Archive for the ‘Business and Economics’ Category
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Social Transmission and Viral Culture (PDF; 379 KB)
People often share news, opinions, and information, and social transmission shapes both individual behavior and collective outcomes. But why are certain things more viral than others? An analysis of over 7,500 New York Times articles published over six months suggests that individual-level psychological processes (e.g., emotion) act as a selection mechanism on culture, shaping what becomes viral. Even controlling for external drivers of attention (e.g., the time an article spent on the Times’ homepage), awe-inspiring articles are more likely to be among the newspaper’s most e-mailed stories on a given day. Practically useful, surprising, positive, and affect-laden articles are also more likely to be viral. The magnitudes of these relationships are considerable. These results underscore the importance of considering how individual-level psychological processes shape collective outcomes such as the transmission and prominence of culture.
Source: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Berger/Milkman)
Posted in Consumer Issues, Media, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Scholarly Publishing, Social Media, Source File, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
This Forbes list was released in December (holiday time) and we didn’t post. So, here it is.
1. Introductory Article
20 companies are listed.
2. Slides For Each of the 20 Companies
Includes directory info, what they do, the latest news.
3. A Complete List of Companies, Video with Head of Company, and Methodology. Most useful portion of article package.
4. Using the “buttons” on the right side of this page, you can create lists of companies that meet the following criteria:
+ Prior Entrepreneurial Experience
+ Companies with More than 10 Employees
+ Outside Investors
+ Patents
+ Revenue Greater than $0
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Access the Article
Here are the Top 10 (of 40). Note: These estimates do not count any television work the person may do.
1. Michael Bay, Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $125 million
2. Steven Spielberg, Director/Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $85 million
3. Roland Emmerich, Producer/Director
Estimated 2009 earnings: $70 million
4. James Cameron, Director/Writer/Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $50 million
5. Todd Phillips, Director/Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $44 million
6. Daniel Radcliffe, Actor
Estimated 2009 earnings: $41 million
7. Ben Stiller, Actor
Estimated 2009 earnings: $40 million
8. Tom Hanks, Actor
Estimated 2009 earnings: $36 million
9. J. J. Abrams, Director/Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $36 million
10) Jerry Bruckheimer, Producer
Estimated 2009 earnings: $35.5 million
Access the Complete Rankings
Source: Vanity Fair, March, 2009
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Barry Schwartz writes:
I received a tip from a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” I was told that they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions. They also took pictures of products.
Google Store Views will allow people to essentially walk into the store, off of Google Street Views. So imagine you are looking at this store, and then you can click on the door to enter it, all on Google Maps. Then when you enter the store, you can wall through it.
Schwartz’s post continues on to include several shots of the Google “Store Views” team capturing images inside the store.
It’s going to be interesting to see how many and what type of stores Google captures “Store Views” for. Also, will they be in small town or only in large cities in the U.S.? World?
Source; Search Engine Land
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Industry, Web Search | No Comments »
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
From an Article:
The FDA has launched a new,searchable database that includes 971 recalls since January 1, 2006. (The database only goes back four years. If you have pet food from before then, I urge you to throw it away now for reasons completely unrelated to recalls!)
The number 971 sounds quite scary indeed. If you’re thinking of circumventing this problem by making your pet’s food, remember that recalls of human food are stunningly common as well…
Access the New Pet Food Recall Database
Access the Human Food Recall Database
Source: Dr. Eric Barchas, DVM (Dogster/Catster)
Other Human Food Recalls Can be Found Here
Also, More RecallsHere No Food But Many Other Products, Some Data Back to 1973.
Posted in Consumer Issues, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information, Reference Tools, Resources | No Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010
There are very specific requirements for this list…. 1) You must have a public LinkedIn profile page that 2) indicates that social media is part of your full time career and job –not just for personal use, 3) You must work at an enterprise class corporation with more than 1000 employees.
Industries included — airline, automotive, business services, consumer product goods, electronics/devices/mobile, financial services, health and life sciences, hospitality, media and entertainment, retail, technology/hardware/networking/component/computer, technology/software/internet.
