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Twitter’s Law of Unintended Consequences

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As I’ve outlined in a recent blog post, where Twitter has shown it has “legs” isn’t in the area most hyped by its founders.

As it turns out, “What are you doing?” hasn’t been much of a foundation for building a money-making social media platform. And in fact, the inevitable media backlash has now set in — even as the number of new Twitter users have begun to plateau and the majority of current members use the service hardly at all.

But hard on the heels of the Iranian and Moldovan unrest, in which Twitter played an important role facilitating the organizing of anti-government public demonstrations, comes another use of Twitter that few could have foreseen.

A recent article by Steven Sears in Barron’s Magazine outlines how Twitter is being used to affect the share price of stocks. According to Sears, “Before the market opens and throughout the trading day, Twitter lets you tap into market-moving news .. and link through attached URLs to more detailed analysis … You can control your information streams by deciding who to follow, and who can follow you.”

That’s hardly revolutionary behavior. But here’s the interesting part: By law, brokers must save instant messages and e-mail correspondence, but no such mandate exists for tweets on Twitter.

What this means is that some of the more sensitive information or speculation about a company makes it onto Twitter long before it’s broached elsewhere.

One example noted in the Sears article was Matrixx Initiatives, the manufacturer of Zicam nasel spray. Speculation that using Zicam might damage people’s sense of smell started to circulate on Twitter. The result? The stock price fell dramatically from $19 to $13 … and those following the news about Matrixx on Twitter were “in the know” a lot sooner than others.

So here we have yet another example of the unintended consequences of adopting new communications techniques. Twitter is effectively replacing instant messaging capabiliites — without the attendent legal paper-trail requirements.

I wonder what’s next?

Spam-a-lot? You Bet-a-lot.

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It’s no secret that corporate inboxes are stuffed with e-mail messages that are – let’s be kind here – unneeded or unwanted. And the latest report from anti-virus software maker Symantec Corporation confirms this in spades.

The report, covering April activity, claims that unsolicited e-mail makes up nearly 91% of messages on corporate networks. And it turns out this is nothing unusual, as earlier surveys have shown that spam makes up anywhere from 80% to 95% of all e-mail volume on the Internet.

So when you look at your own inbox, you might be pleased if your spam volume isn’t that high. And probably it isn’t, because corporate spam filters are blocking a big volume of e-messages before they ever hit your own inbox.

So where is all of this spam coming from? Symantec reports that nearly 60% of it comes from botnets, which are networks of hacked computers that can do all sorts of mischief – not only e-mailing spam, but also swiping financial information or launching cyber attacks. The “worst of the worst” are donbot spammers, which are computers that are available for rent on the black market. According to Symantec, those represent more than 18% of all spam e-mail volume.

But of course, nothing stays the same for long in the cyber environment. A new, even more alarming trend is being noted with an increase of non bot-driven spam. In those cases, spammers are renting legitimate network services (usually located offshore) and blasting huge amounts of spam at large individual Internet service providers. The objective is to push as many messages as possible onto the network before the ISP’s filtering software is able to detect it.

How much of this is going on? Hundreds of thousands of messages each day, and getting greater all the time.

And if that wasn’t enough, just like flies at a Fourth of July picnic, spammers have now discovered social networks, taking over an alarming number of Facebook and Twitter accounts and phishing for user passwords. These swiped passwords are then used to spam the friends of victims with obnoxious unwanted promotional mail about various products let’s just refer to euphemistically as “personal” or “intimate.” Experts say these types of attacks are particularly effective because they can’t be filtered at a corporate firewall level, and because any such message looks like it’s been sent by a friend of the recipient.

So if you’re on any of these social networking platforms, despite their apparent safety, the watchword should still be: “Caution.”

Robert lays down the gauntlet. Would anyone care to pick it up?

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My recent post on U.S. airlines’ sorry consumer ratings led Robert, one of this blog’s faithful readers, to make a broader comment about America’s standing in the world today compared to years past. Here, in part, is what he wrote:

“… people are more or less brainwashed to think that the USA is #1 in everything. I think some people in the USA (the smarter ones) are now slowing waking up to discover that the rest of the world has really moved on since the early 80s — and at a very past pace … Where the USA was clearly leading the world in the 50s and 60s, the last 30 years are very, very different in that respect. An interesting topic [for your blog]?”

