The Paul Neto Blog

Where do you use Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:53:00 +0000

Crowd Science releases today results from it's Twitter usage research.

PS3 Slim - finally

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:29:00 +0000

The Sony Playstation 3 is lagging behind the Xbox 360 in sales. I've been tempted for a while (I already have the 360 and wii) to pick one up. The slim was recently introduced and the price dropped a hundred bucks so when I came across Batman: Arkham Asylum at half price on the PS3, that was enough to put me over the edge.

Critics are wondering if

the price drop was enough. For me, it was the combination of new styling, price drop, my getting tired of the 360 sounding like my old 386DX40 PC, and of course, Batman (though I must admit I was first looking at it on the 360).

So far, I am quite impressed and the game is impres

sive. It is the first super hero game that I've actually enjoyed though in the first 5 minutes I

was a bit worried as I thought it may turn out to

be a butt

on masher.

Not to be disappointed.

Replying to that job posting

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:12:00 +0000

One of the challenges in running a company is hiring. While I do admit it is one of the good problems to have, it is a very time consuming, expensive and difficult process. Having been in the hiring process across a number of firms, I've done my share of good and bad hires.

Working within a start-up environment, a bad hire is a very expensive mistake. Not only in terms of finances, but in time and effort lost, and the distraction from getting things done. If you assume almost two months to interview, hire and start a new employee, and it takes three months to train and figure out you've made a mistake, the total cost is almost ten months to get back to where you were (that is being able to assess if you've made a mistake).

So for this post, I wanted to provide some feedback for anyone replying to a job ad. This of course is my own view and reflects my personal style when cycling through hundreds of emails and resumes.

When replying to a job posting (in no particular order):

DO NOT simply attach your resume to a blank email. You'll be lucky if anyone opens it.
Don't tell me why I must act now and how otherwise I would be missing on an opportunity (aren't you the one looking for me to hire you?)
Keep the intro email short. If it's too long I will glaze over it or ignore it.
There is no need to say how you feel you would be a perfect fit for [company] or a valuable asset. Chances are you don't know enough about [company] and their challenges to make this kind of statement.
Make sure you itemize the qualification(s) that you have, paying particular attention to ones set out as requirements in the job posting. This demonstrates that you actually read the posting. If the job calls for Python and Django experience, don't go on about C++ and a dozen others. It's not that impressive.
If you are a recruiter, DO NOT tell me that you have the 'perfect' candidate - unless you do. If you fail to deliver on that, you lose all credibility. I am yet to see this as being the case.
If you follow-up via email after submitting your resume, please re-attach your resume. This is just for 'my' convenience so I don't have to go through my list of resumes to verify (in the case that I don't remember your name). I am more likely to read a follow-up anyway.
Show some initiative. Do your research on the company, the people, the business area, the competition etc. If you can strike up some intelligent dialog, you've got a decent chance.

In summary, anyone interesting in working with Crowd Science, or any position where you have to get through me, all you need to do is make sure you can demonstrate the final point. It's really quite simple.

Why audience measurement is so difficult

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:47:00 +0000

There are numerous resources for online audience measurement available today. One of the earliest forms was the page counter which appeared soon after the now retired scrolling text on web pages.

Today some of the online analytics include Google Analytics, Quantcast, Nielsen, comScore, Hitwise, and others. Though there seems to be quite a bit of controversy and debate over who's numbers are right, who's are wrong and why. A recent example has been the coverage over comScore and Google's Ad Planner and Trends for Web sites. After the announcement of Google's Ad Planner, comScore's stock price took a real hit. Headlines like Google Comscore Killer? didn't help the situation and helped stir a lot of reaction across the web. Once things started to settle down new headlines of a different tone "Google Ad Planner No comScore-Killer After All" started to appear.

A primary reason why audience measurement is so difficult, I believe is due to a lack of understanding of some of the fundamentals of audience measurement. This includes principals around sampling, panel recruitment and measurement. I am a data-junkie and data is only good as long as it is within context and when there is a thorough understanding of it's limitations, methodology and assumptions.

