study - ReadWriteWeb

Study Suggests Content Matters On Twitter

Dave Copeland — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:30:00 -0800

Will this article get re-tweeted? According to a new HP Labs white paper, we can now predict whether or not it will become popular on Twitter.

The findings are crucial because most previous analysis of how tweets travel have focused on who has been tweeting as opposed to what they have been tweeted. If someone influential on Twitter tweets something, the conventional thinking goes, it will spread. That thinking still plays a big factor, but the new research highlights that content matters.

]]> Researchers analyzed 40,000 articles posted to Twitter over the course of a week in August and collected information on the agency that wrote each article, the outlet that first tweeted the article, the article's information category and the emotion of the article's language. What they found is some articles are more tweetable than others.

Among the key findings predicting the likelihood of an article getting tweeted and retweeted:

Source was the biggest indicator. The more reliable the source, the better chances of a tweet.
Stories in popular categories will spread more rapidly. (As Megan Garber at The Atlantic notes, "Health! technology! cats!").
Mention a known person, place or organization and you're also more likely to get your story tweeted (which explains why celebrities' names often litter the trending topics column whenever I log into Twitter).

What does not, however, seem to influence an articles tweetability is emotion. Emotional articles were no more likely to be spread than objective articles, the researchers said. "Brand matters; information matters; tone, however, doesn't seem to make much of a difference when it comes to sharing," Garber wrote in her thorough analysis of the study.

The researchers classified articles "low-tweet," "medium-tweet," or "high-tweet." They said their model is 84% accurate.

Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.

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One More Smartphone Woe: Social Networking Stress [STUDY]

Dave Copeland — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:30:00 -0800

Go ahead and check those work emails on your smartphone: a new study says it's time spent checking Facebook and other "personal" social networks that is stressing you out.

It gets worse: the more times you check your smartphone, the higher your stress levels. The study also suggested people who are used to getting lots of text messages and push notifications on their phones will feel stress levels rise if they hit a stretch where their phones are silent. In the worst cases, study subjects experienced "phantom" vibrations when, in fact, they had not received an alert.

]]> Results of the study by University of Worcester psychologist Richard Balding were presented last week. The sample was relatively small - only 100 people, including students and employees in a wide range of occupations - but do demonstrate a link between compulsive behaviors and increased smartphone use.
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The problem is also a self-created one. Many people get smart phones to help manage workflow and not be tied to an office or a desk. But as they add apps like Facebook and FourSquare, they find they have an increased and more consuming virtual social life.

Balding, the study's author, recommended that companies help employees address the problem.

"Smartphone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking," he told the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology Conference in Chester, England last week. "Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people's temptation to check their devices."

While other researchers stressed more studies are needed, they agreed the advice that Balding and other experts give is reasonable.

"Now, certainly it's good to keep connected," Balding told USA Today. "But everyone needs a break. Some time on your own. Otherwise there's a risk that the stress and tension that builds up from keeping engaged can end up having a negative impact on relationships."

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You Are What You Like (And Not What Your Friends Like) On Facebook [STUDY]

Dave Copeland — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:12:53 -0800

Students who share certain tastes in movies and music - but not in books - are more likely to friend each other on Facebook, according to a study released in November that has been getting attention in academic circles.

The study has its limitations, according to authors Kevin Lewis, Marco Gonzalez and Jason Kaufman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. But it is significant in that it demonstrates how social networks can help sociologists better understand social relationships and how they are influenced by cultural preferences, while also suggesting online friendships may not be effective in helping spread cultural tastes.

Sociologists have long known that so-called "weak ties" between acquaintances are particularly effective in helping push cultural trends. What the most recent study suggests is that online friendships like those fostered on Facebook are more about strengthening ties between people with similar interests than they are about influencing neighbors.

]]> The study tracked the Facebook friendships of 1,640 students at an unidentified college over four years and found that students were more likely to friend other students with similar musical tastes, as opposed to having their musical tastes influenced by what their friends on Facebook listened to; the lone exceptions were classical and jazz music, which the researchers said were "especially 'contagious' due to [their] unique value as a high-status cultural signal."

Researchers who build off of the work could soon better understand cultural diffusion, a plausible theory for explaining why fashion changes over time. Without a lab like Facebook, where participants voluntarily list their preferences, it has been difficult for researchers to substantiate how diffusion works - or whether it actually does work.

"Facebook provides users with open-ended spaces in which to list their 'favorite' music, movies, and books, offering an unprecedented opportunity to examine how tastes are structured as well as how they coevolve with social ties," the study said.

The study also highlighted key ways students chose friends on Facebook, and showed that proximity was important, even in online relationships. Students were more likely, for example, to friend someone on Facebook who lived in their building or had the same major. Having just one friend in common increased the chances of students friending one another by 0.10 percent, and those odds increased for every additional shared friend.

Students also tended to self-segregate along gender, racial, regional and socioeconomic backgrounds.

What you like to listen to, of course, is far more complex than simply looking at what your friends like to listen to. The researchers didn't know what concerts or movie nights were happening on campus, or what books were being assigned in classes, all of which could affect tastes over four years of college. They were also aware of a certain cool factor, in that some students may may have said they liked a certain type of music to fit in (and Indie rock kids, interestingly, were more likely to try to distance themselves from one another in an effort to maintain their unique street cred in musical tastes).

"In fact, students whose friends list tastes in the 'indie/alt' music cluster are significantly likley to discard these tastes in the future - an instance of peer influence operating in the opposite direction as predicted by prior research," the study said.

Visualization of distribution of students' musical preferences on Facebook. Similar tastes appear closer together in 3D space, with size being proportionate to popularity.

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Study: Twitter's Early Growth Relied On Geographic Proximity

Dave Copeland — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:53:00 -0800

The takeaway from an MIT study released Wednesday, tracking the early growth of Twitter, is that new Web technologies - particularly social networks that rely on adoption by other users - cannot depend solely on online buzz (or even Ashton Kutcher, for that matter).

The study tracked data from 2006 to 2009 in the 408 U.S. cities with the highest rates of Twitter adoption. The findings clearly demonstrate that mainstream media mentions, coupled with the geographic and socioeconomic proximity of users, fueled its growth. A video mapping the data shows initial growth in San Francisco, where Twitter is based, then spreading to Boston.

