Who Cares What Everyone Else Thinks?

Few products today launch without a social media strategy?a way of creating online buzz around whatever's being sold. The widespread belief is that people influence other people to buy products. A new study from MIT researchers, to be published in PloS One, suggests that this influence has its limits.

"We don't know what we mean when we say 'social influence,' " says Coco Krumme, one of the researchers involved with the work. She suggests that it's important to get a more specific idea of what kinds of social cues actually affect others' behavior.

By studying a body of information about music-downloading behavior, Krumme and colleagues Galen Pickard and Manuel Cebrian found that social cues could influence people to listen to samples of songs, but not necessarily to download them. They also suggested that the influence of social factors on a song's popularity diminishes over time, meaning that songs that rise to the top of download lists do that because they're better than ones that don't.

The researchers worked with a body of data from the MusicLab, a study several years ago that examined how social cues influenced the popularity of songs. In the MusicLab study, about 14,000 people were presented with 48 songs. They could sample the tracks, and if they liked the music, they could take the additional step of downloading them. The original researchers divided the people into groups and experimented with different ways of giving people information about what others were doing with the same songs.

Which songs became most popular varied a great deal, depending on the social interactions around them, explains Matthew Salganik, an assistant professor in the department of sociology at Princeton University, who was involved with the original study. Salganik says that luck played an enormous role in the success of songs. Those that became popular right away had a huge advantage over the others, and the social factors in the study tended to make the rich (the most popular tracks) get richer.

Salganik believes that people look to others for cues because of the overload of choices available. "You could listen to music nonstop for the rest of your life without getting through it all," he says. "The simplest shortcut is to listen to what other people are listening to."

But the MIT group took another look at the MusicLab's data and tried to explain more specifically how people were influenced. They found that social cues did increase the probability that someone would give a song a chance. However, the main factor in whether someone downloaded a song was whether the person had listened to it. A social recommendation didn't increase the chance that a person would give the song deeper attention. In other words, a social recommendation could make you try something. But once you try it, you aren't any more likely to buy it than if you had originally tried it on your own, without a recommendation.

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Fractured Democrats Keep Pelosi as Leader

Ms. Pelosi, who will hand over the speaker?s gavel at the beginning of the new Congress in January when Republicans assume control, defeated Representative Heath Shuler, a conservative from North Carolina, by a vote of 150 to 43. On an earlier vote that some Democrats framed as a proxy on Ms. Pelosi, her supporters beat back an effort to delay the leadership showdown to allow more review of the election by 129 to 68.

Her ability to prevail after a severe midterm drubbing showed deep loyalty among elements of her caucus for the work Ms. Pelosi did to first win and then hold the majority for four years. But the votes for Mr. Shuler and, more tellingly, the substantial support for delaying the election were evidence that Ms. Pelosi is now the leader of a fractured caucus and could have difficulty retaining the tight control she has had on House Democrats in recent years.

After the vote, Ms. Pelosi spelled out why she thought her colleagues were willing to keep her at the top even after Republicans won at least 61 Democratic seats on Nov. 2

?Because I?m an effective leader, because we got the job done on health care and Wall Street reform and consumer protection ? the list goes on,? she said. ?Because they know that I?m the person that can attract the resources, both intellectual and otherwise, to take us to victory because I have done it before.?

On the Republican side, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio was, as expected, picked as the new majority?s candidate for speaker, virtually assuring him of the highest office in the House when the 112th Congress convenes on Jan. 5. He won the right to be the nation?s 61st speaker on his 61st birthday and, adding to the numerological coincidence, the day House Republicans picked up their 61st seat in the election. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia will serve as majority leader for the Republican Party.

But the chief focus was on the elections in the Democratic ranks, given the steep losses that occurred on Ms. Pelosi?s watch and the public sentiment expressed by more than two dozen Democrats that she should step aside.

Ms. Pelosi, 70, a San Francisco liberal who was first elected minority leader in 2002, became a favorite foil in Republican advertising as the party sought to tie Democratic candidates to her ideology. Moderate lawmakers joined others in the caucus in arguing that Democrats need a new leader if they are to win back the majority in 2012, pointing particularly to difficulties they could have in recruiting candidates in the more conservative districts they will need to take back.

?It?s time for new leadership after the worst electoral defeat since 1948,? said Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee.

Some of the Democrats defeated this month counseled strongly against keeping Ms. Pelosi, and one did not mince words. ?Have they lost their minds?? asked Representative Allen Boyd, a defeated Democrat, as he passed by the Cannon Caucus Room, where the election was occurring.

But her allies said Ms. Pelosi was the party?s best fund-raiser, had been unfairly maligned by Republicans who saw her as too effective and merited the loyalty of House Democrats whom she had led to the promised land of the majority in 2006 after 14 years out of power .

?How can we fold on this woman when she is not folding on us?? Representative Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania asked his colleagues in the closed-door meeting, according to officials present.