I think Fred Wilson summarizes things well in his post Checking Out Google Trends for Web sites.

. . . Everyone who provides third party measurement starts out with a data set that is skewed in some way. The trick is to understand how your data set is skewed and apply statistics to take that bias out. Firms like ComScore, Compete, Hitwise, and NetRatings who sell their data have invested heavily for many years in reconciling their data to server logs and internal analytics. And that makes their data better.

Instead of everyone wondering who's data is better, it would be nice to see an unbiased review of the different data sources summarizing the benefits, disadvantages, limitations, methodology and use cases.

Buffalo + Lion + Croc = YouTube reality show

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:58:00 +0000

I've personally had enough of reality tv. It's taken me some time to get into the YouTube thing and in part it may be my lack of patience with Idol-tv, so-you-think-you-can-[fill in whatever] and basic let's watch people fail specials.

Reality tv (or near-reality-tv) has been around for quite some time, some of the pioneers included Tiny Talent Time, the Newlywed Game, America's Funniest Videos, and of course Jerry Springer. How else do you explain the popularity of American Idol and Trailer Park Boys.

The beauty of YouTube is you can get your fix of reality entertainment in 30 second doses. One of my favorites for quite some time is the video below.

The lost "R"

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:29:00 +0000

It was about 15 years ago that the three "R" campaign really started. The three R's being Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. While the three circular arrows are still quite common, you don't hear mention to the three R's so much any more.

Looking closer at these, I think as a whole we've become relatively good at two of the three R's.

Recycle. Technology for recycling and participation in recycling programs is quite impressive. At one point not long ago people couldn't imagine separating their household waste, now blue boxes are all over and some are lost for a moment if they are some place without one. Recycling has become a major industry and waste diversion initiatives generally work.
Reuse. Maybe not as successful (or as measurable) but people are much more aware of the need to reuse products before sending them off to the garbage or recycle. This is very apparent with children who don't like to waste anything and reuse it for something new. Hopefully this generation will help us turn the corner.

The lost 'R' is Reduce. While the others have achieved modest success, our society refuses to reduce. We live in a consumer society and purchasing and consuming is the furthest from the 'Reduce' mentality.

Why have we lost this R? I think in part because of the scale that the mega-marts of the world (don't want to mention any names) are able to achieve. Things are built cheaply and sold cheaply, making the short term perception much more desirable than the long term view. The expectation that people have is that things should be cheap.

The two items that really get me are bottled water and backyard canopies. A lot has been written up on bottled water so I won't dwell on that one. As for backyard canopies, you know these. They are cheap at every major chain, last about a season then end up in the garbage in the spring, only to have a brand new one in the yard a week later.

The wake-up call that I'm trying to make is that before you jump on that great deal, think twice about what you are really getting. Typically if you spend just a little bit more, you can get something that is much better quality. In the long run I would argue that it is cheaper - and helps contribute to the lost R.

Look around your house, surely you can find a dozen examples. If that's not convincing enough, when you do your spring or fall cleaning, take note of what you are getting rid of.

The Reduce mentality is of course much much more than this. I'm just sick of cheaply built and sold products.

Email panel response rates

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:21:00 +0000

The topic of response rates and online email panels can provide some interesting discussion amongst research professionals. Response rates in general are important for all research and is sometimes referred to as a measure of panel quality or a measure of risk on data quality. Outside of some statistical reasons, there is growing discussion on how to calculate and report response rates - or if you should at all.

Calculating response rates for an online email panel can be rather challenging given some of the questions around methodology, panel recruitment, email delivery, email bounce, shared accounts and so on.

Online sample is a hot commodity these days, the industry is strong despite some real challenges. Though while I say it is 'hot', it is not yet a 'commodity' as methodology is still charging non-commodity prices. Enough on that for now so back to response rates.

