my list of followed people than someone who sends me the odd sales message.

    The other interaction is who follows us; until we also follow them, we don’t see any content that these people put up, but I’m equally protective of who I allow to follow me, based on the real world aphorism of being judged by the company that you keep.  This is why I regularly screen people following me and block folks who’re obviously doing little else than selling, obvious ‘iffy’ accounts, etc.  It’s important to do this as far as I’m concerned because I don’t want any of my other followers following someone based purely on the idea of ‘If they’re following Joe they must be OK!’  Just a quick look at the profile and Tweets of some some folks immediately indicates to me that they’re

    The ‘silent spam’ we tolerate by allowing folks to follow us who’re ‘bad’ but whose posts we don’t notice is just as bad as the noisy spam that we’re aware of on a day to day basis.  In my view I regard this sort of spam as the true voluntary spam, and as members of the Twitter community we should all be blocking and where appropriate reporting these folks, even if we are not following them ourselves.

  • The next, next, next thing!

    Hands up whoever has heard of the Red Queen’s Race?  That was the athletic event in Wonderland where the participants had to run very hard to stay exactly where they were.  I’m becoming convinced that we’re entering in to that sort of event in the online marketing and PR world – and probably beyond as well.  And it worries me.

    The article that sparked this off is here – nothing major, really, but it did get me thinking.  Does anyone ever give any online or software technique any realistic time to show whether it can deliver the goods anymore?  Or is it all a case of ‘MTV Attention Span’?  Does everything have to prove itself within a 30 second elevator pitch?  If something does the job, does it effectively and meets whatever targets are set for it, why do so many people jump ship as soon as the ‘next, next thing’ comes along? 

    There seems to be no scope today for a technique or technology to get time to prove itself.  Of course, there are going to be some advances that are just so awesomely great that it’s obvious even to a relative techo-Luddite like me that they’re worth using immediately, but for other things, how can you know whether you can get more out of an upgrade when you probably haven’t even measured the value of your current process?  If you’re using online tools like Facebook, Twitter, Search Engine Optimisation to market your business, then do you actually know how much business comes to your site via these various channels?  Because if you don’t then simply changing techniques to fit with the current ‘fad’ is likely to be a waste of time; you simply don’t know whether the new tool is worse or better than the old one!

    Impatience with results from all online marketing methods has always been an issue; people still seem to think that making quick money is posisble on the Internet; I’m afraid the only way to do that is probably to sell people on the Internet ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes!  But flicking from one technique to another and then to another without giving time for them to work or even knowing whether they ARE working is pointless.

    So…my advice?

    Well, bearing in mind that I am certainly NOT a marketing expert and not a millionaire, all I can say is apply good, sound, marketing techniques, such as:

    1. Measure your traffic to your site or business before you start, using a metric that matters – whether that’s page impressions, money earned, downloads made, whatever suits your business.
    2. Introduce new marketing channels in such a way that business from them is identifiable.
    3. If your business is cyclical in any way, let new techniques run for at least a fair part of that cycle.
    4. When you have your baseline, make changes to the channels one at a time and measure any effects based on those changes.

    Just remember the old adage that you cannot manage what you can’t measure; just because the technology changes doesn’t mean that common sense approaches to marketing should change as well.