Robert is a true citizen of the world. He lives in the Far East currently, but his business activities have had him a resident in the U.S. and in Europe also. He’s brought up an interesting, perhaps controversial point to ponder.

Agree? Disagree? Somewhere in between? Feel free to contribute your own thoughts by posting your comment below!

Frequent Fliers’ Lament: U.S. Airlines are Second String

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It isn’t just with automobiles that the U.S. public sees American companies as worse than their overseas counterparts. Our airline industry also comes in for its share of lumps.

Anyone who has ever heard horrific air travel stories from colleagues, friends or relatives – and that’s most of us – wouldn’t be surprised if consumer ratings of U.S. airlines pale in comparison to others. And now we have the record to prove it. SeatGuru, TripAdvisor’s online site that bills itself as “the ultimate source for airplane seating, in-flight amenities and airline information,” has just released the results from its most recent annual survey of frequent fliers (defined as people who have flown at least eight times in the past year).

And what does this year’s survey tell us? For starters, U.S. air carriers have the least comfortable seats of all airlines.

Also, they serve the worst food – if they serve it at all.

Rude flight attendants? Bottoms again.

Who ranks best? If you’re looking for good food, the survey respondents tell us we can’t go wrong with Singapore Airlines, British Airways or Air France. Perhaps surprisingly, Continental Airlines also ranked well. But avoid American, United and U.S. Airways – rated the worst of the bunch.

These same three U.S. carriers also scored at the bottom of the heap for the comfort of their economy-class seating. JetBlue does score well in this category; too bad most of us never get the chance to fly this airline because they serve precious few cities. (For the best business class seating, respondents gave highest marks to British Airways.)

And guess what? The very same three carriers – American, United and U.S. Airways – topped the list for having the nastiest flight attendants. If polite, friendly service is your thing, you’re far more likely to find that over at Singapore Airlines or Southwest.

What about the all-important performance metric of on-time flight arrivals? For that, we can look to actual data compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics rather than rely on survey findings. What we see is that for the first three months of 2009, Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance of any U.S. airline company, with more than 90% of its flights arriving within 15 minutes of schedule.

But they’re a small airline company. What about the biggest carriers? Southwest has performed the best, while Continental is at the opposite end of the scale.

And what flight to take if you want the dubious distinction of traveling the worst airline route of all? That would be Northwest Airlines Flight #5803 from Atlanta to Honolulu. It was late a mere 96% of the time. Well, there’s consistency for you at least!

As for getting yourself to your destination in one piece … may your pilot be Chesley B. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger.

Happy Travels!

Yes, even the Reader’s Digest …

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Reader's Digest logoAs print magazines have been hammered by falling advertising revenues and as eyeballs have shifted from paper to PCs, the one publication one might think would be spared much of the fallout is Reader’s Digest. With its readership skewing older along with its strong popularity across the entire income spectrum — not to mention its 8 million domestic circulation — it would seem to be the media property best able to maintain a strong position in the current environment.

Well, you can burst that bubble. This past week, Reader’s Digest announced plans to shed some 2.5 million subscribers. It also announced that it is reducing its frequency from monthly to just 10 issues per year.

Plus, like other consumer magazines, Reader’s Digest is expanding its digital presence. Just listen to how Eva Dillon, Reader’s Digest president and group publisher, puts it (in florid language): “As one of the world’s largest producers of original content, we will continue our transformation into an innovative, multimedia brand by delivering content to users whenever and by whatever means they want, through expanded digital and print investments and the development of new mobile, video and multimedia applications.”

Translation: The print model isn’t working anymore, so we’re trying what everybody else is doing. We’ll see how it goes.

Of course, let’s not forget that Reader’s Digest is the world’s largest transnational magazine brand. When you add up its 50-odd country editions around the globe, its circulation tops 14 million.