Whether a researcher expecting a online sample provider to report response rates, or a sample provider reporting response rates, both need to realize some of the short-comings of such a metric. As an example, what does it really mean if someone says their panel can get a 70% + response rate? On the other hand, should anyone expect this from an online email panel.

Here are a few scenarios where a 70%+ response rate on an email panel may be possible:

You, as a panel manager, do everything right (or at least most things). Recruitment is from credible sources, respondents are not 'touched' too many times that they get fatigued, respondents aren't ignored so much that they forget about you. Surveys are fun, engaging and relevant. Incentives are reasonable but not unrealistic. Your respondent, has developed some level of loyalty to your brand.
Non-responsive panel members are purged on a regular basis. This leaves you with very responsive members, thus a higher response rate.
Email members who have responded in the last few days.
Primarily email 'new' members. New members are mostly likely to participate when they are fresh.
A panel consisting primarily of professional respondents who take everything.
Simply lie about the response rate.

Most cases are a mix of the above and hopefully #6 doesn't ever happen. In many cases email panel managers simply don't report response rates since low numbers don't look attractive and many attribute it to a reflection on panel quality.

So the next time you ask for a response rate, or report one, consider carefully what your metric really reflects. Is a 70% response rate really much better than a 4% response rate?

And for the record, the list above is not exhaustive, just a few extremes. Please add yours to the list.

T-Rex on the streets

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Last fall I was out in Cupertino and came across a T-Rex outside of the Apple headquarters. These car/motorcyle cross vehicles made by Campagna look killer.

The particular models that we saw were 100% electric and sounded beautiful. Apparently performance and handling is impressive with a low stance and instant torque.

Most impressive is that these are a great example of thinking outside of the box. Electric powered cars are a good step forward, but there is a real ceiling that is hit when you are trying to apply it to a 3,000 pound vehicle.

I assume they are relatively expensive but if they could be mass produced, it would be the coolest car on the street!

When a good employee becomes a not-so-good employee

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:50:00 +0000

There is a lot written on what makes a good employee or employer. These tend to focus around attributes such as dedication, professionalism etc etc. What I want to explore is while these are true, what about when a good employee becomes a not-so-good employee? And of course the same goes for an employer.

The employee and employer relationship can be very delicate. It typically starts off well and both are eager to impress each other, whether to provide a good service or provide a good working environment. The reality is that even under the best intentions and best circumstances this relationship can become strained. I am sure that everyone can think of a few situations where this has become the case.

What I am alluding to here is that many employees have trouble identifying when they've been at a job too long, have reached their potential, and instead of growing, they become disgruntled employees over time. I am sure that everyone has been guilty of this at least once in their career. This of course, applies to some industries and environments more than others but for the sake of this discussion, we'll keep it generic.

The employer can be as guilty as well. They may develop a loyal connection to these long time employees who have probably helped through some tough and good times. Though at some point they are unable to provide new opportunities for growth and advancement.

This is a very unfair system that starts to grow on both parts. The employer recognizing the commitment and history of these employees may tend to promote due to loyalty and not on merit. The result is employees who are eventually promoted to a level of incompetency. This can lead to an employees dissatisfaction at a job.

I'm not implying that anyone should be fired in a case like this, but it is important that both the employee and employer are aware of this. In an ideal world an employee can address this with their employer and if an employee is ready to make a change, to support it and help them with new opportunities. The worst thing an employer can do is try and entice them to stay by simply offering them more money. It's a very short term fix only.

Ultimately, don't stay at a job out of comfort and fear of change. It is much better to leave when things are good and you feel that you've accomplished something. Having been on both sides of the employment relationship, I believe very few employees take full benefit of the opportunities that an employer can offer, even outside of their immediate firm.

For employers, I believe that a primary goal is to provide them with an opportunity to do a good job, and build their skills which will help them land and succeed in their next job.

Why we must endure high oil prices

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:50:00 +0000

There is no doubt that the continued rise in oil prices will have impacts across our economy and daily lives for quite some time. A decade ago if you were told that oil was going to surpass $100 per barrel, most people would have responded with "I would sell my car" or "the economy would crumble".

