Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Ethnographers vs. Moderators: Know What You Are Buying | anthrostrategist – Ethnographers vs. Moderators: Know What You Are Buying
  The other day I was speaking with someone about ethnography and was informed by the person in question that she too was a “moderator.” She, of course, practiced ethnography, such as it is, and informed me she had been “moderating ethnographies” for years.  Yes, it made my skin crawl. Not because someone was crossing disciplinary boundaries, but because the choice of words told that ethnography was indeed the last thing she practiced, but had no doubt sold her self-defined ethnographic prowess into many a company. And unfortunately, this is precisely what continues to water down and cheapen the methodology and its use in business settings.

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Social Means Freedom, for Better or for Worse – Nilofer Merchant – HBR @nilofer (via @armano) – From a series of posts on how the Social Era will reward fast, fluid, flexible organizations. QUOTE: "This post is part of a series on the Social Era and answers the question: If you were going to design an organization from scratch today, what would you design for? And the answer is: nimbleness." …….. "What will it look like to lead an organization when only 5% of talent affecting output is directly on payroll, and others come and go? Organizations will not need to be big to have a big impact. But they will need an extremely clear purpose, and shared, decentralized power throughout. ………………. Work is freed. This changes not only how we work at the broadest levels — and how we organize every single part of our organizations — but what we make, how we produce and distribute it, and how we market and sell it. Is that scary? For many, yes. But, for better or worse, social is giving us this freedom. The question now is what we do with it." UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• India’s elite is blinded by a cultish belief in progress | Siddhartha Deb | Comment is free | The Guardian – QUOTE: The Hazare movement has since petered out, but its central idea, of the unique meritoriousness of the middle and upper classes of India, remains. It is an illusion, and it reminds me of the illusion among the middle and upper classes of another society, and that is the US. I live and teach in New York, where I've seen among my students (mostly white, just as elites in India tend to be mostly upper caste) and in the Occupy Wall Street movement an elite that has suddenly been forced to examine its notions of unique meritoriousness and endless prosperity. The lack of jobs in the US, something that earlier affected only those in manufacturing and the service industry, and therefore had an impact mostly on inner city African Americans, poor immigrants and rural whites, has now worked its way into the lives of the middle and upper classes, towards even people with expensive college degrees." UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Farmers using Facebook to discuss prices and plan strategy – The Economic Times – QUOTE: "Facebook farmers played a crucial role in stopping the auction and solving the problem," says Raghunath Ramachandra Patil, president, Shetkari Sangathana, a political party with farmer members. The small protest at Sangli may not be a patch on the social media-led 'Arab Spring', but it does point to the growing importance of social networking websites in the Indian countryside. From sharing critical information in real time to eliminating middlemen to opening up marketing opportunities for companies looking to tap rural consumers, social media is becoming a powerful tool of communication across India's 600,000 villages. Technology experts say the community has always been central to rural India and therefore its acceptance of social media tools is not surprising. "Community concept has always been prevalent in villages," says Asheesh Raina, analyst at technology research firm Gartner India." UNQUOTE
• Brilliant argument by @jeffjarvis: The temporary, pop-up corporation « BuzzMachine – QUOTE: "I have been arguing that vertical industries will be replaced by horizontal ecosystems made up of three layers: (1) platforms that enable (2) entrepreneurial ventures to be created at low cost and risk and (3) networks (e.g., ad networks) that, when needed, bring these ventures together to reach the critical mass that firms used to provide. Of course, enterprises today can start with no need to build factories (use someone else’s) or distribution (plenty of that, for now) or technology (use the cloud) or marketing (let your customers do it for you) or design (let your customers help) or retail outlets (they’re dying anyway) or capital (see above). We know that this new architecture of the economy means enterprises can be launched with less investment, risk, and effort." UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Can a 10-year-old sell you a bike? TOI – one reason why we’re doing Convo Kids (bit.ly/convokids) – QUOTE: "Advertising gurus are turning to kids to help them sell products to all you adults. Just how did tiny tots beat cricketing stars to land airtime, asks Purba Dutt" UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• How "frictionless sharing" is undermining the individual experience – essay by @evgenymorozov. The Death of the Cyberflâneur – The New York Times – QUOTE: "Something similar has happened to the Internet. Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore. The popularity of the “app paradigm,” whereby dedicated mobile and tablet applications help us accomplish what we want without ever opening the browser or visiting the rest of the Internet, has made cyberflânerie less likely…." UNQUOTE

  QUOTE: "According to Benjamin, the sad figure of the sandwich board man was the last incarnation of the flâneur. In a way, we have all become such sandwich board men, walking the cyber-streets of Facebook with invisible advertisements hanging off our online selves. The only difference is that the digital nature of information has allowed us to merrily consume songs, films and books even as we advertise them, obliviously." UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Stuck? Now stay connected: Use Facebook on your Mobile Without Internet or a Data Plan | thanks @labnol – It reminds me of the old days when I travelled overseas and had no data connection but could still chat with friends on Yahoo Messenger via an SMS number.

  QUOTE "Do you have an old mobile phone, like the Nokia 1100, that has no browser and can do little more than make phone calls? Or are you stuck in some remote place where there’s no Internet or no other form of data (EGDE/GPRS/3G) connectivity is available? Not a problem. You can still use your Facebook account in India by dialing *325# (or *fbk#) from your mobile phone – this service requires no data plan or Internet and it will even work on phones of the Stone Age. Here’s a quick tour:      
  UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• I don’t like it tho I kinda get where Twitter is coming from! Read @techsoc on why Twitter’s new policy is actually great – QUOTE "I know many people are upset with Twitter’s announcement that it will now be able to block tweets country by country. There has been a lot of excellent writing / reporting on the content explaining that this is not as bad as it looks. (Check out good posts by my friend Jillian York here or Alex Howard here). My initial reaction upon a cursory reading of the announcement was also that it wasn’t too bad, given the alternatives. However I’ve since looked at the policy in more detail and my conclusion is that this isn’t a mediocre but acceptable policy; rather, this is an excellent policy which will be helpful to free-speech advocates.