]]> While the data is dated by Internet standards, the study does challenge the notion that the Internet has allowed social networks to ignore traditional geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.While the data is dated by Internet standards, the study does challenge the notion that the Internet has allowed social networks to ignore traditional geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.

"The big question for people in industry is 'How do we find the right person or hub to adopt our new app so that it will go viral?' But we found that the lone tech-savvy person can't do it; this also requires word of mouth. The social network needs geographical proximity," said Marta González, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems at MIT, in a statement. "In the U.S. anyway, space and similarity matter."

While the MIT study only looked at Twitter, the broader implications are clear. From an economist's view, the current period of free apps and Web services gives them a chance to look at why some succeed and others do not. The MIT study could also theoretically be used to understand the growth of more recent social success stories like Instagram and Spotify.

"Nobody has ever really looked at the diffusion among innovators of a no-risk, free or low-cost product that's only useful if other people join you. It's a new paradigm in economics: what to do with all these new things that are free and easy to share," said MIT graduate student Jameson Toole, a co-author of the paper.

The study was also novel in that it did not keep mainstream media mentions as a constant, but instead tried to track when the media responded to user mentions and vice versa. The study, and the video, covers through April 2009, when Kutcher challenged CNN to see who would become the first to reach one million followers, bringing Twitter decidedly into the mainstream.

Each circle represents a U.S. city containing Twitter users. Circles grow in size as more users sign up in that location over time. When a location has reached a "critical mass" of users, or 13.5% of all eventual users have signed up, the location turns red. The line being drawn across the center of the screen is a time series of the number of new users that signed up across the whole country in a given week.

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From the Mouths of Babes: The Future of Tech is Robots and Real World Integration

Kadley Gosselin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 10:00:00 -0800
This is Part Two of a two-part series. Part One: Study: Kids are the Road to Tech Innovation
Latitude recently completed a multi-phase innovation study, Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, which asked kids across the world, ages 12 and under, to draw the answer to this question: "What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can't do right now?" In our last post , we highlighted three themes that recurred across kids' ideas for new technologies.
The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing (Tech = World)
Why Aren't Computers More Human? (Tech = Me)
Technology Can Improve and Empower Us (Me = World)
We also pinpointed three key recommendations for creators of new content and technology experiences (for both kids and adults):
Download the study summary (PDF) for Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.
]]> Kadley Gosselin is a writer for Latitude, an international research consultancy. Visit latd.com/ for other studies in Latitude's open innovation series.
"I want to travel to another place as if I was really there--like a virtual reality thing where you can move around in the environment as it exists in real life." --Female, 10, Melbourne, Australia
Don't think robots are just for schools. The majority of kids (77%) imagined future technologies with human-level responsiveness, often in the form of robots or virtual companions that could assist them with real-world tasks and abilities like doing chores or troubleshooting homework issues, suggesting that humanoid robots are a promising area of opportunity, as they can teach while feeling like a mentor or friend rather than an electronic console. (Check out Latitude's Robots @ School study here.)

"My son wishes the computer was a robot he could take everywhere with him--to play chess with him or soccer outside... in other words, he wants it to be a friend he can share with his other friends." --Male, 7, Barranquilla, Colombia

For kids, learning systems equipped with networking functionality and real-time, natural language processing - such as a robot that can look up and recite Wikipedia entries - can create a greater sense of independence and control. Robots such as LEGO Mindstorms offer kids the thrill of creating while helping them to understand algebra, while some robots are being piloted in schools to help with language-learning. However, there's a clear opportunity to move beyond school environments, bringing robots into the home to motivate independent learning and to foster new interests.

"I would like a ballet teacher on the computer." --Female, 5, Kankakee County, Illinois

"Kids are not only learning computer programming, they are also learning how to participate in a peer-production environment where they collaborate with others by remixing and exchanging ideas." - Andrés Monroy-Hernández, researcher and designer of the Scratch online community.
For adults, robot interactions can offer encouragement, increased motivation and progress-tracking to help them achieve their personal goals. Robots can be used to practice physical therapy, play sports and even provide training and track fitness goals. For example, Autom is a humanoid health coach by MIT's Personal Robots Group that becomes part of the user's social support network. Over long-term evaluation, Autom was shown to be more effective at keeping people engaged than a stand-alone desktop computer running the same software and a traditional paper log.

Photo by MIT Media Lab.

Bring "grown up" skills within reach. One-third of participants invented technologies that would empower users by fostering knowledge or "adult" skills, such as playing a musical instrument, making Web sites, or learning how to cook. Tech developers should focus on products and services that transfer knowledge or skills to users without the burdens traditionally associated with self-improvement--and which allow them to flex their mastery of these advanced skills in the context of creation and creativity.
Story Patch is a smartphone app that enables users to create their own illustrated storybook--essentially, the child version of Blurb, a site that provides a quick and easy means to design and publish a book. Other current "creatitainment" games along the lines of Guitar Hero and Rock Band answer a huge demand while serving a similar need. Moreover, when building apps and other tools that enable "advanced creations," ensure that users also have the ability to instantly show off what they've made.

"You should be able to record a video of yourself singing a song without having a video recorder or audio recorder attached to your computer. You should be able to put different backgrounds on, and make yourself wear different things. And share the videos with your friends if you want." --Female, 9, Canberra, Australia
MIT's Scratch is a programming language and online community that allows kids to produce their own interactive content and games and share their creations with others. "People often think of programming as an activity reserved for expert adults. We think programming, like reading and writing, is for everyone," explains Andrés Monroy-Hernández, researcher and designer of the Scratch online community. "Kids are not only learning computer programming, they are also learning how to participate in a peer-production environment where they collaborate with others by remixing and exchanging ideas. In the future, I hope to see a broader range of socio-technical platforms that empower amateurs to be active participants in a world increasingly mediated by social computing environments."