We are feeling an impact in the economy but it has not crumbled (not yet at least), and people are still buying cars. Regardless, while it is painful, we must endure these high prices for very good reasons.

The main reason is that we now have a problem. The oil industry has been in a depressive state for many decades; the result is that little investment and innovation is created. North America has enjoyed a long history of cheap fuel prices (except for a few minor blips) and as a result has developed around this abundance of cheap fuel. Big cars, big highways, inefficient transportation are a natural side effect. Why can't we just produce or refine more fuel? The reason is that when an industry has little innovation or investment in technology, don't expect refineries to be built.

Amidst these high prices also exists an opportunity. This is an opportunity for change and innovation. Hybrid vehicle technology and alternate fuel sources have been around for years. Though while fuel prices have been low, there has been little incentive to work towards an alternative. Today, people are starting to make better choices or at least being aware of choices, hybrid and alternate fuel technologies are on everyones mind and I can ensure you that investment and technology becomes a major focus.

This may surprise some, but we will NEVER run out of oil. That is, as long as prices keep going up (even if the supply really is depleting), this increase in price will drive innovation. Problems and opportunity create innovation. At some point, changes in habits and technology will provide a solution to this problem.

Many nations have endured and prospered with relatively high oil prices, and there are many ways of coping. It may mean a few changes, but change in general is painful. For now we must endure high oil prices and the inconvenience that comes with it.

I have my own ideas on how we can cope, and everyone probably has their own. Though I urge those who merely complain to take some action.

Taking multiple surveys - What's the answer?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:08:00 +0000

A recent post on Research Live reports how Greenfield Online is addressing the issue of panel quality with the development of a DRD system (Duplicate Respondent Detection). It is defined as being designed to stop panelists taking surveys more than once and that it will be applied to ALL projects from now on.

The part that I don't fully understand is the methodology which is described as:

"by assigning a unique ID which remains on their PC, and can detect multiple accounts"

To me this sounds like a cookie. If it is in fact a cookie, first, easy on the technology bragging, and secondly, I doubt this is very effective as I suspect the heavy survey takers are the heavy ad clickers and the ones that clear their cookies multiple times per day. If it's not a cookie, it would be interesting to get a bit more information on exactly what is being installed or stored on the users PC.

The article further quotes:

the new measures will help change the atmosphere in the online research market, which has for years been marred by unanswered questions over transparency and quality.

My 2 cents on this matter is that the answer lies in this very statement. For many years panels have been run providing little transparency on methodology and quality. It is easy to find and join a panel that will send me 2 - 4 surveys per day. This immediately raises questions of quality. While all sample sources have their deficiencies and challenges, these can only be addressed and accounted for if the providers abide by this call to transparency.

The core problem which is being ignored, is that these mega panels are littered with professional respondents. It will be interesting to see whether attempts to remove these will merely result in mega-panels turning into micro panels of non-responsive members.

Many still consider RDD (random digit dialing) as the true form of survey recruitment despite it's own issues. Though this methodology has not translated well to the web - not yet at least.

Pete Comley is quoted summing it up nicely:

"Pete Comley – of the UK’s Virtual Surveys – who recently compared reliance on panels to reliance on dwindling fossil fuel reserves, welcomed the quality initiatives but said industry-wide standards, rather than separate initiatives, are needed."

. . . and I'm hoping someone can provide further insight into these issues . . . ?

Crowd Science launched

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:08:00 +0000

Crowd Science was launched to the public today after months in stealth. The site is up and already have a number of publishers registering. The day started off with a few mentions on TechCrunch, Mashable and Techeme. In all, a great start.

Evolution of GPS

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:04:00 +0000

Mark Evans talks about the mainstream-ification of GPS in his recent post. As noted, GPS technology has been around for 30+ years but it is only until the past couple of years that it's really started catching on and becoming a mainstream technology.

