People aren't irrational only when buying on eBay. We are pretty far away from being rational even when thinking about prices. A recent paper in the Journal of Consumer Research indicates that we tend to act as the lower digits were farther apart than higher ones.
"Students who saw ads showing a $233 skate marked down to $222 thought
they were getting a larger discount than did students who saw a $199
skate marked down to $188, even though the opposite was true. The first
group of students also rated themselves about 20 percent more likely to
buy the skates than did the others."
We aren't as clever as we tend to believe. Irrationality is very important when observing and analyzing human behavior. It also makes advertising kind of difficult as it is hard to predict, control and influence irrational behavior.
You don't need to spend lots of time og have a talent to write your blog. Blogdrone it is a service that makes it for you. All you have to do is to type a phrase and the program will generate a post for you.
Now it is Facebook, I was invited to join. Of course I did it, as I was curious about recent hype around it. I have send some invitations to make some friends there (sorry guys for bothering you), so I didn't feel too lonly and could look around what other's use Facebook for. When I was browsing I got a strange feeling of being overwhelmed. I thought about all those available applications, the amount of informations, groups, contacts, blogs ... Isn't it too much? And this morning I read a comment by Sobleizer to a post Jason Calacanis being fed up with Facebook:
"I’ve been on Facebook, what, about six weeks? I have more than 4,000
friends [...]"
Come on - 4.000 friends?! How on earth can you call 4.000 people for your friends.
Robin Dunbar proposed in 1990s 150 to be the maximum number of people with whom any of us can maintain a social relationship; maintain meaning: hold in mind, have feelings for, keep track of. Others claim it is only 70. This is simply the physical limit our brains have. There is the huge gap between 150 and 4.000, and our brains couldn't change within such a short time. Evolution takes centuries, as it happens vertically - from generation to generation. Besides our brains were developed 250.000 years ago! There were no computers at that time. What happened then that we have so many "friends" (I'd rather call them contacts) and claim to be able to hande it? There is defenitely huge social value of having lots of "friends", it is the sign of our popularity, and that's what we hunger for - being appreciated. Social media, all LinkedIn, Facebooks, twitters, and so on, enabled us to become really popular in the style of old mass media stars. I think the heavy social media users don't storage all their cotacts in their heads, they use simply social media as virtual storage space. Everytime they need to fullfil any need, they look up in their social life hard drive and choose the person that it is the best for it. The friends/contacts are being activated physically when needed. It is smart, but still overwhelming for me. I guess I will take Facebook with small steps.
I was just thinking about the humans' susceptibility to emulation of social behavior. The easiest experiment is at the zebra crossing. Red light is on (make sure first there is not traffic and any possible danger near you), you begin to go over to the other side, people will always follow you. It is very simple experiment, but it shows that we act instinctively. We follow the herd. Our brain makes us to move and follow others without any rational thought about how dangerous it could be.
We follow the group convinced that it must be good and accepted behavior when others people act the same way. Besides it saves us time to make decisions ourselves, it is kind of shortcut. The same phenomena we can observe on the tram in the video below. Just watch the young guy, how his surprise turns into engagement. No matter how strange it is what others do, it must be OK if they do it - social proof.
This is promotional video of Polish agency Artegence that works with building communities - excellent and clever spot that shows in a simple way what they are good at. They have also superb website - available in English as well.
I've participated a couple of times in the discussion about superiority of X-mass over Eastern and discussions on the "what's in the Apple" topic. Yes, what's in it? Apples are delicious fruits, but computers, iPods, screens? For me the answer was simple, Apple is religion you believe and follow it or not. Then I saw the commercial and I understood (btw excellent ad)
For the last couple of weeks you couldn't hear too much about Second Life in media. Apparently, SL hasn't live up to its hype. I was skeptical from the beginning about companies investing money and opening their virtual offices in SL to earn money. And today I read in Danish newspaper (Politiken) that companies begin to leave SL.
I guess there are too major problems with SL
1) The lack of users - the numbers Second Life gives as the number of SL users are the number of profiles. The truth is most people never come back again.
2) Companies have no idea how to act and interact in virtual reality of SL. For most companies SL is just another advertising window.
I guess there is also the third problem with users itself. Virtual reality is very new concept for us and we have no idea how to behave and how we can use the new space we have available. Plus there are still technological obstacles.
I do still believe Second Life is good and important but we need to explore the virtual reality more in order to understand its nature and become wiser on how to use it. The mix of traditional opt-down models, traditional advertising techniques and Second Life isn't the best in the world and can't bring any spectacular results (Danish Red Cross raised only 10.000 DKK from February 2007 ... I bet they still haven't earned home investments they made to create their HQ in SL)
Stop measuring and calculating, just try to understand in the first place. Understanding delivers better ROI.
Second Life has become the media celebrity lately, everyone is talking about SL, so many companies throw $$$ to opening their virtual stores / offices there. SL become crowded, unfortunately not with people (3,6 million accounts opened but only 250.000 people revisited SL within 30 days since the last login and there are maximum 20.000 people at the same time) but with companies.
Nic Mitham has recently made a brand map of Second Life that gives the overview over the major companies existing in SL. I find it interesting the way companies are places on the outskirts of the SL and form the circle. Is it an attempt to try to separate itself from competitors?