Source: Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Customer Strategy, Altimeter Group
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Social Media, Source File, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Research shows online reputations matter
Research commissioned by Microsoft in December 2009 found that 79 percent of United States hiring managers and job recruiters surveyed reviewed online information about job applicants.
Most of those surveyed consider what they find online to impact their selection criteria. In fact, 70 percent of United States hiring managers in the study say they have rejected candidates based on what they found.
Review the results of the survey to see how online reputations impact people’s lives. The research comes from interviews with over 1,200 hiring and recruitment managers and 1,200 consumers in the United States, the U.K., Germany and France.
The results of the research reveal what you post on the Internet and what people post about you can affect your professional life. Learn what action you can take to manage your online reputation.
+ Research overview (PDF)
+ PowerPoint presentation
Source: Microsoft Privacy Day
Posted in Business and Economics, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0, Web Search | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Forty-nine percent of surveyed consumers unlikely to buy dedicated e-book readers
Dedicated e-book readers won’t be the easiest sell if you go by Verso’s 2009 Survey of Book Buying Behavior—presented at DigitalBookWorld. On the positive, the overwhelming majority of owners say they do not pirate e-books.
Participating were 5,640 respondents, 48% male and 51% female. Here are Verso’s questions and findings, with a 1.6% margin of error and a 95% confidence level.
Source: TeleRead
Posted in Consumer Issues, E-books, Search News | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
From the Web Site:
Top 50 winners were selected by the people who know these companies best — their employees!
Each entry on the list includes reviews by employees.
Top 5 on the List of 50
1. Southwest Airlines
2. General Mills
3. Slalom Consulting
4. Bain & Company
5. McKinsey & Company
Google was ranked 14th.
The page also contains methodology and Top Choices by City.
Source: GlassDoor.com
Hat Tip: Stuart Basefsky
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’
Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming rates. The CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Defense Department, and other government agencies are at this very moment turning to a group of companies to provide them information that these companies can gather without the restrictions that bind government intelligence agencies. The information is gathered from sources that few would believe the government could gain unfettered access to, but which, under current Fourth Amendment doctrine and statutory protections, are completely accessible.
Fourth-parties, such as ChoicePoint or LexisNexis, are private companies that aggregate data for the government, and they comprise the private security-industrial complex that arose after the attacks of September 11, 2001. They are in the business of acquiring information, not from the information’s originator (the first-party), nor from the information’s anticipated recipient (the second-party), but from the unavoidable digital intermediaries that transmit and store the information (third-parties). These fourth-party companies act with impunity as they gather information that the government wants but would be unable to collect on its own due to Fourth Amendment or statutory prohibitions. This paper argues that when fourth-parties disclose to law enforcement information generated as a result of searches that would be violations had the government conducted the searches itself, those fourth-parties’ actions should be considered searches by agents of the government, and the data should retain privacy protections.
Source: Columbia Business Law Review
Several options available for retrieval of full text.
Posted in Access to Information, Consumer Issues, Information Industry, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Privacy, Search News, Source File | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
From the Careercast.com:
When launching their careers, many job seekers had a simple method of choosing the best job for them: They guessed. A job might “feel right” or “sound cool” or be considered successful according to the media, conventional wisdom or the advice of others. However, as many realtors and autoworkers will tell you, conventional wisdom can change. And with fierce competition for jobs making it tougher than ever to get a “do-over” if you make the wrong choice, guessing is not a smart approach to career management.
So if the lesson of the past year is that you need to determine the best career path for you the first time around, how exactly can you do that? For starters, having a few facts will help. CareerCast.com’s 2010 Jobs Rated report offers a comprehensive analysis of 200 different jobs – from Accountant to Zoologist – giving each a unique ranking based on factual analysis and hard data, not guesswork. If you’re entering (or re-entering) the job market and want to avoid selecting the wrong career, our rankings can help you make a stronger, more informed decision, both for today and the long-term.