So this brand isn’t going away anytime soon. But it is interesting to see that despite its unique (and enviable) position in the publishing world, Reader’s Digest is having to deal with the very same issues as everyone else in the industry.

This just in: The organization stinks. Now, what are you going to do about it?

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I Hate People BookI’m in the midst of reading an interesting book with a provocative title: “I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job.” (Little, Brown Publishing, ISBN-10: 0316032298 … also available in a Kindle edition.)

I think this book takes some risks. It certainly bursts a few bubbles in the conventional thinking about organizations and how they work. If you read it, be prepared to discard some of those platitudinous notions about shared mission and vision, organizational behavior, teamwork, matrix management and all the rest.

Coauthored by Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon, this book fearlessly tackles the thing many workers know but are afraid to say out loud: Every day they come in the office, people have to deal with colleagues who exhibit a host of traits they frankly can’t stand.

We’re well familiar with the types … and Littman and Hershon give us catchy names to describe them, such as:

“Stop Sign” — the person who always finds something wrong or unworkable with the latest idea/product/strategy/solution being proposed. (And isn’t it interesting how many of those issues would entail that person having to contribute a bit more time and effort of his or her own?)

“Switchblade” — be very careful of these people … they’re highly dangerous when you’re not looking!

“Happy Face” — you know, the folks who approach their work at the office the same way they circulate at a cocktail party or spend an evening at the country club.

Or “Time Waster” — there’s no explanation at all needed for this common specimen!

The idea of “teamwork” comes in for pointed criticism by the authors as well. In theory, teams are all about working together to achieve consensus and implement better programs or initiatives that everyone can support. Littman and Hershon remind us that too often, teams produce nothing more than mushy “group think.”

And the bigger the team, the more tepid the results. The authors contend that only a few team members carry their own weight; the others can get away easily with little more than just showing up at meetings. For this reason, we’re advised to join teams of no more than four or five people, where “hiding in plain sight” is far more difficult to pull off.

A good thing about this book is that instead of presenting a litany of problems and then just leaving the entrails on the floor, Littman and Hershon provide ideas for how to work around all of the mediocrity and the frustration. They sugggest practicing “solo-crafting.” What’s that? Basically, it’s taking it upon yourself to “just do it” rather than passing the buck or relying on others. Or, as the authors put it: Stop talking, stop acting, start doing.

The book is quick to point out that solo-crafting doesn’t mean becoming a loner or maverick. It also doesn’t mean becoming a peacock, screaming “Look at me, I’m so great!” — just the kind of person everyone loves to hate.

Instead, by accomplishing more while working within the orgnizational structure, Littman and Hershon contend that you’ll find yourself being recognized for your ability to actually accomplish what others simply give lip service to. And that will result in being asked to perform more key tasks, with more opportunity to be recognized and rewarded for a job well done. Solo, of course.

Hype and Hope: The Twittering Machine in Action

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Twitter logoOver the past few days, we’ve heard reports of how the post-election demonstrators in Iran have been using Twitter as a means for organizing protests, moving crowds from neighborhood to neighborhood to keep one step ahead of the armed authorities … and to upload images and video clips of the demonstrations to broadcast to the rest of the world. Twitter has played an important (and successful) role in engineering a “grand workaround” scheme, thwarting a government-ordered news blackout.

We saw the same phenomenon play out in the Eastern European country of Moldova just a few months back.

Viewed from this perspective, Twitter seems to be living up to its billing — in spades.

But there’s also research that shows another side of the coin. A just-completed Harvard University study of 300,000 Twitter users has found a classic rule of behavior in force: just 10% of users are generating more than 90% of the content on Twitter.

It goes even further than that. The average Twitter user “tweets” about once every 75 days … or even less frequently. And the median number of tweets made per person is … One!

That’s right. More than half of the 300,000 people in the Harvard study have sent just one tweet ever. It was with dry understatement that Bill Heil, the Harvard Business School graduate who carried out the study, reported, “Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it.”

I have an additional explanation to offer: Perhaps most people haven’t (yet) figured out what to do with Twitter to make it meaningful in their lives.