My first GPS experience was in the mid 90's when I was working for a GIS (Geographic Information System) software company. It has been quite interesting watching this industry grow and going from being a novelty where people would say "so what can you do with it?" to them saying "let me show you the directions on my GPS".

So what has been the catalyst for this industry. I firmly believe it is due to data availability on a couple fronts. Firstly, up until 2006 civilian GPS suffered from a built in selective availability (SA) feature. With the systems origins in the military, a random error was introduced into the system for apparently security purposes. This meant that for example anywhere in the US you'd have an error margin of about 10m in any direction.

In 2006 this was disabled (or set to 0) so finally it was possible that a $200 device can pinpoint you down the center of a street. Prior, it was difficult to explain to a user why the device was placing us in the middle of a field when we were standing in our backyard.

The second and probably as important catalyst to the growth of this industry is general data availability. Introduce MapQuest, Google Maps and numerous other available data sources, consumers can now see where they are on a map.

Map data is expensive - very expensive to collect and maintain. Thus there was a period throughout the industry where any licensing of data was extremely expensive as producers were very protective of their data. Canada was particularly bad in having a cost recovery attitude to data and the US (starting with the USGS) was a pioneer in making data available to the public.

One of my greatest frustrations when working within the Geo industry was the lack of data. I am a firm believer that providing data and making data accessible at a very reasonable cost has much greater benefit. Data on it's own is quite dull until you can wrap it into some application. Consumers and users in general relate to data through an application. But the moment you restrict access to data, building an application to access it will be hindered as well. The end result, no data and no applications for consumers.

Like I said, my first GPS experience was almost 15 years ago though my parents got excited about geo-technology and map data when they downloaded Google Earth. Since then they purchased a GPS unit for their car and tell all their friends about it.

This same concept applies to any other data intensive industries including web metrics. Right now we are in a transition stage. Most trusted web analytics are buried in corporations taking a cost recovery approach though with a number of initiatives, there is a trend to opening up and making much more data available to users.

The problem with surveys

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Surveys are broken. It's a bold statement but I'm not sure if it's far off from being true. Surveys are broken in part due to a lack of innovation in the industry. Market research and the survey related industries suffer from a lack of technical innovation and are generally engineering poor.

I would stand to argue that surveys have changed little over the past 50 years. Sure technology has made it somewhat easier and less expensive but let's take a look at a few changes in the survey as we know it.

Taking a look at some traditional survey techniques, we can start with the mall survey. The premise is that if you intercept people where they conduct a primary activity (shopping) that you'd get a valid sampling population. The basic survey mechanism involved an individual holding a clipboard to ask the unsuspecting shopper as they pass by if they would like to participate in a survey. If they said yes, the interviewer would ask a few basic screening question and if successful, conduct the interview based on a paper survey with question and logic notes. This method is slow, error prone, time consuming and expensive, though still a valid method.

Telephone polling changed the industry since the adoption of the telephone was near 100% in some areas. Using random digit dialing (RDD) a truer random sampling of individuals could be done and all you needed was a room full of phones and interviewers. Today this sector of the industry is facing many challenges due to do-not-call lists and the rise of cell phone use. Still the survey hasn't changed much. In this case the survey was still mostly the same in either paper format or CATI.

The CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interview) system added great efficiency to the telephone interviewer. Essentially a survey would be programmed and the interviewer would read off of a computer screen. This system supported basic survey logic (conditional skips) and computerized data collection.

Welcome the Internet and the CATI or paper survey can now be formatted in HTML and presented to an individual online with checkboxes, radio buttons, text boxes - all with logic, nice formatting and drastic cost savings.

Up until this point, the major breakthrough has been in the efficiency of deploying surveys. Online technologies drove the cost of implementing a survey to near commodity levels so to reach 500 or 1,000 individuals become very cost effective.

Though my real disappointment has been that the basic survey has not changed. The paper survey used by the mall or phone interviewer really hasn't changed much when it went live on the Internet. The effect has largely been a direct translation of the paper survey to the web browser screen.