(Click on the picture for bigger view)
While companies are rushing into virtual territory, the recent survey from Komjuniti revealed that 72% Second Life users (“avatars”) are disappointed with the activities of the companies in SL. Moreover "over a third of them were unaware of the branded presence and 42% said they thought it constituted nothing more than a short-term trend, lacking durable commitment from the companies. Just 7% consider that it has a positive influence on brand image and their future buying behavior."
The major problem for SL users is the insufficient customer care and opportunities for interaction with companies - the two most important factors and the basic reason for existence in place like SL.
It seems like companies feel the urge to be present in the SL but have no reason for being there, have no clue or plan how to act in SL. One should believe that the reason for company entering SL is to build a community around brands and interact with the consumers. Apparently it is not the way consumers feel.
I spent a lot of time in SL and I've always been skeptical abut the SL frenzy in business world. There is nothing wrong with SL itself, even though it seems to me as the ghost ship, the world with fantastic building but not too many people. SL is a wonderful world, the virtual scene that opens door to the new experiences and ways of communication. However many companies misunderstand that and see it mostly as the new area for the exposure of their ads and products. I guess we, both consumers and business need to understand first how the virtual worlds are relevant to us, what do they mean and give us, how we can use them before we fling into using them without having any goals or plans how to use it. I do believe in SL as the huge innovation and research space at the moment. This is the exciting place for gathering insights, observing and understanding humans interactions and testing products or ideas.
There is no need to get hasty and make the wrong decisions. It can affect companies negatively, as they don't live up to consumers expectations and needs. They way companies act in SL reminds me about the bad traditional marketing where ads are developed and broadcasted on TV without even spending a minute on understanding consumers, without even thinking about any kind of research.
It is better to take it slow and put resources into decent research. SL is great and important so better use it wisely.
You can read more about companies in SL here and here
Duncan Watts has found out through the computer modeling that Tipping Point may not be as easy as Malcolm Gladwell sees it, as "even if the influentials are several times as influential as normal person, they have little impact beyond their own immediate neighborhood" what makes creating the cascades of information difficult. But it'd mean they never influence other influencers that can influence their network and extend the reach of message. On the other side, I think it is difficult to define influencers and evaluate to what extent the viral effect is the result of their 'hidden persuasion' and to what extent is the result of others' conduciveness to contagion.
Just take the extremely popular YouTube video. It's close to have 10 millions views on YouTube. It is silly, it is hilarious. The question is - does it need the influencer to spread and create viral effect or is it just network that is open and receptive to this type of message? What makes prairie dog so popular?
Can we at all predict human behavior, and design viral actions? Or are humans just to complicated and the factors playing role in social behavior and actions endless and impossible to define? I think human networks are dynamic and nonlinear systems, they are sensitive to conditions that trigger given behavior. It makes them random and difficult to predict, as we aren't able to analyze all factors that play role. Human behavior is impossible to measure.
If you'd take the video to pretest it, what do you think respondents would say. They would shrug their shoulders and say it is stupid, maybe funny but nothing special (I tested it). But bang, in reality we got 10 million people who watched it and asked others to watch it by sending links, posting the video on blog...
Interesting question, indeed. I remember when I was 11 and I got Commodore C64 from my parents (it was
huge thing to have computer in Poland in 80-ties during darkness of communism). What I remeber best is the black screen and green shapes. I was keen on playing tetris. Do you recall the sound as the bricks fell down? It was incredible machine and took some of my time...until Commodore C64 died.
10 years later I found myself at studens apartament with more modern PC, playing obsessively together with my friend very stupid and cruel game Blood. We had split functions, I was responsible for shooting and fighting, she was responsbile for moving, jumping, kicking. We were pretty good team and used very fast and chaotic method of fighting against zombies. I know it is embarassing but we haven't been to any lectures for over a week. After that I was done with gaming that is about shooting and killing. Anyhow, I couldn't make it myself. I was used to team gaming :-).
It is fascinating to look at the technological development of today's gaming. It happened quite a lot since my Tetris adventure. Together with growing complexity of everyday life, games became complex too. I can actually understand that kids today develop special coordination skills my generation didn't have. I could imagine their reaction time is the way faster than mine.
I could write more about the changing gaming universe, but videos tell the story better. From Atari to Xbox and PlayStation. From family fun to life experience.
Economist are using the data behind millions of eBay's auctions to understand the shoppers behavior. They've found out that we act very irrationally. You can read more here
We can still remeber the famous fountains generated by adding Mentos to Coke. Wow, what the exposion was it. Now when the hype about Mentos and Coke is almost over, Carlsberg decided to try out what's going to happen when you mix Mentos with Carlsberg. Funny viral ad.
There were 2 men and 1 very good idea. They have invited the bloggers to write a book about conversations. Over 100 clevere people said yes and contributed with their view, ideas and thoughts on conversations. It is also worth mentioning this is charity book. The money will be transferred to Variety, the children's charity organization.
I have look it through yesterday and there is lot of good material there.
The book is available now and you can buy it here.
To see without being seen - Internet embodies Bentham's idea of Panopticon with its databases, countless information about users. It is a massive storage, virtual memory that allows to keep track of people. Wired society is the naked society. It is the society where some can see without being seen.