Offer games and entertainment with real-world outcomes. Kids expect their online activities to have real-world impact and vice versa. Web, mobile and game developers are bridging online and offline experiences for both kids and adults through sites like Nickelodeon's The Big Help and Recyclebank which assign real-world rewards for eco-friendly actions. Healthcare companies and Web services like Health Month have also been working to extend games into traditionally "offline" spaces--specifically, games that motivate personal wellness through tech-enabled tracking and tangible, real-world rewards like saving money, meeting personal health goals and forming new social connections.

This is Part Two of a two-part series. Read Part One: Study: Kids are the Road to Tech Innovation
Looking beyond basic Web and mobile apps, there are significant opportunities for networked objects (e.g., The Internet of Things) to reinvent gaming in the real world. Just last week, Angry Birds announced its integration with the physical world using NFC (near field communication) technology, which is currently built into some mobile phones. Users will be able to advance in the game and unlock virtual achievements by tapping two NFC-enabled phones together or by tapping their phones to objects bearing NFC-enabled tags. In a similar vein, GreenGoose is another "real life" game that allows user to place stickers (affixed with tiny sensors and accelerometers) on everyday objects to automatically record positive behaviors and track them online--transforming healthy and socially responsible behaviors into a tech-driven game.

"I want to play a 3D game while earning real money at the same time." --Female, 9, Sydney, Australia

Download the study summary (PDF) for Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet here.

Study lead: Jessica Reinis

Latitude is proud to have partnered with ReadWriteWeb on phase 1 of Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet. Latitude is an international research consultancy helping clients create engaging content, software and technology that harness the possibilities of the Web. To learn more about working with Latitude, contact Ian Schulte (ischulte@latd.com).

Image credit Kai Schreiber, (cc) some rights reserved.
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Study: Kids Are the Road to Tech Innovation

Kim Gaskins — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:30:00 -0800

Over the course of 2010, Latitude Research completed a multi-phase innovation study, Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, asking kids across the world to draw the answer to this question: "What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can't do right now?" This study is part of a larger research initiative by Latitude that positions younger generations as a window into the future of technology, capable of informing tech experiences that resonate with people of all ages.
Download the study summary (PDF) for Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.
]]> Kim Gaskins is Director of Content Development at Latitude, an international research consultancy. Visit latd.com/ for other studies in Latitude's open innovation series.
More than 200 kid-innovators, ages 12 and under, from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, South Asia and Australia, submitted drawings of their imagined technologies. By and large, kids wanted their technology to be more interactive and human, better integrated with their physical lives and empowering to users (such as by assisting new knowledge or abilities).

"Teleport through the screen to another computer at the place of your choice." --Male, 9, Perth, Australia

"I want an interface where we can search, not by text, but by drawing--and get image results with that particular shape or pattern." --Female, 12, Mumbai, India

Researchers scored kids' inventions on the presence of specific technology themes, such as type of interface, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, user's desired end-goal and so on.* The following infographic displays some of the top attributes present in kids' created technologies across world regions. (Download the full PDF report summary to read more about cross-cultural differences.)

To view a larger version, click here. Infographic created by Latitude in collaboration with ffunction, (cc) some rights reserved.

The following are key insights to come from an analysis of children's future requests for technology:

The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing (Tech = World)

Kids today don't neatly divide the "online" from the "offline." For them, these two realms continue to converge as technologies become more interactive, portable, connected and integrated with "real world" activities. Nearly 4 in 10 kids imagined technologies that integrated the virtual with the physical, such as more immersive experiences of physical spaces (e.g., real or simulated travel) or devices that assisted physical activities (e.g., playing sports). At a time when 3D movies are still a novelty and 3D televisions have just begun to hit the market, a full 9% of kids explicitly built 3D effects into their own imagined technologies.

"I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real." --Female, 10, Pakenham, Australia

"I'd like to go through the computer to the places that are inside it." --Female, 4, Medellin, Colombia (translated from Spanish)

For kids, technology is no longer something that mediates experience, but something that pervades it. "There's a real opportunity to create new experiences where the technology seems to disappear, where we experience the web directly - and almost magically - in the world," says Steve Mushkin, Founder and President of Latitude who's speaking at ReadWriteWeb's 2WAY Summit today on the topic of kids as tech innovators.

Why Aren't Computers More Human? (Tech = Me)

Kids expressed a desire for more intuitive modes of input as well as higher degrees of responsiveness from technology. Only half of kids envisioned technologies that used the standard keyboard/mouse interface, while 36% went for more fluid interfaces: touchscreen, verbal/auditory, gestural and even telepathic in some cases.

"Help Computer: it knows what you are thinking and does it for you--both touch and voice controlled." --Male, 8, Brisbane, Australia

The majority of kids (77%) illustrated a technology with more dynamic, human-level responsiveness. Children in Africa, South Asia and Latin America were much more likely to anthropomorphize computers in a direct way--to imagine them as friends or teachers that could share their experiences or help in the accomplishment of a goal. Additionally, 43% of all children drew themselves or another person interacting with their creations, highlighting the shrinking gap between gadget and user: the "iGeneration" understanding of device as merely an extension of oneself.

"A robot that would help me pick out fashion clothes everyday and dress me." --Female, 8, Potchefstroom, South Africa

Technology Can Improve and Empower Us (Me = World)

Instant access to people, information and possibilities reinforces young users' confidence and interest in self-development. One-third of kids invented technologies that would empower users by fostering knowledge or otherwise "adult" skills, such as speaking a different language or learning how to cook.

"I want to video kids on the other side of the world using a different kind of language." --Female, 7, Warwick, RI, United States

"Kids want technology to either act as a companion - a friend they can enjoy various activities with - or as a tool that empowers them to grow and express themselves," explains Jessica Reinis, a research analyst at Latitude who led the study. "In some cases, we saw the fusion of these two with kids envisioning tech as teacher."

In addition to self-development, kids expected technology to enable and empower them as creators. One-quarter of kids' inventions - the same number which favored gaming - centered on art or design. "Technology is a fully integrated part of kids' lives and this makes their creativity and their drive to create with it boundless because tech is really just an extension of themselves," says Vanessa Van Petten, founder of Radical Parenting and author of Do I Get My Allowance Before or After I'm Grounded? Nearly 1/3 of all children went beyond simple creations, envisioning more flexible platforms for creating games, Web sites, action figures and so on. Kids' interest in a wide range of design fields--industrial, landscape, fashion, game, Web and more--reflects the visual richness of the online world, as well as the can-do creative drive that tech encourages.

