VACATION REWIND: Dunbar is the reason all social networks eventually become horrible

NOTE: I am out of pocket more or less until the New Year, so I thought I would re-air a few pieces that I liked from earlier this year for folks who may have missed them the first time. Hope you are having a great holiday season and a Happy New Year!

From March - Dunbar is the reason all social networks eventually become horrible

In this week's episode of 'As the social networks turn', many big users and brands that are active on Instagram are in collective freak out mode about the (Facebook owned), social network's announced plans to change user feeds from the classic 'reverse chronological' order to some kind of an algorithmic feed designed to show users the posts they are likely to be most interested in seeing and engaging with at the top of the feed.

The reasoning behind these changes are laid out on the Instagram blog post announcing the shift:

You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.

To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.

The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.

If Instagram is right, and people miss 70% of the posts from the accounts that they have choosen to follow, there can only be a couple of possible reasons why this is the case.

1. People just don't spend that much time on Instagram. They check it now and again, look through a few pictures on their feed, and get back to whatever else it was they were supposed to be doing. They don't make it a point to make sure they have seen everything. (FYI - this would be me in terms of Instagram. I follow 119 'accounts' on Instagram. This is important to mention for reasons that will be more clear later in the post). I do check Instagram every day (or close to every day), but there is no way I see every photo that the 119 accounts I follow have posted. 

2. The recent, and pretty dramatic, increase in ads and sponsored posts on Instagram has turned people off and they are using and engaging with content less and less, thus driving a more significant 'miss' percentage of their feeds. This increase in ads has definitely been noticeable lately, and while I know that Instagram needs to pay the bills, I also know that with social networks, almost no one signed up to see the latest artsy pic from Bank of America. More ads --> a worse user experience --> less time spent on the platform --> more posts missed.

3. (And the real one I am most interested in). Many if not most users have decided to follow far, far too many users/accounts than they can reasonably keep up with. As I mentioned at the top, I follow 119 accounts, well below Dunbar's estimate of the number of social relationships that a person can reasonably carry on and I still can't (and really could not try for very long), to stay on top of this level of accounts on Instagram. This is not even considering for the moment the time commitment of all the other networks that a person today must have some type of presence on. A quick look through about five people I follow shows crazy numbers of accounts they are following, 500, 800, in one case over 1,200 accounts. You could live on Instagram all day and not be able to keep up with the feeds of 1,200 users. Instagram sees this situation, and will attempt to show this person (at least at the top of their feed), the 20 or 40 or whatever number of posts and accounts they follow, in order to try and improve the overall experience.

So the better question is not 'Why is it impossible to follow and engage with 1,200 friends on Instagram, (or any other platform), but rather 'What would drive someone to even click the 'follow' button 1,200 times in the first place?

Dunbar's research and the 'Dunbar number' have been well known and repeatedly proved out over a pretty long time. We know no matter how many people we follow on Instagram or Facebook or wherever, that we will only interact meaningfully if at all with a very small percentage of those people we follow. Probably even less than Dunbar's number of 150 I would bet.

So why do we do it? Why do we try? How can it make sense to have 1,500 friends on Facebook?

I think there is only one reason.

It's because every online/social network starts as a site or community to connect with real friends and family. And then once the platform begins to grow, even more people join. And when even more people join still more people join, (and your teenagers flee to the next new network, but that is a different issue). But at some point (close to when the network starts accepting ads and sponsored posts), the tenor of the entire conversation around the network begins to shift into a commercial one.

Brands and company accounts are set up and they try and act like people. People amass even larger following and then try to act like brands. For both the brands (and many of the people), it becomes all about maintaining business prospects and business relationships and much, much less about sharing details of your lives with your (less than 150) networks of people that you actually know.

That's the only reason I can think of while you or me or anyone keeps following more and more people, beyond the ones you actually know and socialize with. They might be business contacts, they may just work in your company or industry - doesn't matter, you can't not follow them if it means missing out on a business opportunity.

There are two essential truths about every popular social network.

1. Once you join, your kids will think it is less cool

2. Eventually, it will become all about business. Just about all anyway.

Instagram is moving to an algorithmic feed because it has finally reached the point where the use/purpose of the platform is primarily commercial, and we should have known this was coming the minute we thought following 529 people was a good idea.

Dunbar strikes again.