Representative Xavier Becerra, a Pelosi ally from California, said, ?She has led us, and she has led us to historic heights.?

Mr. Shuler said that he never expected to win but that he wanted to give his colleagues an opportunity to express their opposition. He said his support exceeded his expectations.

?There was a lot of unrest in the room,? said Mr. Shuler, who said he did not intend to vote for Ms. Pelosi as speaker during a formal roll-call vote at the start of the new Congress. Other conservative Democrats said they would vote for Mr. Shuler instead of Ms. Pelosi even though members of the minority party traditionally vote for their leader in what is a formality.

Supporters of Ms. Pelosi acknowledged the division among House Democrats but said she had the strong backing of most of them. They predicted the issue would fade in the coming weeks.

?When you lose like that, there is no clear answer,? Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said of the midterms. ?But I don?t think this will be on anyone?s radar screen very long.?

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Blog - Twist 'n' Bend

White House Memo: An Electoral Upheaval, but Few Signs of Change

The Thursday meeting is now off ? pushed back to Nov. 30 after the Republicans complained that the White House had not consulted them about their schedule ? and the arms treaty, which faces stiff Republican opposition, is in jeopardy. Two weeks after a midterm election that both sides interpreted as a mandate to change the way Washington does business, little, it seems, has changed.

Just how little was underscored on Wednesday when the two parties finished electing their leaders for the new Congress ? the very same people, including Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who will go from speaker to the House minority leader, who have spent the past two years at one another?s throats.

For Mr. Obama, who has promised ?midcourse corrections,? the developments are a stark reminder of just how difficult it will be to change the dynamic in Washington. While he was in Asia, top aides back in Washington sketched out their postelection agenda ? and came up with a relatively narrow list of items that might win Republican cooperation, including revamping President George W. Bush?s landmark education bill and extending certain business tax credits. The White House also sees an opportunity to work with Republicans to cut the pet projects known as earmarks. Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama?s communications director, described the White House as ?hopeful but not naïve.?

But other Democrats say the president must come up with an aggressive strategy to put himself back in the driver?s seat. If he cannot pass legislation, they say, he must use his executive authority and the force of his office to advance his agenda in ways that do not require Republican cooperation. The Center for American Progress, a research group with close ties to the administration, put out a report this week called ?The Power of the President? that sought to identify areas where Mr. Obama can bypass Congress.

The report suggests that Mr. Obama can act on a host of domestic and foreign issues, like conserving federal lands, carrying out the Small Business Jobs Act, promoting mediation for homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure and appointing a special envoy for the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, who could work with Yemen?s government on the terrorism threat there.

?He needs to rise above the definition of the presidency as just being a skirmish between Republicans and you,? said John D. Podesta, the president of the Center for American Progress and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. ?If he spends two years in the scrum with these guys, that?s what they want. He?s capable of doing things on his own without them.?

The White House has given no sign of any major postelection reorganization or personnel shakeup, and Mr. Obama?s aides have not tipped their hand about how they might address issues, like reducing the deficit or overhauling the tax code, that could offer opportunities for bipartisan compromise.

As president, Mr. Clinton reached deals on the budget, welfare and other issues with the Republican majority that swept Congress in 1994. But if Mr. Clinton?s experience is any guide, it will take Mr. Obama time to find his footing.

Mr. Clinton fumbled for months while the new speaker, Newt Gingrich, captured the public imagination with his 100-day agenda. It was not until the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, Mr. Clinton?s former aides say, that he was able above to rise above the partisan fray with a speech challenging the notion that government was a problem.

?That was big turning point for him,? said Pat Griffin, Mr. Clinton?s director of legislative affairs at the time. ?We built it as something that was bigger than this bad fight.?

Building legislative and political coalitions will be tricky in the current environment. The Tea Party movement is pulling Republicans to the right and warning against compromise. The remaining House Democrats are predominantly liberal and are pushing Mr. Obama to the left. There are few moderates left in either party.

If Mr. Obama is to build support, he must get out of Washington and take his case directly to the American people, said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. But, he said, the president cannot make that case in the intellectual way that he has in the past.

?The only chance he has of restoring his power is by going to the country,? Mr. Gelb said. ?He can rally the majority around common sense. And he can?t do it in the way he has in the past.?

It is no surprise that the two sides still seem dug in: both are figuring out strategy for the remainder of Mr. Obama?s first term as they head into the 2012 presidential campaign. Mr. Griffin said the shape of the legislative debate would become much clearer next year, when Mr. Obama outlines his budget ? a blueprint for his agenda ? and Republicans counter with theirs.

?The president will propose his budget; it will be dead on arrival if history is any predictor, and at some point there will be a debate about what is the world view of the Republicans and what is the world view of the Democrats,? Mr. Griffin said. ?This is a movie; it?s not a one-act play.?

