Captivating Connections.

sorry kevin bacon: we're all a little bit closer now.

Thanks to Facebook's 721 million active users, we're now all a bit closer than 6 degrees...

According to Facebook, we are now globally connected by 4.74 degrees.

Check out the logic here.

is your brain wired 'differently'?

Time Inc. recently took part in an incredibly cool-sounding neuroscience research projust, working with neuroscientists who wired two groups of consumers (Millennials and Boomers) with biometric technologies that track how their brains respond to media consciously and unconsciously throughout their day.

What did they find?

While final data from the study won't be released until early 2012, "a glimpse of preliminary findings from two respondents - Rachel, a 23-year-old 'digital native,' and Dan, a 47-year-old 'digital immigrant' - suggests it will reveal profound differences in the way generations process media. Rachel, who cannot live without her smartphone, incessantly multitasks media options, and could care less about television, averaged more emotional engagement, but fewer 'peaks' and 'valleys' of intensity compared with Dan, a 'digital immigrant' who could care less about his smartphone, loves TV, and didn't exhibit one instance of media multitasking in the day he was observed consuming media."

So, what is the value in this research?

"Both Rachel and Dan are part of a longer-term study that is following two simultaneous groups of Millennials and Boomers around throughout their media days, with each respondent equipped with a combination of unobtrusive biometric sensors tracking their heart rates, breathing, sweating, as well as a light point-of-view camera that can show and tell what media they are looking at. Those physiological data correlate to unconscious, emotional responses to the media they are exposed to, which is followed up by two in-person interviews, one aided by biometric testing."

there's a reason data is getting prettier

If Intel's Museum of Me website has proven anything, it's that people like their data pretty and easy to digest. But this speaks to something greater going on...

"Intel is not the first marketer to pipe a fire hose of data into a visualization tool to delight its consumers; it follows Nike Plus, as well as Sprint, General Electric and Fiat as brands that have used a stream of information reformatted to be easy on the eyes.

It's all a sure sign that data, once the domain of geeks and scientists, has now infiltrated visual style. We share infographics on The New York Times website and delight at the Sprint Now Network widget -- even while the marketer's moved away from the tagline in its commercials, the online widget still tells there are more than 75,000 subscribers using its GPS.

'It's less that consumers are more educated about data today, but now they're used to consuming it,' said Tye Rattenbury, data scientist for R/GA, the digital agency that recently launched its own data-visualization department to make the discipline a larger part of its client work. "Think of it as a shift in style."

While marketers are just beginning to package the reams of complicated data now available -- Facebook accounts for Intel, health statistics for GE or car performance for Fiat's Eco:Drive application -- startups and technology companies have led the way in transforming data from marketing prop and resource for sales pitches to actual products and services for consumers."

nielsen going into the brains of consumers.

....literally AND figuretively!

This morning, Nielsen-backed NeuroFocus "unveiled a new biometric measurement technology it claims will revolutionize the way Madison Avenue thinks about how it's consumers think. NeuroFocus claims the technology, a cap-like device that can read the brainwaves of people who wear it, will leapfrog current methods of neurological testing, because it is lightweight, mobile and 'medical grade.'"

How cool/crazy is that?

 

insight into teen groupthink (or why teens do stupid things).

Ever wonder why Teens make some ridiculous decisions, especially when seemingly "under the influence" of their friends?

"Scientists, who know the reason goes beyond peer pressure, are looking for causes rooted in the brain to explain how the decision-making process differs when teens are in groups.

Temple University researchers may have a piece to add to the puzzle. In an experiment, teens and adults were asked to play a video game in which they drove a car and had to decide whether to stop or speed through intersections with oncoming traffic.

When teenagers had friends watching from another room, they were more likely to speed through. Psychology professor Jason Chein, who helped run the experiment, said there was a difference even though teens did not talk to each other while they were making the decisions.

'Simply the awareness that you were being observed by  peers, if you were an adolescent, influenced decisions about risk and the activity of underlying brain systems,' Chein said.

Brain scans taken during the experiment showed the reward center in the teens' brains lit up as they made decisions while their friends watched, leading them to make more risky decisions. This is a preliminary finding, and Chein said more research needs to be done to determine why the difference exists.