Surveys or market research in general has a fear of change. Any change in implementation creates fear and concern in validity of data. This fear has stifled innovation in methodologies and implementation. Why not challenge the boring typical linear survey? Sure there are those who are creating surveys with silly flash to flip pages or select items off of a shelf.

In my opinion the value or advantage of doing research online is being drastically under utilized. Take for example email panels. Instead of being innovative, everyone is still trying to build these massive 1,000,000+ email panels. I won't go on my feeling about panels, that's for another time.

Though there is some potential of advancement. Behavioral research is getting a fair bit of attention, and a few companies like Brain Juicer, UThink, comScore Peanut Labs and HotSpex are getting some recognition for doing innovative things.

Online research is a sector that has been growing incredibly fast and is quite healthy. Though, due to this lack of innovation there are many concerns in it's direction. Some major firms are even starting to pull away from using online research due to the rise of professional survey takers, poor methodologies, weak panels and questionable sampling techniques.

Nearly 10 years ago, we were all trying to justify online research to clients. Today just about everyone is online because it's the place to be. The next generation of research is not far around the corner. It really only takes a little innovation to lead to big changes.

Is Mozilla to enter the metrics game?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:40:00 +0000

There is a lot of activity in the realm of web analytics with the likes of Compete, Hitwise, comScore, Alexa, and Quantcast. The latest announcement with Mozilla potentially entering this game can make things interesting.

Apparently Mozilla is working on an internal project simply called "Data" where they are proposing to invite the 170 million FireFox users to opt-in to anonymous data collection. Up take would only need to be a small fraction of the 170 million and the worldwide distribution is even more impressive.

One of the first criticisms that everyone will hear is that FireFox users are different from IE, Opera and other users. Thanks to comScore, this difference has already been explored in their Firefox vs. Internet Explorer post. Based on the study findings, a greater proportion of users are male, are more likely to have a household income of over $75,000, and younger than the average internet user.

These known differences are easily accounted for and further, are key demographics that are hard to reach. I would argue this to be a benefit and not a criticism.

Back to what I've been saying for quite some time, web metrics require a lot of heavy lifting, particularly for companies who take the brute force approach. What is interesting and I believe can really change the landscape of web analytics is that this would be the 'other' thing that a company Mozilla can do by leveraging what they already do well. The other analytics companies are reliant on providing some value proposition to users. The problem here is that perceived value changes frequently so keeping value at a minimum level is a constant challenge.

Mozilla has the benefit of already having a great and loyal community and I wouldn't be surprised if the uptake would be quite decent.

So for everyone else in the game, things will only get tougher.

Another great reason for being part of a start-up

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:33:00 +0000

It's tough and anyone who's done it will surely agree. It's tough enough that if it wasn't largely driven by the passion of it's founders, employees and even external investors (if you've been fortunate enough), the chances for success are very limited.

Max Kalehoff has a great post on Why Passion Matters in a hyper-competitive market and outlines a few key places in business that are sensitive to passion:

In my experience, there are a few places in business especially sensitive to passion:
Listening and understanding your customers and the market.
Innovating based on your market insight and intuition.
Building your product with quality and speed.
Ensuring the highest aesthetic and usability.
Refining your product over and over and over again, until it’s better and better and better.
Paying attention to all the details and signals that comprise the experience.
Inspiring your employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders.
Engaging and collaborating with customers.
Fixing things quickly when they go wrong - and then making them far better.
Using your product yourself and recommending it to friends because you truly believe it’s the best.
Businesses with passion tend to excel in these areas, while businesses that don’t tend to just get by or break. I know - this is all obvious. But the irony is that most businesses and brands I encounter come up short.

Maybe this is part of the reason why start-ups are so supportive of each other. When you meet someone passionate about that they are doing, you naturally support them. Are you passionate about what you do?

A great reason for being part of a start-up

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:45:00 +0000

A quote by Dick Costolo that rings very true and close to home. One of the great reasons for being part of a start-up.