  I often criticize companies on this blog so I want to take a moment to recognize Twitter for a model policy and explain why these should be the kind of practices that I hope other Internet companies follow.

  In my opinion, with this policy, Twitter is fighting to protect free speech on Twitter as best it possibly can ….." UNQUOTE

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• Crowd dynamics: The wisdom of crowds | The Economist – Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. An experiment in 2009 tested the walking speeds of Germans and Indians by getting volunteers in each country to walk in single file around an elliptical, makeshift corridor of ropes and chairs. At low densities the speeds of each nationality are similar; but once the numbers increase, Indians walk faster than Germans. This won’t be news to anyone familiar with Munich and Mumbai, but Indians are just less bothered about bumping into other people.

  Another problem with assuming people act like particles is that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually in groups. That matters, as anyone trying to get past shuffling tourists knows. It also leads to some lovely fine-scale choreography when small groups are squeezed. ….

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• How we’ve changed! User experiences in reverse – mobile to desktop – Apple Pushes the Desktop Toward a Mobile Experience – Apple isn't the only company merging the experience of using the desktop with that of smaller devices. Microsoft is taking things even further. The next generation of their PC operating system, Windows 8, borrows heavily from mobile design and user experience concepts. It features a touch-friendly UI, a new breed of HTML5-driven applications and a relatively seamless user experience between smartphones, tablets and the desktops.
• troubled . India’s economy: Slip-sliding away | The Economist – EXPECTATIONS for India’s economic growth rate have been sliding inexorably. In the early spring there was still heady talk about 9-10% being the new natural rate of expansion, a trajectory which if maintained would make the country an economic superpower in a couple of decades. Now things look very different. The latest GDP growth figure slipped to 6.9% and industrial production numbers just released, on December 12th, showed a decline of 5.1% compared with the previous period, a miserable state of affairs. The slump looks broadly based, from mining to capital goods, and in severity compares with that experienced at the height of the financial crisis, in February 2009, when a drop of 7.2% took place. Bombast is turning to panic.

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• @sumants i love the "collective art" expression! The CST Flash Mob in Mumbai – but why? | Beast Of Traal.com – Another tweet response – from Sumant Srinivasan was more pragmatic and made sense to me – collective art. Yes, I quite buy the ‘collective art’ argument. It’s just that I’m not exposed to such philanthropic collective art to make people happy in India besides Lok Sabha TV that shows parliamentarians behave like kids.

  So, yes – it is a wonderful precedent that there are people like this in India who spend so much time, effort and money in creating collective art to make other people happy with only YouTube views as return on time/money invested. To be clear, I’m not deriding this effort – it is a damn good effort and the final video to communicate the effort is superbly produced and edited – lot of little nuances like people’s surprised expressions have been captured beautifully!

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• @sumants i love the "collective art" expression! The CST Flash Mob in Mumbai – but why? | Beast Of Traal.com – Another tweet response – from Sumant Srinivasan was more pragmatic and made sense to me – collective art. Yes, I quite buy the ‘collective art’ argument. It’s just that I’m not exposed to such philanthropic collective art to make people happy in India besides Lok Sabha TV that shows parliamentarians behave like kids.

  So, yes – it is a wonderful precedent that there are people like this in India who spend so much time, effort and money in creating collective art to make other people happy with only YouTube views as return on time/money invested. To be clear, I’m not deriding this effort – it is a damn good effort and the final video to communicate the effort is superbly produced and edited – lot of little nuances like people’s surprised expressions have been captured beautifully!

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• The Closed, Unfriendly World Of Wikipedia. A bit harsh, but we found Wikipedia image was a lil ‘cold’ in a study we did – http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mobile_Strategy_Research/India – Interesting perspective. We did research recently on Wikipedia in India and found it was seen as a little "cold" by a segment of users. Here's the report: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mobile_Strategy_Research/India

Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• A Case for Why Words Matter | Ad and Marketing Book [via @ Reviews – Advertising Age – QUOTE: "Mr. Shapiro's shift in nomenclature from the idea of customers — that is, buyers — to users is fundamentally valuable for two reasons. First, user is, frankly, more of a digital term, as opposed to a consumer-packaged-goods term. And CPG language has dominated the marketing vocabulary for decades. People use Google, Twitter and Facebook — they aren't customers of them. Mr. Shapiro's book is another signal of the cultural shift towards the digital in everything. We're no longer applying CPG terms to digital entities in order to understand them. We're applying digital terms to the CPG world, so that it functions better in the new reality.

  The second reason this is fundamentally valuable is it identifies a deeper kind of transaction: the word customer defines the relationship purely in the transactional terms of buying and selling. But buying does not solve the buyer's problem. They have to become a customer, so that they can then become a user."

• Facebook Study: It’s a Small(er) World After All | Epicenter | Wired.com – The concept of a tightly knit, interconnected world — one where an individual’s connection with another is within six degrees of separation — has been around for nearly half a century. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram published his findings in 1967, and has been a standby of sociology and pop culture alike ever since.

  It comes as little surprise, then, that the rise of social networks over the past decade has brought us even closer together. Facebook released two studies of its social graph on Tuesday, which conclude that we Facebookers are closer to one another than we thought.

  In collaboration with academic researchers at the Università degli Studi di Milano, Facebook’s study found that instead of the average of six degrees of separation between each of us, Facebook users are separated by an average of four degrees.