"I want to make up my own video game." --Male, 8, Kennewick, WA, United States

This part 1 of a 2-part series. Check back later this week for the next installment including opportunities for creators of technology experiences for both kids and adults.

Latitude 42 Study: Children's Future Requests for Computers & the Internet

*Note: Reported frequencies may be based on total number of submissions that were possible to code on a given variable, rather than total number of study participants.

Image credit: Marcus Kwan, (cc) some rights reserved.

Latitude is proud to have partnered with ReadWriteWeb on phase 1 of Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet. Latitude is an international research consultancy helping clients create engaging content, software and technology that harness the possibilities of the Web. To learn more about working with Latitude, contact Ian Schulte (ischulte@latd.com).
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Only 66% Use Twitter Profile Location Field as Intended, Says PARC Research Study

Sarah Perez — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:46:08 -0800

The first in-depth user research study on the usage of the "Location" field within Twitter profiles has just been published by the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). With a sample size of 32 million English language tweets in hand, PARC summer intern Brent Hecht selected a group of 10,000 active users to study. Remarkably, he found that 34% of Twitter users do not provide a valid geographic location on their Twitter user profiles. Instead, some of these users co-opt the field to make jokes, express their love for a particular celebrity or to shout back at Twitter that their location is "NON YA BUSINESS!" Others, meanwhile, provide no location information at all.

For any related service or other research study that leverages this field to determine Twitter users' actual location, the implication is obvious. Without first parsing the tweets to remove those that don't use the location field as intended, the sample data could be corrupted. PARC already found one study where that was the case.
]]> To perform their analysis, PARC researchers collected 32 million English language tweets from the Spritzer sample feed, a feed of 1-2% of all tweets, selected at random and delivered in real-time. The tweets were created by 5,282,657 individual Twitter users. A random sample of 10,000 active users (those have more than five tweets in the data set) was selected from the feed. Then from that group, the researchers extracted and examined the location field.

66% Report Location, but That Doesn't Mean "City, State"

Only 66% of Twitter users had entered any sort of valid geographic information into this field, and the term valid is being used loosely here. For example, the researchers included someone who wrote they were from "kcmo - call da po po," as having entered a valid geographic location - Kansas City, Missouri. They also included those who just shared what continent they were from or those who provided a fake city name (e.g. "Bieberville") alongside a real U.S. state ("California.")

In reality, the actual percentage of those who provided a true city/state combo was much lower, but PARC did not specify by how much.

Location: "Justin Bieber's Heart:" Jokes and Other Sentiment Found in Location Field

From the 34% who did not provide real location information, there were a number of trends spotted. One was that the field was often used to denote appreciation for a particular celebrity. Celebrities the researchers came across here included Britney Spears, the Jonas Brothers, Jedward and, of course, topping the charts with 61 users mentioning him, Justin Bieber.

Another common trend was using the location field to express a desire for keeping that information private through the use of phrasing like "not telling you," "none of your business," etc. Also frequenting this field were insults ("looking down on u people"), non-Earth locations ("outta space"), sexual content, jokes and even an expression about how much someone hated their current location. (for example, one user said he was from "redneck hell").

What This Means for Researchers Analyzing Twitter Data

That wasn't the end of the PARC study, however. The researchers also popped the portion of their dataset (the 16% who had not provided a valid location) into Yahoo! Geocoder, a tool that converts place names and addresses into latitude and longitude coordinates. Instead of returning errors, Yahoo! Geocoder provided coordinates for 82.1% of the data. For example, "Middle Earth" was determined to be north of Lubbock, Texas, "BieberTwon" is in Missouri, "somewhere over the rainbow" is in northern Maine and "wherever yo mama at" is in southwest Siberia.

What this means, of course, is that research studies that simply enter a Twitter dataset into a geocoder will have corrupted results. Geocoders assume that all the information they're given is geographic, so it will attempt to locate these coordinates. To accurately determine location from a dataset of tweets, the data should first be pre-processed by a geoparser to separate geographic information from non-geographic information.

Unfortunately, not all Twitter user studies have done this. One well-known research study from 2007, "Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities" by Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, and Belle Tseng, did not use a geoparser, the PARC researchers found. (See coverage on ZDNet, SmartMobs or EdTechTalk, for more on that study.)

Although that doesn't necessarily discredit all of the study's findings - it looked at a number of trends, from type of Twitter updates (links, chatter, replies) to categories of Twitter users (info sources, info seekers, friends), too - it should be noted.

More information on PARC's Twitter research is available here.
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Tech for Transit: What Happens if You Give Up Your Car For a Week?

Kim Gaskins — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0800

If you mainly rely on an automobile to get around, ask yourself this question: What kind of improvements to public transit or new service offerings would make me go car-less? A public transit mobile app with real-time, open data available? A city-wide bike-sharing program? A more efficient ride-sharing community? How about something as basic as bike-friendly buses?

Latitude (who recently partnered with RWW on the Children's "Future Requests" for Computer and the Internet study) is conducting a new study to investigate how cities, transportation providers and technology companies can use Web, mobile, real-time, and location-aware technologies to improve transportation modes so that they work together as a fluid system, adding value to individuals' lives.
]]> Participate in the Tech for Transit: Designing a Future System study
If you would like to participate in this study, click here. Please allot 5-10 minutes to take a short, online screener. Deadline to submit: October 20th.
Owning a Car Ain't So Great Anyways

Transportation is an essential part of human life; it influences where we live, when we socialize, where we work, our personal finances, and our general quality of life on a day-to-day basis. It also has an enormous impact on the environment - automobile emissions represent a leading cause of global warming. What's more, owning a car is sometimes a hassle instead of a benefit, and it costs a bundle.

In fact, one participant in Latitude's recent The New Sharing Economy study (in collaboration with Shareable Magazine) noted "the absurdity of owning something large and relatively expensive that just sits around." Giving up ownership to join a car-sharing program." She benefitted by "getting great exercise, reducing my carbon emissions, and making something available to someone who really needed it when I did not."