"In the beginning, you are the most limited in terms of resources but the least limited in terms of range of motion. It's easier to innovate and change directions in the early days, but it's harder to do nine things at once. This is probably the founding team's favorite part of the lifecycle of the company. Everything is possible, and you can really focus on building the most awesome product/service possible"

Greatest product of all time . . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:58:00 +0000

R2-D2 DVD Projector has to be the coolest product of all time. Be sure to watch the entire clip . . .

LinkedIn to start market research polling

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Tom Anderson talks about how Facebook and Linkedin are entering the market research game. Linkedin seems to be the soon-to-be latest entry, though as Tom points out polling is not robust enough to provide real consumer insights.

Polls are the logical entry for any social network due to their simplicity to implement. Further, any more thorough true market research provides a much higher level of maintenance and sales cycle between the audience/respondent and research professional. This is in part due to the historical high use of incentives for market research and as a result, becomes an administrative nightmare.

Polls are single questions, no logic, and little burden for the respondent - thus no real value proposition is needed. I would argue that if you get people at the right time, there is an incentive for respondents to provide insights beyond a simple poll. We just need to get outside of the 'email panel' or 'registrant' way of thinking. More to come on this . . .

The flip review

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:08:00 +0000

Mark Evans had a great post about simplicity and technology highlighting the success of the flip no-frills video recorder. As a result I set out to hunt one down and unfortunately as far as I can tell, they are not yet available in Canada. Thus I finally got one special delivery via carry-on from California.

What impressed me most about this little device is that it captured 13% of the camcorder market last year. I had also recently purchased a Canon SD750 point-and-shoot camera and was heading out to the west coast so I thought it would be a good time to give these two a bit of a run.

The flip I must admit is a great little device. Video quality is decent for it's size and it is durable. I even managed to drop it and have it roll under the car without a scratch or problem. It is small, handy and quick to pull out and shoot a few seconds. Though my favorite piece of convenience is the built in USB plug. No worrying about adapters or wires - simply plug it into your computer and go.

To be realistic, the flip is not designed to replace your HD camcorder so don't think about capturing a wedding video with it. Though it was a blast for the kids at a recent wedding to capture some funny dance floor antics. The intention is a quick point, shoot and share approach, whether you email or post to YouTube or Flickr.

Now the reason that I mentioned the Canon SD750 above is because these simple little cameras have come a long way in the last few years and have dramatically dropped in price. The SD750 with a 2GB card is only about $50 more than the flip, so for the price point I think they are a worthwhile mention.

The Canon SD750 while able to take decent still pictures at 7+ megapixels (not sure what the need is for 10 megapixels yet for a point and shoot), they have improved dramatically in their ability to capture short video. With a decent and inexpensive memory card (2GB to 4GB) you can capture an easy hour of video which is similar to the flip. Video quality is comparable though you get a much nicer screen on the Canon.

Point and shoot digital cameras have been quite successful for their simplicity and for the same reason the flip will and has been quite successful. For my purposes for quick video shots I still prefer the flip for it's durability and is a great family device particularly if kids are to be using it. For example, it took 15 minutes for the kids to drop the Canon and snap the lens cover off (3 weeks to get repaired).

So in all, the flip is a great complimentary device to your P&S, SLR, and HD Camcorder if you set the right expectations for it.

Great camera phone pics

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:22:00 +0000

A great example on Digital Photography School of 10 great Cameraphone photographs that Rock. It's hard to believe that some of these came from a camera phone.

Alexa finally tries to catch up

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:08:00 +0000

Alexa recently announced their new rankings system. This is an overhaul long in the waiting. When Alexa came on the scene it quickly became a staple reference measure though as other players started to emerge, they were quick to point out why they were better than Alexa - primarily by stating that toolbar users are not representative.

Alexa's metrics were initially compiled from users of their toolbar and with this update they are finally addressing this.

In recent months we've heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!
We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.

