Maura Welch on Social Media

The power of data visualization

There are 7 billion humans on earth and the Internet contains more than 1 billion Terabytes.

Data? We've got that. We're drowning in it. 

But how to grok it?  How to draw out key insights for what is happening between, among and individually to 7 billion humans, and hopefully, well, make the world a better place?

We need maps. Lots of maps.

Here are a few cartographers that show how powerful it is when we look at data visually...

David McCandless
 

Hans Rosling "Let my dataset change your mindset"

 

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And the word of the year is...

Unfriend

The Oxford English dictionary has gone all facebook like the rest of us.

Recent uses of the word I have heard in coversation:
 

"It was so hard! I mean, it was my first unfriending."

"Don't worry. If they really bug you, you can just unfriend them."

Via PSFK and the all-powerful OED

Facebook good. Twitter bad.

...for your brain, that is. Social games and strategy games are thinking activities and good for your brain. Texting, Twitter, etc. are interrupt activities and mess up your brain action.

This via Raph Koster's blog:

Dr. Tracy Alloway of Scotland’s University of Stirling, says her study shows using Facebook stretches our “working memory” our short-term or recent memory, while Twitter, YouTube and text messages tend to weaken it.

Alloway studies working memory and has developed a training program to increase the performance of children – ages 11 to 14 – who are slow learners. She found:

• Keeping up-to-date with Facebook improved the children’s IQ scores
• Playing video games – especially those that require planning and strategy – and Sudoku also were beneficial
• Using Twitter, YouTube and text messaging does not engage enough of the brain to be helpful, and actually reduce attention span.

Where we're headed

I've been reading Fred Wilson's blog for a long time. He always provides intelligent, incisive observations and ideas.

He recently gave a talk at Google about why the internet is disruptive, what it's disrupting and where we are likely headed from here. Worth contemplating. Here is the slide show:

Disruption - Final Version

View more presentations from fredwilson.

Managing Twitter

This is my new favorite thing to try. I'll let you know what I think.

Did you know?

Kill the press release

I'm up late tonight working on a press release that's not a press release. It's a "social media release." Sure I wish I was sleeping. But it could be worse. I could be working on a press release.

A social media release recognizes that the web has changed the game and journalists don't want to get a heavily canned press release that's dense with run on sentences like this one that contain a million bits of jargon all awkwardly architected in language that pushes the bounds of grammar and often never seems to get to the freaking point already.

When I was writing for the Globe, the releases I received largely went unread. The pitches I really payed attention to were very short interesting emails. But even then, if they didn't contain a link directly to more info, I just passed them by.

Social media releases have a headline, a short summary and then bulleted lists below that contain key facts, approved quotes, and links to media (blog, site, video, image, etc.).

Mark Glaser has a nice piece on the current state of the social media release.

Help to kill the press release!

Logo angst & evolution

Source: Neatorama via TechCrunch

Ever been a part of the process of designing a company logo? It's an oddly fascinating nightmare.

For it to be fascinating, you have to be intrigued by the sociological and existential aspects of life. Because that's what logo creation brings out in people. A logo, when it's right, crystallizes something about its subject. It's not about the company itself. It's about the idea of the company.

And that's the nightmare - everyone has a different idea of the idea.

If creating a logo in the first place creates that much angst, re-creating a logo is, well, worse.

Neatorama does a great historical retrospective of the evolution of some familiar logos over time. Great logo and company trivia, such as how Apple is to Isaac Newton as Nokia is to a fish.