How does Jobs Rated determine which professions rank better than others? Data on each job is broken down into five key categories: Physical Demands, Work Environment, Income, Stress and Hiring Outlook. Jobs receive a score in each individual category, and when these are added together, the career with the best overall score is ranked 1st, while the one with the worst overall score is ranked 200th.
Of course every employee is different, and what you consider a “dream job” might be someone else’s idea of a career nightmare.
Make sure to read the complete introduction. Important info at the conclusion
Access the Complete List
In case you’re interested, a librarian is #46 on the list. That’s one below a Market Research Analyst at #45 and one above a Anthropologist at #47.
Source:Careercast
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Reference Tools | No Comments »
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
The 50 highest-earning American athletes
Is the slumping economy finally affecting America’s premier athletes? For the sixth consecutive year, Sports Illustrated has compiled a list of the 50 top-earning American athletes in salary, winnings, endorsements and appearance fees. And for the first time, the average earnings of those on the list fell — down $1.5 million per athlete to $23.6 million.
That falloff is mostly due to lower earnings for No. 1 Tiger Woods and No. 2 Phil Mickelson, both of whom saw their on-course income shrink while also losing key endorsement deals. This year’s list features 22 basketball players (a record nine who earned more than $20 million), 14 major leaguers, nine football players, three golfers and two NASCAR drivers.
Meanwhile, the average income of the athletes on our International 20 list of the top-earning non-American sportsmen hit an all-time high $29.5 million (up slightly from 2008), thanks to big gains by those in soccer and Formula 1 racing.
See: The slumping economy finally hitting the Fortunate 50
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Source File | No Comments »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Fortune’s 2010 List is Now Available.
Lists Back to 2006 are Also Online.
Top 5–2010
1. SAS
2. Edward Jones
3. Wegmans Food Markets
4. Google
5. Nugget Market
What’s Available?
+ Full List (Can be sorted by Rank or Company Name)
Click on any company name for last year’s ranking, hq location, 2008 revenues, and an answer to the question, what makes it so great.?
+ Top 100 Organized by State (Includes Map)
+ Top Companies
Rank by size, job growth, low turnover, no layoffs, women, minorities, all stars (employers who have been on the Best Companies to Work For list every year since it launched in 1998).
+ Big Pay:Annual Pay
For salaried and hourly workers.
+ Best Perks
+ Cool Tool: Perkfinder
“Select benefits you want…and instantly see which Best Companies offer them. When hovering over a selected company, other perks the firm offers will flash and you can click on the company name for more details. To see how many firms offer your chosen benefits, hover over the blue arrow at left. Hover over the right arrow to return to the main screen.”
Special articles and profiles about:
+ Companies that are Hiring
+ 25 top-paying companies
+ Additional Background Articles and Features
+ Methodology
Source: Fortune
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
If you’re looking for someone new to follow on Twitter, how does Bill Gates work for you? He started with Twitter yesterday and as of Wed. afternoon had over 235,000 followers. You can find his page at: http://www.twitter.com/billgates and yes, this is a verified account.
Today, Gates launched his new web site titled, The Gates Notes.”
It includes sections on:
+ What I’m Thinking
+ What I’m Learning
+ My Travels
+ Infrequently Asked Questions
+ and more
The home page also states:
Every January, Bill writes an Annual Letter, which includes his thoughts on the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and progress it is making toward achieving its goals. Interest in the 2009 Annual Letter was one reason Bill decided to create the Gates Notes website.
Source: The Gates Notes, Twitter
Posted in Business and Economics, Social Media | No Comments »
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
DOT Unveils Improved Aviation Consumer and Enforcement Website
Air travelers will find it easier to file complaints with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) about airline service, compare the historical on-time and baggage mishandling records of airlines, and find helpful tips about air travel thanks to a redesigned, more user-friendly aviation consumer web site unveiled today by the Department. The web site can be found at http://airconsumer.dot.gov.
…
The improved site contains useful information about the Department’s complaint handling system for consumers who experience air travel service problems, including a web form that consumers can use to file a complaint with DOT about airline service.