It didn’t help that Twitter itself set the bar at a pretty low level right from the start by suggesting that users answer the question: “What are you doing?” How inconsequential is that?

As it turns out, the trivial isn’t where Twitter has found its true voice.

Indeed, ask the Iranians or Moldovans whether Twitter has been meaningful in their lives. You’ll get a life-and-death answer in the affirmative.

Risë Stevens: A Living Legend

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Risë Stevens poses with a young Gen-Y fan, New York City (2006).
Risë Stevens poses with a young Gen-Y fan, New York City (2006).
Risë Stevens as Carmen, her signature role at the Metropolitan Opera for 20+ years.
Risë Stevens as Carmen, her signature role at the Metropolitan Opera for 20+ years.
Risë Stevens (c), honorary chairperson of the 2004/05 Career Bridges award program supporting promising young opera singers at the outset of their careers.
Risë Stevens (c), honorary chairperson of the 2004/05 Career Bridges award program supporting promising young opera singers at the outset of their careers.
This past week, a living legend in the world of the arts has celebrated a birthday. When Risë Stevens was born in Bronx borough 96 years ago, New York City was very much like it is today … the largest city in the United States, with a rich ethnic diversity including many first-generation immigrants. A city of amazing contrasts, from dirt-poor neighborhoods to districts of fabulous wealth and style.

Miss Stevens’ background was typical of many. Her father was a first-generation Swedish Protestant, her mother a second-generation Russian Jew. Growing up on the tough neighborhood streets of the Bronx, the bright lights of Manhattan must have seemed a world apart rather than just a few short miles away.

In her rise to the top of the billboards at the Metropolitan Opera, Stevens would have her share of luck – the onset of World War II in Europe gave American-born soloists their best chance ever to star in the limelight. But it also took years of practice, sheer hard work and “paying her dues” on provincial stages in places as diverse as Prague and Buenos Aires. Much of those early years are recounted in her biography Subway to the Met, published in the late 1950s.

Miss Stevens’ rich mezzo-soprano voice, coupled with her highly attractive physical appearance, made her a natural for several femme fatale operatic roles such as Dalila in Saint-Saens’ Samson & Dalila, Giulietta in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and, most notably, the title role in Bizet’s Carmen. But early in her Met career, management seemed disinclined to cast her in this role, perhaps because several other stars were already filling the honors there. Not willing to accept this situation, Stevens did a true star turn, getting herself cast opposite Bing Crosby in the Hollywood blockbuster movie Going My Way in which, as Father O’Malley’s erstwhile neighborhood chum and now star of the opera, she sang the famous Habañera from the opera Carmen.

That seemed to do the trick, as the American public now clamored to see her sing the role. Dutifully, the Metropolitan Opera cast her as Carmen within the year, and for the next two decades, Stevens would practically own the role at the Met. (And it was as Carmen that Stevens made her last performance before retiring from the Met stage in 1961.)

The number of people who were introduced to the world of opera through Miss Stevens during the 1940s and 1950s is astonishingly large. Her compelling portrayal of Bizet’s cigar-factory worker temptress has been cited as THE defining catalyst for opera lovers in countless postings all over the web (you can read some examples here, here and here).

But beyond the limelight and the marquee board, there is another reason why Risë Stevens has been loved by so many: she has always been true to herself, and to her art. You can see that in how, despite the fact that she probably made more money starring in just three Hollywood films than she made in her entire career on the opera stage, she left Hollywood and returned to opera because it was her true love.

… You can see it by her loyalty in promoting the art of opera and her beloved Met Opera company. Even today, she remains on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, making her association with the company more than 70 years running.

… You can also see it in her compelling “up-from-poverty” personal story … and in her long and loving 65+ year marriage to her Viennese-born Hungarian husband, Walter Surovy.

And you can see it in the genuine interest she takes in people of all backgrounds and generations. Unlike so many stars who, once they are famous, become absolute personality horrors – full of arrogance and snobbery — Risë Stevens has never lost her connection to the “real world.” My own two daughters have carried on a correspondence with their “Miss Risë” for 15 years, who they’ve come to regard as a kind of special relative who lives far, far away and is larger than life in some respects.

