I know this video is old, but I remembered today how angery it made me. This is me calling it out.

I’m a data nerd and as much as I hate to admit it the first thing that happens when I see a video like this I get pulled into the numbers. I immediately begin to back track and comprehend how they came upon the random slew of statistics.

Then inevitably I get angry and begin to realize that these statistics are either immeasurable of completely ridiculous. Take from the piece above. “India has more honors kids than America has kids.” How can you measure that? Does the US or India have a way to measure honors kids? And if they do does there definition of an honors student equal the same thing? And as my mind begins to spin off into a tizzy of possible measurement scenarios, I realize the slow drip quicksand has caught me-out of context data vomit.

It’s hard not to fall into the trap; our society routinely practices data bulimia. We choke down stakes of facts and figures and just regurgitate them out often with little planning. It hard not to with all the new ways to collect data; even the most useless facts seem alluring. Did you know that Mosquito’s are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color?

But numbers are useless without a well framed purposed and without context statistics are not actionable. For example, let’s say Fred’s Fish Bar does a survey of customers and finds delivery to be the least satisfactory service in the restaurant. They spend a large portion of their next quarters budget revamping the delivery service only to see no change in results.

This is the set up for the classic contextual faux pas. Digging deeper into the data find that while delivery WAS the lowest scoring service, it was only marginally lower. Also, the survey was only administered to people who visited the restaurant for a sit down dinner-those who may not find as much value in delivery. Also, they find that while family dinning wasn’t the least satisfactory service, it was significantly lower among women. Perhaps the investment would have been wiser spent creating a family friendly perception of the restaurant targeted at women. But, who knows because this is all hypothetical- ie I made it all up.

But the issues addressed in the fantasy example all too easily plague real world businesses. How do you get data that isn’t just compelling, but actionable? It’s simple ,build a frame work. Take time to invest thought into the following 3 questions:

1. What are you looking to measure, and why?
2. What do you plan to do with results of your research?
3. Can this metric be backed up by any additional data?

I quite enjoy when good debate leads to new thought. Just so happens that was the result of this evening’s Social Media Club NYC event. Midway through the meeting, the room was a buzz with conversation about major corporations’ success with social media or lack there of. Soon, what started out as a conversation recognizing the common pitfalls larger companies find themselves stuck in, became an all out bashing session. People were gnashing their teeth and jumping on tables shaking their fists at each other. One person even brought out a bow staff just in case his fist waving failed to get his point across.

Okay, I exaggerated. A little. But there was some yelling and some harsh words being said. In the thick of it, it hit me. I felt bad for these large corporations.Never have I felt more left of center than in that moment. I’ve always be a perpetual advocate of the underdog, a product of what I like to call”picked last for every team in high school” syndrome. Now my brain was overflowing with thoughts that led to sympathy for these companies and more importantly the people in charge of their Social Media. I feel that if the walls of America’s fortune 500 companies could speak openly about their social media programs, this is along the lines of what they would say:

“Courtney Treebird from Muskingum, AL I understand your pots arrived broken. I saw your tweet about. I also saw that you wrote a blog about it. I know your friend Sherri also wrote about your pots and about a similar problem she had with our brand. I know you then both joined a group on facebook called “I hate brand X.” I want you to know I saw ALL of this. I even told my boss Sam, who forwarded me to Mike who’s in charge of customer satisfaction. Mike referred my to Allison who manages shipping, who told me this was out of her hands and referred me back to Mike. Mike then sent me to Alex who’s the head of digital marketing. She said that she thought our company had someone in charge of requests like yours. A week later she wrote me an email referring me to reach out to myself for help. As you can see, Courtney, I’ve tried to resolve your issues. I’ve tried to reach out to people and make you feel more satisfied with our product. I have. We want you to be satisfied. The problem is, my company is just not quite sure who’s in charge of meeting your needs.”

Classic social media success stories like Jetblue & Zappos have it easy. They’re newer companies and have been able to build customer centrality into their sales model from the get go. Older companies do not have the same advantage and they struggle to bring the same level of service to their customers because of it. To compete they must retrofit a modern customer centric model onto internal working system that just doesn’t cooperate with that way of thinking. So what you are left with is a bunch of people who think service and communication with consumers is important, but no clear leader or process to ensure actual customer needs are met. Even when there is a defined leader in charge of meeting customer needs, that person is not likely to have the power necessary to demand the change needed to meet disgruntled customers needs’. So, what you’re left with is a whole lot of mess.