Car-sharing services and green car companies have made worthy progress to minimize the various downsides of car ownership, but there are significant, untapped opportunities for alternate (non-automobile) transit options to improve our everyday experiences and spare the environment.

Central Study Questions:

What are the various options for alternative (more sustainable) transportation these days, and how can cities encourage people to use them?

What role can Web, mobile, real-time, and location-aware technologies play in improving transit experiences?

How we can better design various transportion modes to function together, creating a fully integrated and more intelligent system of transportation?

The Gist

Selected participants living and working in the Boston or San Francisco metro areas will agree not to use their cars at all for one week (Mon., 11/1 - Sun., 11/7); instead, they'll have to rely on alternate transportation options (like walking, biking, public transportation, ride-sharing, etc.) - not to mention their own creativity and resourcefulness - to get around. Latitude will collect their experiences, frustrations and innovative suggestions to learn more about how we could all experience transit as a more practical, integrated and sustainable system. As with all Latitude 42 studies, results will be published openly at life-connected.com in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery.

Why Participate?

1 in 10 chance to win an iPad (one participant from each city will receive an iPad)

Discover your city in new ways, and receive up to $100 in reimbursements for alternate (non-automobile) transportation costs (e.g. public transit passes, bike rentals, etc.)

Be featured in a publicized study!

Get to know your city better, and live a more sustainable lifestyle (at least for one week)

Requirements*

Must use a car regularly (no car-share members, sorry!)

Must live and work within either the Boston or San Francisco metro areas

Must be able to carry out normal, everyday activities without a car by using alternate transit methods (walking, biking, public transit, ride-sharing, etc. - anything but driving)

Must be available for the study (willing to not drive a car at all) from Monday, Nov. 1 - Sunday, Nov. 7

Must be willing to participate in surveys and interviews before, during and after the week of the study.

Must be willing to be featured in all study-related content - this may entail providing an appropriate headshot of yourself, capturing video documentary, and appearing in post-study interviews about the experience. (You may request that Latitude not publish your real name, but your likeness and any study/interview content - including video, audio, text - may be featured.*)

Got questions about participating? Email life-connected@latd.com.

Why Boston and San Francisco?

These two cities were chosen, in part, because of their recent work to improve transit in an innovative, tech-oriented, and open manner. Some recent developments include:

San Francisco

The city of San Francisco just broke ground (below) on a $4-billion Transbay Transit Center to connect eight Bay Area counties and the State of California through 11 transit systems: AC Transit, BART, Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, Greyhound, Muni, SamTrans, WestCAT Lynx, Amtrak, Paratransit and future High Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim. Additionally, the project aims to "create a new neighborhood with homes, offices, parks and shops surrounding the new Transit Center."

San Francisco is also implementing sophisticated technology solutions like "supply-and-demand," variable pricing for parking meters (SFPark) to improve traffic and parking conditions for drivers, and to discourage people from driving into urban areas that can easily be accessed through other means of transportation: "A network of wireless sensors let the city keep track of which parking spots are empty. If a particular block never has available spots, the city raises the meter rates until it does. In places where parking is plentiful, rates fall. As an added bonus, this information-age system lets residents check the rates and availability of parking online before deciding to drive."

Boston

Earlier this year, Boston's Livable Streets Alliance collaborated with MassDOT (Massachusetts Department of Transportation) on a "Transit 2.0" talk to discuss the city's open development initiatives - current successes and future plans - to make use of newly open data around public transportation. Thus far, MassDOT has placed special emphasis on creating mobile technologies to improve user experiences and increase usage of the city's bus, subway and commuter rail lines. (Livable Streets' calendar of community events is here.)

MassDOT Developers Presentation to the ABC TMA

In the past, Boston has been marked as a notoriously poor biking city, but MassBike is working to change all that. In July, Boston received $3M in federal funding for its planned bike-sharing program.

Lead analyst on this study: Marina Miloslavsky

*Privacy Policy: Latitude reserves the right to use submitted content for research purposes and to publish openly on aggregate results in the spirit of knowledge-sharing. By request, Latitude will refrain from citing your name when publishing specific qualitative data, but reserves the right to publish any photographic and audio/video content submitted for the study, which may, in certain cases, contain identifying information. During the course of this study your information may also be visible to other participants for purposes of allowing interaction with contributed content. Content that may be shared includes photographic and audio/video content, online message boards and chats, and submitted written content. Latitude values your privacy and will never sell - or otherwise distribute - your personal information to third parties.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Tech for Transit: Designing a Future System" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Brian Conry. To subscribe to Latitude's open innovation news, click here.

Bike lane photo by JASON ANFINSEN; biker by richardmasoner; Transbay Transit Center by Speaker Pelosi
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Study: Digital Publishing Subscriptions to Reach $3B by 2014

Chris Cameron — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:00:00 -0800

Ever since the release of Apple's iPad, the only device making a significant impact in the tablet market, many have speculated about the possibilities for the the future of the publishing industry. Back in June we mentioned the early success seen by magazines and newspapers like Wired and the Financial Times, and more recently, the Flipboard app has iPad users drooling. With these trends in mind, a new study released today by Next Issue Media predicts that $3 billion will be spent on electronic publication subscriptions by 2014.
]]> Next Issue Media is a consortium of digital publishers consisting of Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time, Inc. The study, which surveyed 1,800 U.S. customers, also found that while electronic subscriptions will rise, traditional print subscriptions - like newspapers and magazines - will suffer from "cannibalization". With that, it estimates a net gain of roughly $1.3 billion in revenue to publishers over the next three years.

According to the study, customers are 9% more likely to renew a subscription if an interactive edition is available, and 30% of those renewing chose a bundled option with print and digital editions. Additionally, uptake among "device-owning non-subscribers" tripled from 5% to 15% with the presence of interactive editions in online stores.

This data shows that the digital publishing industry is indeed growing and attracting new subscribers from traditional print media. Many view digital editions to be supplementary to the print versions, and advertisers are keen on the ability of users to buy items directly from ads in digital publications, the study finds.

In terms of demographics, the study showed largely equal growth in interest for digital subscriptions among both men and women, as well as across all age groups. This just goes to show that, yes, readers do indeed want interactivity with their subscriptions and are enjoying the added functionality.