It may be that kids are anticipating how cool they will seem after pulling off something perceived as risky. But it could be that simply being with friends sensitizes those reward centers, making the reward part of the brain yell louder than the part urging caution during split-second decision making."

 

mad (social media) scientists at work.

The New York Times Magazines has an incredible article on how social scientists (PS - how cool of a job is THAT!?) have started using social networking data to gauge larger trends in public perception.

The idea of Social Media as Social Index isn't super new, but it's super cool, especially the way they're taking it.

And to think, you didn't believe those 140 characters you tweeted were that important for the greater good.

are you depriving your brain of downtime?

"In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas."

So by supposedly improving our working capacity are we denying ourselves creativity and memory?

According to UCSF's Loren Frank, assistant professor in the physiology department at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory, "'almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories.'...He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, 'you prevent this learning process.'"

the latest kidlet/teen mobile stats.

"According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 66% of US children and teens ages 8 to 18 had a mobile phone as of 2009.

Turning wide ownership into wide marketing opportunities may be difficult, however. Companies must take into account extra privacy and safety considerations when it comes to minors, and young people who view their mobile phones as devices for personal communications may not welcome marketing messages.

In addition, most children and teens are still using feature phones, so relatively few can be reached through more sophisticated mobile advertising such as via the mobile internet or smartphone apps. Just 14% of moms surveyed by Q Interactive in January 2010 said their kids had a smartphone.

The future lies in smartphones, but for now mobile marketing efforts directed toward kids and teens will have to focus on feature phones. Texting is best for driving immediate actions, but also has its drawbacks."

are you hooked on tech?

Do we really need a Techie Anonymous thanks to the "deluge of data" constantly attacking us (or being invited in by us)?

"Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for millions of people like Mr. Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers.

'The technology is rewiring our brains,' said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world’s leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.

Technology use can benefit the brain in some ways, researchers say. Imaging studies show the brains of Internet users become more efficient at finding information. And players of some video games develop better visual acuity."

However...

"The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco.

'We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” he said. “We know already there are consequences.'”

all about techie early adaptors (& their impact on your biz).

We know that over 1 million iPads were sold in the first month. Crazy, right? Not to those who willfully and happily ponied up the time and cash to be among the first to own the gadget.

So why are these early adaptors so important?

"What is truly remarkable about this surge in consumption is that early adopters — those who simply have to own a new gadget right away — cheerfully exhibited what might seem to be irrational behavior. These ardent consumers will stand in long lines, if that’s what it takes, to get an overpriced gadget ahead of everyone else they know.

A tough lesson about buying early could have been learned by the iPhone’s first buyers back in 2007. Those early adopters paid $600 for a phone. Two months later, Apple dropped the price to $400. Then, in June 2009, it introduced a better version, with twice the storage, for $200, one-third the original’s price.

So how do early adopters justify their actions? Let’s look first at what they say. Often, they claim that they actually got a bargain."

Yep. A. Bargain. That $600+ iPad? A STEAL!

"Of course, it’s not easy for a consumer to know what a product is really worth. Sure, within a few days of the debut of the iPad, which, in its most basic version, cost $500, analysts at iSuppli had taken it apart and calculated the value of its parts at $260. That provides a floor; you wouldn’t expect Apple to sell it that cheaply yet.

But the early adopter is looking for a ceiling, which Apple kindly provided. When it announced the imminent sale of the first iPad series, it also said a second would be coming soon — costing $130 more for each model. The new series’ most expensive version, which includes 64 gigabytes of storage and connects to AT&T's cell network, costs $830. That gives consumers a reference point, which marketers call a price anchor. It helps convince people they’ll 'save' by spending anything less than $830.

Economics professors may say that such behavior is irrational, but that doesn’t mean it makes no sense. People who stand in lines for the latest product may be buying it for what it conveys about them to others, says Jonah Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

That’s true of music, clothes and cars, but not so true of dishwasher soap. Tech gadgets fall in between those extremes, he says. A new gadget can be a fashion item — a revelation that Apple embraced long ago.

Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University and the author of a new book, 'The Upside of Irrationality,' has studied why earlier adopters do what they do. “It’s not about the cost-benefit analysis,' he says. And rarely is it a successful calculation of higher productivity, though many a person has tried to justify purchases of expensive toys that way."