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Trends | Organizations
Trends
One way to keep
up with business and cultural trends is to keep an eye on the numbers.
Many of us follow the fortunes of the NASDAQ and the Dow, the pollsters'
predictions about upcoming elections, the win/loss records of our favorite
sports teams, or the highest-grossing movies at last weekend's box office.
And most of us track the key measures used in our own business or profession.
There is no way to
track all of the important numbers collected and published each
day. Some leap out at us, though, because they seem surprising, thought-provoking,
sobering, or amusing. Surveys, polls, scores, and sales figures are only
snapshots in time -- but they often trigger new business, social, and
personal insights.
Numbers that leap
out at us may also fire the imaginations of our associates, clients, and
customers. They can enliven our spoken and written communications.
This section of our
site records statistics and trends that catch our attention as we process
the daily data stream.
Freestyle
The line between editorial
and advertising content is becoming increasingly blurred -- not only on
the Internet, but in more traditional media, as well.
For years, movies have been a venue for not-so-subtle "product placements"
that clearly display product images and logos, marketing cereals or cars
or computers without actually advertising them. The practice is becoming
more common in print publications, with special "advertorial" inserts
in newspapers and magazines covering subjects like health and travel.
On television, VCRs and now digital video recorders allow viewers to skip
obvious commercial messages with ease, encouraging producers and sponsors
to experiment with more creative ways to retain their attention.
This week, Nike has taken product placement one step further, with no
apologies for the pun. Its popular "Freestyle" commercial, featuring an
array of talented basketball players accompanied by a percussion soundtrack,
has been adapted as a music video for broadcast on MTV. Savion Glover,
who choreographed "Freestyle," will introduce the video during a guest
appearance on MTV.
New York Times advertising columnist Stuart
Elliott notes "the groundbreaking nature" of the adaptation from commercial
to music video, as evidenced by contradictory statements by Nike and MTV
about whether the video would be treated "programming" or "an ad." MTV's
policy is to edit out product names, logos, and other "clearly commercial"
elements of music videos, a practice Elliott finds "fascinating because
music videos are in and of themselves commercials for the songs they feature."
To view the music
video, tune in to MTV starting April 11. You can see the commercial online
at:
http://nikebasketball.nike.com/nikebasketball/qt/moviepop_big60.html
Music to Go
MP3
is a technology that allows music to be stored digitally (as music is
stored on a compact disc) in a compressed format, while maintaining high
sound quality. A piece of music stored in an MP3 file takes up a tenth
or less of the storage space that it would occupy in compact disc format.
This means that music files can be downloaded much more quickly than ever
before and then stored and replayed on a portable MP3 player. (If you
don't have one, a teenager you know either has one, is saving up to buy
one, or would be delighted to receive one as a gift.) MP3 is radically
changing the ways people obtain and listen to music.
The name "MP3" derives from the video file compression system developed
by MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group. The part of the MPEG system
used to compress sound files is called MPEG Audio Layer-3, abbreviated
as MP3.
For a much more detailed explanation of how MP3 works, visit How
Stuff Works.
Opinion Leaders
Online
Opinion
leaders are people who have special influence on the attitudes and beliefs
of their colleagues and friends. They tend to be media junkies and early
adopters of new technologies and techniques. At least since 1945, when
Katz and Lazarsfeld published the first research on this group, marketers
have been interested in identifying and targeting them with their messages.
While most of the research on opinion leaders and early adopters has been
done in traditional social environments, more recent work has begun to focus
on the characteristics of e-fluentials, people who wield similarly
great influence in cyberspace. Last summer, the Burson-Marsteller public
relations firm released the results of research it had commissioned from
Roper Starch Worldwide, the first study to identify individuals with "an
exponential influence shaping and driving public opinion through the Internet."
The term "e-fluentials," servicemarked by Burson-Marsteller, refers to the
most influential 8% of Internet users, some 9 million people, each of whom
has "an impact on the attitudes and behavior of approximately eight people."
An example given by Burson-Marsteller CEO Christopher Komisarjevsky is the
wild popularity and profitability achieved by the low-budget film "The Blair
Witch Project." Its success is attributable almost entirely to Internet
word-of-message.
A number of e-fluential characteristics emerged from the study. E-fluentials
are four times as likely as others to be consulted about business and technology,
and four times as likely as the general population to be influential off-line,
as well. E-fluentials have regular e-mail communication with twice as many
correspondents as other Internet users and absorb more information from
more sources than others online. They spend more time online, more frequently,
than the general online population and are inclined not only to be early
adapters, but also to influence the purchases of others.
Sources consulted for this article include Jeffrey Graham, "Who
Is Your E-Fluential?", 11/20/00; www.e-fluentials.com;
and Malcolm Gladwell, The
Tipping Point.
Burson-Marsteller has posted its survey online. To take the survey and discover
whether you are an e-fluential, go to:
www.e-fluentials.com
Computers and Artificial
Intelligence in Film
Most people
who were moviegoers back in 1968 still have a hard time hearing "2001" without
mentally appending "A Space Odyssey." The Stanley Kubrick film, based on
the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, is among the most enduring sci-fi classics,
familiar even to those for whom science fiction is not the genre of choice.
The Cybercinema site, sponsored by the Department of English at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides an interactive look at how computers,
artificial intelligence, and related themes have been portrayed in film
over the past hundred years. The site contains overviews of each decade,
filmographies, and links to trailers and other supplementary information.
A video gallery offers selected stills and sound clips.
To visit this site, go to:
http://128.174.194.59/cybercinema/
Wired Home Offices
NUA
Internet Surveys highlights the results of an IDC
research study that suggests "explosive growth" in the number
of home offices connected to the Internet. The percentage of wired home
offices in the USA has risen from 26% in 1994 to 81% in 1999, with 92%
connectivity predicted by 2004. Currently, 95% of home offices use dial-up
connections. As more users switch to broadband connections, that percentage
is expected to drop to 55% over the next four years. 8/1/00
The Deep Web
BrightPlanet,
a privately-held company based in Sioux Falls, SD, has invented a search
technology they claim is capable of accessing the "deep Web."
Unlike the "surface Web" -- which consists of pages linked to
other pages -- the deep Web consists of content stored in searchable databases
which cannot be reached by the "spider" technology commonly
in use.
BrightPlanet reports that the deep Web contains 7500 terabytes of information
as compared to 19 terabytes on the surface Web. (A terabyte equals
one trillion bytes. A byte is a unit of computer information that
conveys one character, a single letter or a single digit.) According to
BrightPlanet, 95% of deep Web information is available to the public for
free.
To get an idea how
much 7500 terabytes of information is, think about the amount of information
that can be stored on the hard drive of a new mid-priced computer -- say
15 gigabytes, the equivalent of 15 billion bytes. Imagine the hard drive
is completely full. Now imagine 500,000 identical computers -- five computers
for each resident of Sioux Falls, SD -- all with their hard drives completely
full. That's 7500 terabytes.
BrightPlanet claims
that its new search technology can currently search 22,000 deep and surface
Web sites simultaneously. It projects that its simultaneous search capacity
will ultimately grow to 100,000 sites. 8/1/00
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