From them, and from so many others: Happy Birthday, Risë … and may you celebrate many more!

Bing Search: Pike’s Peak … or Halley’s Comet?

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Well, it didn’t take long for the marketplace to render its verdict on the Bing search engine phenomenon. Fueled by a multi-million dollar advertising rollout plus an aggressive PR push, web tracking service StatCounter has reported that Bing actually vaulted past Yahoo to become the #2 search engine … for one day.

That’s right. According to StatCounter’s data, on June 4th, Bing captured over 15% of the U.S. search share market, while Yahoo had only around 10%. By the next day, Bing’s share had dropped below 10% while Yanoo notched up a point to 11%. And by Day 3, Bing’s share had fallen still further to just under 7%.

Think it couldn’t get worse? The day after that, Bing was mired below 6% share.

Similar results were recorded worldwide.

What’s behind the primal shrug that Bing seems to have met in the marketplace? Certainly, all the PR hype was successful in getting people curious enough to click through and do a bit of tire-kicking. But it’s obvious that most weren’t particularly impressed by what they experienced, despite the fact that Bing does provide some user-friendly features not available over at Google.

But that’s not nearly enough for success. Google’s users are, by and large, quite satisfied with the search experience. It’s what they know. It’s comfortable. And unless there’s a compelling reason to switch — to change deep-seated habits — most people simply aren’t going to play ball … whether you put millions of dollars in advertising behind your pitch or not.

The folks at Google might have been shaken a least a bit on June 4th when their market share of search dropped to 72%. But they needn’t have worried. Four days later, Google’s share was back up to 80% — where it had been to begin with.

Next case, please?

More Action on the Search Engine Front

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Bing logo designWolfram Alpha logoDespite the fact that Google has proven itself to be all but immune from threats posed by competing search engines, hope springs eternal. Within the past couple weeks alone, two new challengers have emerged, accompanied by much fanfare in the business press.

Microsoft takes yet another swipe at Google with its new Bing search engine. Based on an earlier one called “Kumo,” some industry observers — though not all — believe it is a pretty good competitor. Reviewers are particularly pleased with the presentation of refined versions of search queries. Bing also features a rollover display of each link’s content, allowing you to see how useful it will be before clicking through to the site.

The search engine also appears to index more recent “breaking news” items, whereas with Google, those results are not shown unless you click through to Google News — an extra step.

The big question is whether Bing will be able to wean web users away from their habit of searching on Google as their default choice. Certainly, Microsoft is putting some serious promotional dollars behind the launch — upwards of $100 million according to Advertising Age magazine. But based on the tea leaves, a wholesale change in search behavior seems unlikely. Search habits aren’t going to change dramatically unless there is a dramatic improvement in the effectiveness and speed of search activity. Fom what we see of Bing so far, we’re talking about improvements nibbling around on the margin rather than big sweeping change.

But “big sweeping change” just might be the recipe for Wolfram/Alpha, the other new entrant in the search engine sweepstakes. That’s because W/A isn’t actually a search engine in the classsic sense. Instead, its developers refer to it as a “computational knowledge engine” that uses complex algorithms to search databases to come up with answers to questions, rather than presenting a list of sources where the answer might be found. It can report some really cool factual results just based on the user typing in, for example, a date range, several city names, or an animal species.

The key difference between Wolfram/Alpha and Google is that W/A does not index web pages. Instead, it draws answers from a wide range of information-packed databases. So if you want to know the number and magnitude of hurricanes hitting North America in the past 15 years, you’ll get a specific answer rather than being presented with a series of web links wherein you might find the answer to be hiding.

Some observers see the potential for W/A and Google to team up rather than compete against one another. After all, what they do isn’t directly competitive, but in more respects complementary. And in an interesting twist, it turns out that Stephen Wolfram, the ~50-year-old computer scientist and developer who created the software platform upon which W/A is based (called “Mathematica”), once supervised a summer intern by the name of Sergey Brin — who would go on to develop Google with partner Larry Page.

Sergey and Stephen teaming up once again would be quite the coincidence … or would it really?