The only way these companies will be able to overcome this mountain of an issue is to build internal communication that mirrors their outward goal. How do they do this? There’s no simple or easy answer. I suppose it’s what makes their situation even more difficult.

Never did I expect I would find the urge to stand up and fight for the big dogs, but today I did. I ask you to give the big corporations a little bit of a break when is comes to social media. They’re still figuring out how to make it work. They want to catch up. They’re going to make mistakes. The important thing is they are trying and that deserves some credit.

Unless you live under a rock (AKA not on twitter) or a 65+ grandparent who lives by the beach while spending any possible inheritance they might have on chotskies made of seashells, you’ve heard the announcement about Facebook introducing “@replies” to their site in the next several weeks. This has caused panic. No, I’m not kidding. No, I’m not making it up.  Mashable’s article on it over had 3,000s tweets on the subject and twitter power users are calling Facebook a “copycat”, “cluttered”, and the “great blue devil” ( I quite like the last one).

Taking all this into account i really think everybody just needs to calm down.  Literally I feel like today might have been the Twitter communities “Chicken Little” moment. OMG Twitter is crashing. Our whole universe is fading away. We’re all going to die!!! Really people, you just got hit in the eye with a pebble and freaked out over nothing.

And why am I so sure I am right on this? Well we’re in business, we all love executive summaries. I’ll give you three reasons:

1. Twitter didn’t invent @replies. Really credit for this  came from forums users and bloggers, who carried it over with them when they started using twitter. That means facebook isn’t copying twitter. It’s copying some guy who thought he’d be nerd chic and pull out some awesome by slapping down an @ sign on a blog to call someone out.  Who he is? I don’t know. That’s why they invented google.

2. Just because something has a cup holder doesn’t make it a car. Facebook adding @replies does not automatically make it a twitter substitute.  It’s adding one feature guys. And yeah you can reply to peoples wall comment on FB now, but you can also do that on all sort of other sites…So who cares?  If facebook were to strip down and focus solely on status updates, limit the number of characters, and make it possible to have one way relations (IE follow/follower paradox) then maybe I’d be a bit worried. Right now. I just don’t see where the fear is coming from.

3. @replies are going to make Facebook an even bigger Hot Mess. Here’s a point we probably can agree on:  facebook is a hunka hunka burning mess. There’s an excessive amount of crap and it’s like an information overload just visiting the site.  Facebook’s  that girl in seventh grade who let make-up explode all over her face before coming to school. Key insight she never learned–> less is more kids.

At the end of the day, I think this is a really good thing. Facebook adding @replies is creating a consistent form of communication. The social world is beginning to create some standard etiquette across sites. You should be excited, the internet is growing up.

Below is a list of the top 10 geek love songs. The focus of the list is original content, so you won’t find any parodies below (even though there are some great ones). If you feel I missed something incredible please leave a comment. I want to see it just as much as you wish I had already seen it

Geeks of the world- Enjoy!

1. Coder Girl- A love song devoted to all the female programmer in the world.

“It’ more than just technolust”.

2. Even Hitler had a Girlfriend- Understanding just how hard it is to find some geek lovin’

“The odds are pretty good, but the goods are pretty odd”

3. She Blinded Me With Science- Because lets be honest, all you need is some good chemistry

“Science!”

4. Computer Camp Love- The Band’s name is DataRock need I say any more? I think not.

“Zedulus lepedus you must know she’s a genius”

5. Code Monkey- This is a music video about the life of the common  code monkey and his love for the receptionist

“Code monkey like you”

6. Geek Love- What’s it’s like to love a geek.

“The first boy I’ve known to get all a’s and appear in all my highschool plays”

7. U+Me=Us (calculus)- This might be the best use of calculus today.

” When it comes to cosigns I know a thing or two”

8. Hail to the Geek- The ultimate song about loving yourself as a geek

“when you end up pumping gas, fill ‘er up and kiss my….”