It will be interesting to watch people and competitors compare and comment on the newly update measures. Further, will the new metrics start to align closer with Compete, comScore or Quantcast?

The tricky thing with the notion of 'free' online metrics is that like many free services, some level of inaccuracy is generally acceptable; maybe this is why Alexa ratings have long been referenced though questionable.

As these 'free' metrics start becoming more and more sophisticated, at what point are their limitation considered ok? This poses a particular challenge to the high end and expensive analytics providers.

When a Hybrid is not very impressive

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:19:00 +0000

General Motors seems to be having some success with it's revamped Malibu. It is well designed, a definite improvement and hopefully will be a turning point for the company. Though where I must put up my hand and say wait is when you read more about the Hybrid version.

I'm all for Hybrid technology but am yet to be impressed. The hybrid Malibu in my opinion is just strategic marketing and for those who buy it, merely a fashion statement. Referring to fuel consumption ratings, you can easily compare vehicles by model. In the case of the Malibu the difference between the standard 2.4L gasoline engine and the 2.4L hybrid is about 3 miles per gallon. In Canadian terms the standard 2.4L engine would consume 9.6/6.5 liters of fuel per 100 km travelled (city/hwy); whereas, the hybrid consumes 8.5/6.2L /100 km.

To bring this into perspective in terms of economics, the typical driver would save approximately $126 in fuel per year consuming about 140 liters less. All this for a premium of about $4,000 for the hybrid version over the standard.

The introduction of hybrid models is very important but while in this case the impact and savings can be argued to be negligible, it is providing options and awareness for consumers. I've always argued that fuel is still way to cheap to have hybrids make a real impact and at the same time, I am sure that saving 140 liters of fuel can be done with a lot less effort and expense than what it took to engineer, build, and market a hybrid version - and not at a cost of $4,000 to the consumer.

All I ask is that if you are considering a hybrid vehicle that you are aware of the true savings and costs, and that it is not being done merely for fashion or status.

iOptOut.ca - will you?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:10:00 +0000

Michael Geist recently launched iOptOut.ca due to his frustrations with Canada's do-not-call-list. The claim is that in it's first week, there have been over 10,000 registrants.

Basically, you can create your personal do not call list by selecting from a number of organizations ranging from polling companies, airlines, retail, newspapers, political parties, charities, banking, finance and insurance institutions.

How does it work is best explained in their FAQ:

OptOut contains a database of organizations, all of which are exempted under the current law. When you register with iOptOut you create a personal list of organizations that you wish to opt-out from further marketing. You provide your name, telephone number(s) and email address(es) and we send a message to each organization, on your behalf, asking that they remove you from their active marketing or polling lists. You could send a message to each organization yourself individually, but there are hundreds and the appropriate contact information is often difficult to obtain. iOptOut allows you to do this in bulk, opting out of dozens of organizations with a few clicks.

This is an aggressive initiative which will surely get a fair bit of press. There are a few concerns though. For one, organizations listed have no formal agreement with iOptOut.ca, though they are obliged to comply with do-not-call requests by Canadian law.

Oddly enough, the greatest concern is that there is no validation process during registration. This means that the system could potentially be gamed by users registering under different email accounts (i.e. Hotmail) and submit multiple phone numbers that do not belong to an individual.

There probably isn't much risk as the intentions of such gaming of the system only has potential harm to the organizations, but still, one of the primary methods to safe guard against gaming of a system is through a basic verification system - email or other. I would have thought that a service based on privacy would at least implement this level of safe-guard for credibility.

So I wonder if organizations receiving thousands of do-not-call requests from iOptOut.ca will launch a campaign to question the validity of each request?

Pirating on the rise??

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Neto) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:52:00 +0000

There appears to be a rise in activity by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The situation has become serious enough that merchant vessels have been warned to be weary of boats asking for assistance under the traditional law of the sea. In a most recent case last month, a ship was released after a $700,000 ransom was paid.

While pirates have been sensationalized by hollywood, it is apparent that not far away, it is a very serious issue.