Signs of the Corporate Death Spiral #4 - Competing like it's 2005

While I was busy over the weekend watching my beloved Knicks researching some blog posts, I caught a TV spot from the wireless company Sprint, which features an actor who became pretty well known several years ago as the 'Can you hear me know?' guy from a series of spots for Sprint's arch-enemy Verizon Wireless.

If you don't recall the once ubiquitous Verizon ads take a look at an example below, (email and RSS subscribers click through)

These Verizon ads ran constantly back in the early aughts, as Verizon (and its competitors in the wireless market), were all feverishly building out their networks, trying to expand coverage to more places, and importantly, working hard to improve sound/voice quality for calls and reduce dropped calls. I would guess most readers are old enough to recall when every second or third cell phone conversation would be barely audible, if it wasn't cut off completely (and randomly). And back in 2004 or 2005, a cell phone (and network), that could not be counted on to reliably carry good quality voice calls was, well, pretty much worthless. Yes it's true, in 2004 you used your cell phone mostly to talk to other people. 

So let's jump back to 2016 and think about what Sprint is trying to do with their messaging and spots starring the actor formerly known as the Verizon 'Can you hear me know?' guy? On the surface Sprint is trying to poke the bear (Verizon), with these spots, showcasing (in case we are all dumb enough not to realize this guy is an actor, and not a real customer), how Verizon's most famous advocate has now defected over to Sprint. In the Sprint spots the reason given for 'Can you hear me know's?' defection has something to do with overall network comparability and equivalency between Sprint and Verizon, coupled with Sprint's claim that its plans are less expensive than comparable Verizon plans.

Or something like that. Who knows for sure because once the 'Can you hear me know guy?' starts talking, (and immediately reminds us that he is in fact the 'Can you hear me know?' guy), that is pretty much all I can focus on. Can you hear me know? Can you hear me know?  Blah, blah, blah and suddenly we are back in 2005. Back when dropped calls, heck when making calls was a big deal.

Now? Not so much. A couple of years ago when my son wanted to get his first phone I was surprised by the request and asked him why he needed a cell phone because I wondered who was he planning to call?

He replied, and he was maybe 12 at the time, that I was being silly because 'Cell phones aren't for talking to people, they are for watching videos, playing games, and getting on the internet.'

And he was/is right. That is (mostly) what cell phones are for today. And that is why Sprint, who in 2016, running ads that like it or not, make us think about what used to be important, (dropped calls, bad call connections), is missing the entire point. What matters now is the device itself, its capabilities, the apps, the camera, etc. And oh yeah, once a day or so when we make a call we want it to go through, but who worries about that any more?

Sprint in 2016, is still in a way, probably non-intentionally I grant, trying to compete with Verizon by harkening back to what used to matter about a decade in the past. And by that, they are missing the point completely. 

Or they are making another point entirely. Which is, we are pretty much out of ideas. But at least we are now ready to compete with Verizon in 2005. We even got the Verizon guy from 2005 on our team. As if that matters.

Have a great week!

Learn a new word; Word of the year finalists, ranked

Earlier this week the good folks over at Oxford Dictionaries released their pick for 'Word of the Year' for 2016, and they went with 'post-truth', an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

Seems like a fitting choice for the current social and political climate, where it seems that how you say something has become more important that what you are actually saying. You can read more about 'post-truth' and the reasons why Oxford tapped it as the 'Word of the Year' over at their site.

There were nine other words that qualified as finalists for Oxford's Word of the Year for 2016 and taken together they paint a picture of a not-so-great year overall. 

But as Fitzgerald suggested many years back, we beat on, boats against the current and all that...

So let's end the week with some fun, and rank the Oxford Word of the Year finalists, and crown our own Word of the Year.

As a reminder, these rankings are unscientific, unresearched, subjective, and 100% accurate.

Here goes:

Here are the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist choices, definitions, and my revised rankings:

10. alt-right, n. (in the US) an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content. Find out more about the word's rise.

9. Brexiteer, n. British informal a person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union.

8. post-truth, adj. relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief 

7. glass cliff,  n. used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high.

6. Latinx, n. (plural Latinxs or same) and adj. a person of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina); relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina).

5. hygge, n. [mass noun] a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture):

4. woke, adj. (woker, wokest) US informal alert to injustice in society, especially racism.

3. chatbot, n. a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.

2. adulting, n. [mass noun] informal the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult,especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.

1. coulrophobia, n. [mass noun] rare extreme or irrational fear of clowns.

I have always been a little leery of clowns.