9. Geeks in Love- A nice animation paired wish a catchy beat about being geeks in love

“when they see us holding hands they wish they were geeks in love”

10. Always and forever- Kip proclaims shis love for technology and lafawnduh with this little ditty from Napoleon Dynamite

“I love technology, always and forever”

So lately I’ve been seeing a slew of articles floating around the twittersphere about whether or not teens tweet. Here are just  few of the many:
Do teens hate Twitter?, Teens don’t tweet… or do they?, Why Teens Don’t Tweet, Are teens the driving force behind Twitter?, & Why Do Teens Shun Twitter?

Now I could go on and on about my personal opinions on who I think is right, but that’s not what this entry is all about.  From all the chatter around these articles it obvious that the general population is unaware of how much bias there is in survey data collection. In fact if you can find me a completely unbiased survey- I will buy you a pony. Yes, I will buy you a brand new pony.  All. For. You.

To understand why it’s impossible to prevent some type of skewed result, I probably should explain what types of things create measurement bias & affect survey results. For example,  a user can be feel pressured the give the response the surveyor wants to hear, that’s a response bias.  Additionally, many  surveys rely  only on the population that chooses to respond, which leads to voluntary bias & sometimes because certain groups of people choose not to respond it leads to under coverage bias.  Plus all those people who choose not to respond to the survey can create a non-response bias. If you want a more in-depth look at these bias..  click here

Now back to the whole teens twittering debacle. Why are so many of these studies have conflicting results? Well, it’s that bias beast I just outlined. Since you can’t force anyone to take a survey and it’s difficult to create a representative sample of the Internet population, it’s likely one or more of the previously mentioned bias are dramatically impacting the results in each survey. So in some case the results show teens are twittering.  In other it shows they’re not. And in some there’s not clear results. It doesn’t matter how big the name is of the company who preformed the study, there’’s likely to be some type of flaw to point out.  Why do you think Neilsen’s in such hot water for how they measure TV? It’s the harsh realities of survey measurement.

So at the end of the day until companies find a method other than self report to determine a twitterer’s age, you’re going to have to take everything you read with a grain of salt.  It’s the facts of life,  and the facts of survey data.

Let’s face it. I work in a a career that is predominately run by men. Sure, there are a good number of women that work in technology-related careers, but how many CTOs do you know that are women? The number is small. I wanted to add “surprisingly” to that  small, but I couldn’t. It’s an obvious fact. Women just aren’t as visible in this scene.  So, how do we change that?  We can’t bribe girls to take the career. If they’re driven by money they’ll probably rather marry a rich man who’s on his death bed, then take advanced science courses. Being serious, the logical solution is making technology appealing to girls at a young age, so that they will be encouraged to pursue a career in it later in life.

According to a study done by the AAUW, i stereotypes about appropriate careers for girls, a lack of female role models and the absence of basic career information dampened girls’ interest in technology-related careers. (1998) So how do we remedy this? One women is coming forward with a rather interesting solution.

Diana Eng a self proclaimed fashion geek, and former project runway contestant, has come up with a pretty remarkable way to blend the typical girl infused world of fashion with the futuristic world of technology. Enter fairytalefashion.org.

“Fairytale Fashion is a program that combines fairytales and fashion to introduce young girls to technology.  Girls will be asked to make-believe they are fashion designers in a fairytale and imagine what magical fashions they would create. These may be fashions that change color, transform, have blooming flowers and moving patterns. The magical fashion design ideas will be evaluated and created in real life using technology such as muscle wire, inflatables, thermochromatic ink, microcontrollers, conductive thread and 3-d printing. The working fairytale fashions and the technology behind them will be documented on the FairytaleFashion.com website to show girls how technology can be used to make make-believe a reality. “

I had the pleasure of attending the launch of the program where the first of such “fairytale designs” was previewed. The dress below is much cooler than it looks, as I failed to capture much of its magic with my camera lens. The bodice is littered with flashing lights, the bottom of the dress inflates ( with no power cord dragging!), and the “cape” is headed up by large bulbous LED finishings. It was literally a fairytale come true to the 3, 11 year old girls that designed it.

If you have a daughter who would love to have their fairytale fashion become reality you can submit their idea to Diana.She will be selecting several girls to have their own fashion impossibilities become reality with the help of modern advanced technology.