"The landscape for digitally distributing magazines and newspapers is about to rapidly change," said Martin Kon of Oliver Wyman, who helped Next Issue Media conduct the survey. "Our Future Marketplace Simulation shows significant consumer enthusiasm for interactive periodicals that offer enhanced features, personalization, multimedia content and optimized layout and navigation."

In other words, if you build it (better), they will come. This seems obvious but digital publications are still only growing at a slow pace. This will be bolstered by the wave of tablet devices likely to hit the market in the wake of the iPad. Android and webOS tablet devices continue to be rumored alongside the possibility of a "BlackPad" from RIM - all which could make for an interesting market for publishers.
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Where Else in the World Will Kids Think to Put the Web? [VIDEO]

Kim Gaskins — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:15:00 -0800

Latitude and ReadWriteWeb recently published a two-part results series on our open innovation study, "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet," which asked kids 6-12 years of age to ideate future Web technology concepts.

Latitude created this video to sum up the study's key findings and big pathways for research, innovation and the future of the Web.
]]>
Latitude 42 Study Findings: Where Else Will Kids Think to Put the Web in the World? from latddotcom

The results discussion focused on the myriad ways in which kids are bringing digital into the physical world - to enhance interactions with everyday objects, spaces, and social activities. As the study's lead analyst, Jessica Reinis, summed things up: "Currently, we have the 'iGeneration' understanding of device as simply an extension of oneself - and we still think that's pretty novel. But kids are showing us that the next step will be exactly the converse of that. It'll be a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere."

Download a PDF of the study summary

If there was any doubt that children are excellent innovators, some recent technology developments are corroborating kids' projections into the digital future. For example, MIT's Fluid Interfaces Group is working on a "food printer" that realizes a concept submitted by one of our study participants.

I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real." Joanna*, Age 10

Of course, MIT got a bit more sophisticated with its prototypes, but we were heartily impressed with the predictive power of our 6-12 year-old innovators.

"Each one [of the three concept designs] addresses a fundamental process that lies at the heart of cooking, namely the mixing of ingredients; the physical and chemical transformation of these ingredients into new compounds; and finally their modeling into aesthetically pleasing and delectable textures and shapes. Our hope is that these designs will provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy."Cornucopia: Concept Designs for a Digital Gastronomy, MIT Media Lab

To see what our other participants created, check out the two-part study results series here:
"The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth"

"Creation and Design: What Kids Want From Tech"

Latitude currently has other initiatives underway to extend its future technology ideation research with kids, including a second phase of the present study. This iteration will also include children from across the globe; however, it will place a more concentrated focus on children in specific regions, including Latin America, Asia and Africa. The aim of this second study is to investigate cross-cultural similarities and differences, and to tap into more diverse perspectives on Web-based innovation. (Check life-connected.com in the coming weeks for study-related news.)

*Name has been changed to protect the participant's privacy.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

Video created in collaboration with designomotion.
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So-Called "Digital Natives" Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows

Sarah Perez — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:18:06 -0800

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.
]]> "I Googled It"
During the study, one of the researchers asked a study participant, "What is this website?" The student answered, "Oh, I don't know. The first thing that came up."

That exchange sums up the overall results from this study: many students trusted in rankings above all else. In fact, a quarter of the students, when assigned information-seeking tasks, said they chose a website because - and only because - it was the first search result.

Only 10% of the students made mention of the site's author or that author's credentials while completing tasks. However, in reviewing the screen-capture footage of those respondents, the researchers found that even in this supposedly savvy minority, none actually followed through to verify the identification or qualifications of the site's authors.

Google was not the only search engine used in the study, but it was one in which the students put a lot of trust. The students felt emotionally tied to the service in some cases, noting how much they loved it and depended on it. (Those who used Yahoo! said they merely "liked" it.)

Regardless the choice of search engine, though, the first step in information-seeking was always the use of such a service, which was typically referred to as a verb. And yes, in addition to "google it," some even said they would "yahoo it."

Wikipedia Not Trusted as Much

Another interesting finding from the study involved the use of Wikipedia. Perhaps because of teachers' insistence over the years that the user-generated encyclopedia is not a credible source of information, only a third of the students used Wikipedia to search for answers when given particular tasks. This is a drop from earlier studies (like Raine & Tancer, 2007) which showed Wikipedia use at 46% among students.

Other popular trusted sources included SparkNotes (a study guide site), WedMD, Planned Parenthood, CNN, BBC, Microsoft (specifically Encarta and Office-related resources) and those sites with a .gov or .edu extension. Some students even thought that .org domain name meant a site was inherently trustworthy - they weren't aware that the .org extension can be freely registered just like .com and is not for nonprofit use only, as may have originally been intended.

Students Need Media Literacy Education

Over 1,000 students were surveyed and then the researchers randomly sampled 102 students from 1,060 students who had participated in the survey. The demographics of the group were both ethnically and racially diverse, reaching a representative sample of first-year college students at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

In summary, the findings showed that students are not always turning to the most relevant clues to determine the credibility of online content, said the researchers Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino and Kristen Yates Thomas. Further initiatives that help educate people in this domain are needed, they claim.
Note: This article was corrected to read "University of Illinois, Chicago," not "University of Chicago." The original student count details were also clarified: 1,060 students were surveyed, but 102 were activity monitored. We apologize for the error and confusion.

Image credit in original article: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer
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Creation & Design: What Kids Want From Tech

Guest Author — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:45:00 -0800

Yesterday, we posted part one of the findings for "Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet" (PDF summary), an open innovation study by Latitude Research and ReadWriteWeb. The study asked children aged 12 and under to illustrate their ideas for new Web and computer technologies.

In our previous post, we looked at the findings from an interaction angle. We discussed how younger generations expect to have increasingly intuitive interactions with technology - and not just localized to swiping and tapping an iPad, but really moving things in the world of physical activity and objects. This represents "a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere," said Jessica Reinis, the analyst who headed up the study.
]]> Kim Gaskins is Director of Content Development at Latitude, an international research consultancy. Visit life-connected.com for other studies in Latitude's open innovation series.