The site also offers guidance regarding aviation rules and statutes, advice concerning airlines that have stopped operating or filed for bankruptcy protection, and travel tips and publications related to air travel, such as the Air Travel Consumer Report, Fly-Rights and the annual report on disability-related air travel complaints.
It also features easy-to-navigate links to all of the Department’s information for air travelers, as well as links to other agency web sites with useful material for air travelers. The public will also find it easier to obtain enforcement orders, rules and guidance pertaining to a wide array of subjects such as baggage, fare advertising, refunds, overbooking, disability and flight delays.
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation
Posted in Consumer Issues, Government Documents and Political Information, Portals, Source File | No Comments »
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Internet Use Among Midlife and Older Adults: An AARP Bulletin Poll
Computer and Internet use continue to be in the domain of the young and affluent, with respondents between the ages of 50 and 64 and those with annual household incomes in excess of $25,000 more likely than their older, less affluent counterparts to report using a computer anywhere, to be more likely to use the Internet for any reason they were asked about, and to access and use the Internet on at least a daily basis.
Notably, older respondents—those ages 65 and older—are much more likely to say they do not currently use a computer or the Internet and, among non-users, are much more likely to say they have no interest in doing so in the future. The less affluent respondents, however, are just beginning to use the Internet, which suggests that access and price may no longer be impediments for them.
+ Full Report (PDF; 127 KB)
Source: AARP Knowledge Management
Posted in Consumer Issues, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Lead or Follow – Should Life Sciences Companies Invest in Electronic Health Records or Wait?
Everyone agrees electronic health records (EHR) is the wave of the future. EHR will promote information sharing, which should lead to better diagnoses and patient care. It should improve operating efficiency for providers and payers. And provide companies in the life sciences industry with new data to drive product improvements and innovation.
For life sciences companies, the question is when to get actively involved in EHR. Is it better to start investing now to help develop EHR standards and capitalize on the potential benefits? Or wait for EHR standards to emerge and then follow the crowd?
Source: Deloitte Development LLC
Posted in Business and Economics, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Policy, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Science, Search News, Source File | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy Survey, Fourth Edition
Source: Deloitte Development LLC
Digitization is radically transforming the way we consume content. But how much do we know about consumers’ behaviors across the generations and what their future media preferences are likely to be? To continue to shed light on these questions and many more, Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice has commissioned a fourth edition of its State of the Media Democracy survey.
The survey looks at:
- Generational preferences for traditional and emerging media devices and platforms
- The evolving adoption of mobile devices, social networking and interactive gaming
- Reactions to conventional and next-generation advertising
- Emerging consumer preferences and the implications for advertisers, content companies, distributors, developers and device manufacturers
+ Full report and associated documents
Posted in Access to Information, Business and Economics, Consumer Issues, Media, Papers, Presentations, Reports, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
No Facebook at Work? No Thank You! Teens Expect Access to Social Networks On-The-Job: Junior Achievement/Deloitte Poll
Online social networks have become so central to teens’ lifestyles that they would consider their ability to access them during working hours when weighing a job offer. This is according to the seventh annual Junior Achievement/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey, which focused on the ethical implications of the popularity of social networking.
Nearly nine-in-10 (88 percent) teens surveyed use social networks every day, with 70 percent saying they participate in social networking an hour or more daily. More than half (58 percent) said they would consider their ability to access social networks at work when considering a job offer from a potential employer. This comes as many organizations have begun implementing policies that limit access to social networks during the workday due to concerns about unethical usages, such as time theft, spreading rumors about co-workers or managers and leaking proprietary information, among other reasons.
Most of the teens surveyed feel prepared to make ethical decisions at work (82 percent) and a significant majority of teens say they do not behave unethically while using social networks (83 percent). Yet, despite this confidence in the integrity of their online behavior, significant numbers of teens do not consider the reactions of specific groups of influencers in their lives when posting content on social networks.
+ See also: 2009 Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace Survey – Social networking and reputational risk in the workplace (adults)
+ See also: Resources for Educators – Ethics (Junior Achivement)
Source: Deloitte LLP
Posted in Access to Information, Business and Economics, Information Policy, Resources for Educators, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