Today I was bumbling through my new followers for the day on twitter and attempting to return the favor to those who appeared not  to be spammers. I noted to myself that my follwers  list was inundated with screenames such as   “sexxyblond4fun” , “brtnyffedvids”  & “cheapslutontwitter”.  Each was accompanied with an equally as  scandalous avatar of a girl giving her best “i’m sooo naughty ” face.  After seeing bikini after bikini as I cleaned out my account,  it hit me.  Spammers are sexist.

How come I don’t have any spammers following me with names like “nakedbradpitt” or “sexyboytoy”.  Why isn’t my followers list filled with attractive men with their shirts off and wearing a “come hither” look? If men get to look at hot,  sassy & supposedly desperate for clicks women such as this,   I want the same.

I want abs. I want oiled pecks. I want boyish looks. I want no shirts. Is that too much to ask?  Heck, I might even be persuaded to click one of those spam links. I mean Brad Pitt can make me do things I would, in normal life,  never ever do.

Call me shallow, but every girl I know wouldn’t mind if an attractive man followed them around even if it was virtually. The way I see it,  you spammers are really ignoring us females.  You’s be suprised what a hot male avatar might be able to get us to do.

Sometimes when I read Broadway twitter streams I feel like I am watching an episode of MTV’s My Super Sweet 16. Yes, this sounds ludicrous, but let me explain.

For those of you not familiar with the show, it is built around a bratty child and the days that lead up to their extravaganza of a birthday party. Mainly it consists of watching teenagers kiss up as much as possible to world’s most spoiled child so that they may go to the magical fiesta extreme that is the celebration of Miss Nasty Pants’ 16th birthday. But here is the catch, at the end of every episode we watch as Miss Diva loses all her friends as soon as the party is over. Yes, attendees might still say hi in the hallways, but they will no longer kiss Miss Prissy Pants’ butt.

I know, you’re scratching your head asking, “How does this show relate to Broadway & twitter?”

Recently there has been a surge of Broadway shows & etc raffling off tickets & merchandise via twitter. Strategically, I am guessing they think this will build their following & social media presence. It is helping them gain followers. But when they aren’t willing to give out free tickets anymore for answering silly trivia or being the nth person to RT them, will people be as eager to support the show virally? Probably not. Sure, people won’t stop following them on twitter, but they will stop paying them the same type of attention they did when free gifts were in the mix. Like the sweet sixteener, they become just another casual “hey” in the hallways.

Some would argue that the trick is just to offer tickets consistently. But, what good does that really do? If you have to persuade people to like you, then they don’t really like you. Also, by raffling tickets to your followers, there’s a good chance that someone who would have purchased a ticket, had there not been a raffle, would win. If that happens, the show’s losses are double. First their out the price of the ticket they raffled. Second their out the price of the ticket their follower would have purchased. Overtime, if a follower can only win once, the shows profitability and the lure to attentively follow are less. Law of diminishing returns anyone?

What these shows are failing to realize is that an experience is more than just a product, it’s a memory. Give aways are focusing on the tangible rather then promoting the wonderful experience live theater offers. I don’t blame theater companies for missing the mark. It’s hard to make an experience on a world class stage translate into a 140 characters 10 times a day. But, it is possible.

While no show on Broadway twitter account, and for that matter no theater related one, is doing everything correct (or nearly correct), I would like to highlight a shows that is trying to think outside the box & gain followers without bribing users with the chance at free tickets. (Disclaimer: this show still has quite a way to go before mastering the art of experiential marketing on twitter.)

Rock of Ages (@RockOfAges) attempts to recreate the tone of show via their tweets. The majority of their communications are 80’s themed and carry the same cocky tone as the show’s narrator, Lonny. Though this tone is at times inconsistent it does help share the feeling of the play. I like how it presents itself as addition rather than replacement (such as in N2N’s case) for the show.

At the end of the day, you gain loyal followers by being germane. Relevancy can’t be purchased, it can only be earned. While shows on the great white way are trying to make a splash with social media, they are lacking this crucial element.

In Conclusion 2 thoughts:

1. No one will buy what they can get for free.
2. You can’t buy love, but you can buy temporary affection.