Today's post will focus on a few other themes that stood out in the kids' "future requests" for technology and why we think they're worth acknowledging.

Confidence Through Creation and Creativity

Study participant, Dylan, age 6, killing time on his visit to Latitude HQ.

Download a PDF of the study summary. Part one of this series was published on July 7.
It's no surprise that gaming is popular with kids. But creation and design? Yep - unsung favorites. Thirty one percent of technology ideas proposed by children were a tool or platform for creating something (a Web site, a game, a video to be shared, a physical object, etc.).

"Artistic creation and design were common underlying principles for a large subset of the kids' technology concepts, with truly incredible diversity across disciplines. Kids wanted to be 3D game designers, Web designers, fashion designers, landscape designers, industrial designers, musicians, 'traditional' artists - and then, of course, the study itself was an exercise in imaginative creation," said Reinis.

"I'd like to paint and draw right on the computer screen and have it show up." - Abby*, Age 8

"I'd like to make up my own video game." - Zack, Age 8

"I'd like computer games to learn about fashion designing." - Klara, Age 11

Per usual, MIT's Media Lab is doing great things. This time, it's providing the tech infrastructure to help kids create. It devised a simple language called Scratch that kids aged 8 and older can use to make interactive animations, annotated stories, games, music and art. Through an external sensor kit, media created using Scratch can interact with everyday objects such as pencils or water.

This study suggests there's more opportunities to build and extend environments like Scratch (especially ones that are conversant with the physical world) as children's offerings. (And, of course, when given these types of generative tools for ideation purposes, kids can contribute real value to innovation processes.)

Interestingly, kids' drive to create - and the expectation that technology will assist creative expression - was highly under-acknowledged by parents. When we asked participants' parents outright what their children's favorite computer activities were, only 7% chose some form of creation or design as an option while, not surprisingly, 70% selected gaming. By contrast, children's own inventions revealed artistic design as a close second to gaming.

Selection of themes coded in children's drawings (n=126)

The Social World is Growing - and Shrinking?

Social networking was especially popular amongst 10- to 12-year-olds, who contributed 56% of all socially-enabling innovations. What's more, some participants expressed a desire to expand their social spheres beyond family and friends; they wanted to meet children in far-distant locales (e.g. remotely through immersive "chat" environments).

"I want to video kids on the other side of the world using a different kind of language." - Emma, Age 7

"Continuous connectivity to people and information via the Web is the norm for many kids today, and it seems to be making them feel more capable and independent - making life opportunities feel closer at hand," said Reinis. They can look up any piece of information on Wikipedia in real-time, they can self-learn with sophisticated, interactive games, and they can even video chat international language partners on Skype for free - and many of them want to do these things.

"We see this drive to experience the world at large and the drive to express oneself in it as symptoms of a much larger phenomenon - a special brand of confidence - which we're calling 'digital optimism'," she continued. For kids today, the world, ironically, feels smaller and more accessible - just as their awareness of its size, diversity, and possibility is increasing.

*The names of some of the children have been changed to protect the participants' privacy. In select cases, participant drawings may be modified solely for the purposes of removing identifying information (e.g. the participant's name).

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.
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Facebook Video Ads Win Over Gamers with Virtual Currency

Chris Cameron — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:20:00 -0800

With a population approaching half of a billion users, if Facebook was its own nation it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India. With that in mind, it's no surprise that secondary activities on Facebook - like viewing videos - can still produce high rankings for the site that compete with the likes of Hulu and YouTube. One of the ways users on Facebook view video is through advertisements, and a recent study by TubeMogul revealed some interesting stats on which ones worked, and why.
]]> TubeMogul studied the various forms of video advertising displayed throughout Facebook, including in-banner video, interstitial and virtual currency ads. Virtual currency ads are served to gamers who receive points or virtual money within a game in return for completing them, and they turned out to be one of the best methods of attracting traffic.

You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

According to the study, around 43% of virtual currency ad viewers completed the entire ad, and roughly 52% watched at least three quarters of the ad. These numbers just barely inch out those of in-banner and interstitial ads, but where the virtual currency ads excel is in click-through and share rate. By rewarding viewers for completing ads, advertisers see a click-through rate double that of in-banner ads and over 5 times that of interstitial ads. Users share these ads on Facebook and Twitter roughly 50% more than in-banner ads and around 6 times more than interstitial ads.

Additionally, virtual currency ads are watched 6 seconds longer than in-banner ads on average, and nearly 5 times longer than interstitial ads. The most intriguing statistic from the study, especially for advertisers, is the price of these ads compared to how long they are watched. The study found that virtual currency ads average $0.22 per minute viewed, nearly identical to the $0.23 cost for interstitial ads. In-banner ads, on the other hand, averaged $6.27 per minute viewed.

How Facebook Ads Stack Up Against Web Benchmarks

But how do these Facebook ads compare to ads placed outside of the site. TubeMogul used an off site benchmark to gauge the advantage or disadvantage of using Facebook for video ads. The study found that Facebook users are nearly twice as likely to finish watching ads than they would outside of the site, but click-throughs for the benchmark ads were higher than in-banner and interstitial Facebook ads. Virtual currency and in-banner ads are watched between 9 and 15 seconds longer than offsite ads, but the offsite ads tend to be better value to advertisers than many Facebook-based ads.

Targeting Ads at User Behaviors

User behavior seems to play a large role in determining which Facebook video ads work the best. By rewarding game players with virtual currency, advertisers see higher click-throughs, longer watch times and higher value from their ads. Interstitial ads, which pop up as users navigate through games and apps, garner just a fraction of the view time and click-through rate despite being cheaper to implement.

Interstitial ads seem obtrusive to users since they only appear at the exact moment a user has clicked to navigate from one screen to another, so it makes sense that users close them quickly in frustration. By offering Facebook users with rewards for watching videos at their own discretion, advertisers attain much higher view times and click-throughs.
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Pew Claims Over 99% of Social Media News Links are to MSM

Curt Hopkins — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:30:00 -0800

See below for response from Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism

"More than 99% of the stories linked to in blogs came from legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. And just four - the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post accounted for fully 80% of all links."