Of course, you can disagree with these rankings, but as it turns out, you would be wrong.

That's it from me - have a great weekend!

Learn a new word: The Illusion of Truth

Repeating something over and over and over again doesn't make it the truth.

That seems like a pretty easy statement to understand, and with which to agree. I mean we all get that right? It doesn't matter what the statement is, or who is saying it again and again, the act of repeating it so many times doesn't impact the fundamental nature of truth.  I think we all learned that back in grade school.

But here's the tricky part, even though we know, or think we know that repeating something doesn't make it the truth, or at least closer to the truth, we often are easily deceived.

And that brings us to today's 'Learn a new word' submission, especially interesting and relevant with Election Day in the USA bearing down upon us in then next week or so.

Today's word is 'The Illusion of Truth'. Definition from our pals at Wikipedia:

The illusory truth effect (also known as the truth effect or the illusion-of-truth effect) is the tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure. This phenomenon was first discovered in 1977 at Villanova University and Temple University.

This illusion of truth effect, which has been known for a while, was recently repeated in a study titled 'Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth' published in 2015 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In that study,  40 participants were asked to rate how true a statement was on a six-point scale, and in the second, a different set of 40 participants were asked to simply state whether a statement was true or false. In both cases, repetition made the statement more likely to be categorized as true. This was the case even for statements that contradict well-known facts, such as, “Barcelona is the capital of Spain,” (when in fact, Madrid is Spain's capital).

Why were the participants in the study, and the rest of us too, more prone to believe a statement was true if we had heard it repeated over and over? According to the researchers, it is because trying to figure out whether new information is true is kind of hard, and requires more brain processing power than just simply accepting it.

From the above mentioned study's summary:

Research on the illusory truth effect demonstrates that repeated statements are easier to process, and subsequently perceived to be more truthful, than new statements. Contrary to prior suppositions, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better. Participants demonstrated knowledge neglect, or the failure to rely on stored knowledge, in the face of fluent processing experiences.

And this from the conclusion:

Inferring truth from fluency often proves to be an accurate and cognitively inexpensive strategy, making it reasonable that people sometimes apply this heuristic without searching for knowledge. 

Thinking about things is hard.  It takes energy. Even doing simple fact-checking might be a bridge too far in many situations. But 'going along' with something largely because we have heard it many times before is always easier, and often makes sense and is a sound and harmless strategy.

Except when it's not.

So that's the trick then. To know when to trust the process if you will and when to do your own research and make your own conclusions. Gosh, that sounds like work.

But be aware that we all are more susceptible to the illusion of truth effect than we may think.

Happy Halloween!

CHART OF THE DAY: All the places you can't stop emailing

Today's CHART OF THE DAY comes to us courtesy of the folks at Adobe, who recently shared some results from their second annual consumer email survey. 

As you may have already expected, after taking a side-eyed glance at your out of control Inbox, our collective Inbox is , well, out of control.

Per the Adobe survey, the typical white collar worker is spending 17% more  time on email compared to last year, and despite this increase in time spent with email, (and email volume), almost half of all workers expect a response to a work-related email in less than one hour. Aside, if you are one of those people who expect that kind of responsiveness, I think I hate you. And you certainly hate me.

There are quite a few other interesting nuggets in the Adobe survey, but the one chart I wanted to share is below, which shows how our disturbing attachment to email consumes us, and infringes on everything we do. Check out the data, (kids, cover your eyes), then some FREE comments from me after the data.

That we can't stop checking/responding to email while watching TV or even in bed isn't all that shocking any longer. But some of the other venues (driving, formal ceremonies, in the bathroom) where at least a good number of folks admit to email use are more more unsettling.

Sorry, I just need to step away from my best friend's wedding/nephew's baptism/grandma's funeral in order to respond to this email. It will just be a second, I promise. And please remember how many folks are all over their email and smartphones in the bathroom the next time a group of people ask you if you wouldn't mind taking a group picture of them with one of their phones. Gross.

One last data point to share from the survey - people have become so addicted to email that many are actively having to 'detox' from the siren call of their inboxes. Nearly half of folks, 45%, have taken an email detox lasting an average of 5.3 days and report feeling 'liberated' and 'relaxed' from these detox efforts.

I know I swore I would quit writing/complaining about email. But here I go again. Just like you swore you wouldn't check your email on date night or at junior's soccer game.

I, like you, just can't help it. We are addicted.

Happy Wednesday.