The Democrats? decision to retain their Congressional leaders does not make it any easier for Mr. Obama. In 1994, Mr. Clinton faced a new crop of Republican and Democratic leaders, which made it easier for him to rebrand himself as willing to cast aside party allegiances. But Mr. Obama has already thrown his lot in with Ms. Pelosi and the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid.

And in another sign of how little the dynamic has changed, Republicans are reminding the White House of a tart exchange between Mr. Obama and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, from early in the administration. The two had clashed over the stimulus package, and Mr. Obama noted that elections have consequences and that he had won. Trent Lott, the former Senate Republican leader, said Republicans feel much the same way now.

?There was an election; they won,? Mr. Lott said of the Republicans, ?and they do expect a little more attention, a little more consideration.?

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Blog - Twist 'n' Bend

Thinking Outside the In-box

Search the Internet, and you'll find hundreds of applications designed to help you collaborate with other people more effectively. But examine your own habits, and you'll most likely find that you use just one piece of software for that purpose: an e-mail client.

You're not alone. A recent Forrester Research study found that 83 percent of business users typically send e-mail attachments to colleagues rather than using collaboration software. According to a recent survey by technology consulting company People-OnTheGo, the average information worker spends 3.3 hours a day dealing with e-mail, and 65 percent of such workers have their e-mail client open all the time.

Even Facebook, which once seemed like a likely replacement for e-mail, at least for the young and plugged-in, has acknowledged that e-mail isn't going anywhere. On Monday, the company announced a new messaging service that integrates external e-mail with its own internal messaging system?an admission of the staying power of e-mail, and an attempt to enhance its functionality.

Other software makers seem to have accepted that they'll never pull people's attention away from their e-mail in-boxes. Instead, they're looking to add new collaborative and social capabilities to e-mail.

"It's clear that e-mail is being used and even abused," says Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft, a company based in Tel Aviv, Israel, that sells a plug-in called Harmon.ie. The plug-in links an e-mail application to a collaboration platform such as Google Docs, and to a person's social networking profiles, calendar applications, voice over Internet protocol software, and so on. To share a document using Harmon.ie, a user drags it from a sidebar to the body of a message, where it becomes a link. When the recipient clicks on the link, she is taken to the document stored in the chosen collaboration software. Using e-mail alone for collaboration creates confusion and overloads in-boxes, Cohen says.

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How To: 6 Easy Tips to Become a HootSuite Ninja [TNW Lifehacks]

The web-based Twitter client HootSuite has been getting a lot of attention lately. I think the new iOS apps are pretty smokin?, but the web app is really the hub of HootSuite. I?ve been an on-and-off HootSuite user since the early beta days. Lately I?ve been back to using HootSuite as my primary tool most of the time, but I?ve always had this sneaking suspicion that I wasn?t tapping into all the power and features that HootSuite had to offer. Yeah, I was right.

Last week I sat down with Dave Olson, Dir of Community at HootSuite, to a little HootSuite schooling. Some HootSuite Ninja tips if you will. Dave showed me some awesome tricks and I had the Flip camera and Camtasia at the ready to record the lesson.

Here are the tips we talked about:

  • Searching with location so you only get the tweets close to you
  • Dragging and dropping into the message bar to start a tweet
  • Drag and drop to make and add to lists
  • Filtering columns by Klout score
  • Filtering columns with keywords
  • The presentation view (like this example for ?Harry Potter?

And now for the video?it?s about 20 mins, and I suggest you have HootSuite open in another tab or window so you can follow along:

In the video Dave talks about HootSuite for iPhone with geo-located search and the overlay map, here are shots from my iPhone with those examples:

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2010/11/20/how-to-6-easy-tips-to-become-a-hootsuite-ninja/

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How To: 6 Easy Tips to Become a HootSuite Ninja [TNW Lifehacks]

The web-based Twitter client HootSuite has been getting a lot of attention lately. I think the new iOS apps are pretty smokin?, but the web app is really the hub of HootSuite. I?ve been an on-and-off HootSuite user since the early beta days. Lately I?ve been back to using HootSuite as my primary tool most of the time, but I?ve always had this sneaking suspicion that I wasn?t tapping into all the power and features that HootSuite had to offer. Yeah, I was right.

Last week I sat down with Dave Olson, Dir of Community at HootSuite, to a little HootSuite schooling. Some HootSuite Ninja tips if you will. Dave showed me some awesome tricks and I had the Flip camera and Camtasia at the ready to record the lesson.

Here are the tips we talked about:

  • Searching with location so you only get the tweets close to you
  • Dragging and dropping into the message bar to start a tweet
  • Drag and drop to make and add to lists
  • Filtering columns by Klout score
  • Filtering columns with keywords
  • The presentation view (like this example for ?Harry Potter?

And now for the video?it?s about 20 mins, and I suggest you have HootSuite open in another tab or window so you can follow along:

In the video Dave talks about HootSuite for iPhone with geo-located search and the overlay map, here are shots from my iPhone with those examples:

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2010/11/20/how-to-6-easy-tips-to-become-a-hootsuite-ninja/

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