This is one of the assertions in the latest report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "New Media, Old Media."
]]> The data the report is based comes from the New Media Index and the News Coverage Index. Pew describes the former as "a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to coverage in the mainstream press."

This figure seems wildly out of sync with the admittedly non-statistical experience of the editorial staff at ReadWriteWeb.

No Original News on Twitter?

Another surprising finding was about original news on Twitter. According to the study, there was no original news at all on Twitter.

"Here half (50%) of the links were to legacy outlets; 40% went to web-only news sources such as Mashable and CNET. The remaining 10% went to wire stories or non-news sources..."

Pew used the term "links" here, though earlier in the report they ask, "What types of news stories do consumers share and discuss the most?" Have they limited their discussion of Twitter solely to Tweets with links? It is a common way of sharing news on Twitter, but not the only way. ReadWriteWeb has reported several times on not just news reporting but breaking news on Twitter.

Questions to Pew about these figures and their sources were not returned by posting time. We will add an update when and if they are.

A Difference in Emphasis

Which stories were deemed most important differed between mainstream media and social media and between types of social media.

"Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda - the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied. On YouTube, the top stories overlapped with traditional media eight out of 49 weeks. "

Of all the social media covered in the study, YouTube had the most international focus. The report states that 26% of the news videos watched were of non-U.S. events. But the most-watched videos were not of "the most important or pressing topic of the week, but rather what image or video was the most interesting to view."

Examples included Susan Boyle on "Britain's Got Talent" (the most popular video during one week in June and viewed 100 million times in less than a month) and a drunk bus driver endangering students.

Update

We received this email response from Pew's Tom Rosenstiel.

The blogs looked at are the ones that are tracked by the prominent blog-tracking sites Icerocket and Technorati. They follow millions of blogs each day, so no complete list would be possible.
As we described in our methodology, we collected the articles that were most linked to on blogs that made the top five lists on Icerocket and Technorati each weekday. Of those, 99% were from legacy outlets as you noted.

Also, as we noted in the report, we relied on the "news" categorization that Icerocket and Technorati used. We made no judgment as to whether a story was considered news versus some other type of story.

It also made no difference what the type of blog was making the link. It only mattered what the story was that they linked to - so if a knitting blog, for example, linked to a Washington Post story about the deficit, that would have been included.

Your own experience may be different depending on the blogs or social media you follow, of course. This is a quantitative statistical analysis over far more material than one person would encounter.

Some have argued that Technorati has been a less than robust source for social media information for some time. Icerocket has recently show signs of substantial re-invigoration but was on the fade for a while.

The relationship between social media and traditional media is a strong one, a reality that should be pretty clear for anyone involved in both. The way that the study was done, however, focusing on a slice of a slice of a slice, may make it less indicative of the state of that relationship as a whole than it might seem at first blush.
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The Fate of the Semantic Web

Curt Hopkins — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:30:00 -0800

This month, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project released a study on the semantic Web. The Web will get smarter. It will become more useful. But will the "semantic Web" become the reality that many envision?

Lee Rainie of Pew and Janna Quitney Anderson of Elon University's Imagining the Internet project asked 895 experts to "predict the likely progress toward achieving the goals of the semantic web by the year 2020."
]]> Some 47% agreed with the statement: "By 2020, the semantic web envisioned by Tim Berners‐Lee will not be as fully effective as its creators hoped and average users will not have noticed much of a difference."
Some 41% agreed with the opposite statement, which posited: "By 2020, the semantic web envisioned by Tim Berners‐Lee and his allies will have been achieved to a significant degree and have clearly made a difference to average internet
users."

Among the more interesting results to me is how "critics noted that human uses of language are often illogical, playfully misleading, false or nefarious, thus human semantics can never be made comprehensible to machines."

How much of the "tedium" of, well, human understanding, can machines take away? How much would we want them to? I'm not alone in asking this. Two gentlemen with appreciably more confidence have addressed the question: Cory Doctorow and Clay Shirky. The latter said the semantic Web "requires too much coordination and too much energy to effect in the real world, where deductive logic is less effective and shared worldview is harder to create than we often want to admit."

On the other side of the semantic aisle is Bryan Trogdon, president of The Semantic Group, who declared that "within the next 10 years, the semantic web will take us from the age of information to the age of knowledge. Simple tools and services will allow individuals, corporations and governments to quickly glean meaning from the vast amounts of data they have compiled."

O brave new world! That has such self-organizing data in't!

The lists of respondents, pro and con, are extremely readable, though a reader will probably find one table-slappingly accurate and the other either a seaweed dance of credulous dreaminess or a dramatic monologue of surly nay-saying. (In other words, it's super fun.)

Hence loathed melancholy... Hence vain deluding joyes...
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study - ReadWriteWeb

Study Suggests Content Matters On Twitter

One More Smartphone Woe: Social Networking Stress [STUDY]

You Are What You Like (And Not What Your Friends Like) On Facebook [STUDY]

Study: Twitter's Early Growth Relied On Geographic Proximity

From the Mouths of Babes: The Future of Tech is Robots and Real World Integration

Study: Kids Are the Road to Tech Innovation

Only 66% Use Twitter Profile Location Field as Intended, Says PARC Research Study

66% Report Location, but That Doesn't Mean "City, State"

Location: "Justin Bieber's Heart:" Jokes and Other Sentiment Found in Location Field

Tech for Transit: What Happens if You Give Up Your Car For a Week?

Owning a Car Ain't So Great Anyways

Central Study Questions:

The Gist

Why Participate?

Requirements*

Why Boston and San Francisco?

San Francisco

Boston

Study: Digital Publishing Subscriptions to Reach $3B by 2014

Where Else in the World Will Kids Think to Put the Web? [VIDEO]

So-Called "Digital Natives" Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows

Wikipedia Not Trusted as Much

Students Need Media Literacy Education

Creation & Design: What Kids Want From Tech

Confidence Through Creation and Creativity

The Social World is Growing - and Shrinking?

Facebook Video Ads Win Over Gamers with Virtual Currency

You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

How Facebook Ads Stack Up Against Web Benchmarks

Targeting Ads at User Behaviors

Pew Claims Over 99% of Social Media News Links are to MSM

The Fate of the Semantic Web