How apps alter behaviour - personal anecdata

I like keeping a record of which football matches I see. I blogged about this last year. I like to use an app called Futbology - as featured in my review of last season - which acts as a way of finding games to go to, recording games I've been to, and marks various milestones along the way. This includes awarding 'badges' for noteworthy things like seeing the same team a certain number of times or attending games in different countries. 

I noticed I was due to get a badge - my 450th game attended overall - and I discovered something strange. I was reluctant to 'waste' the badge on a random game. I had a plan to watch Shrewsbury play in Portsmouth at the end of October and found myself planning to use that game to trigger getting the badge for 450 games. 

That meant I passed up the opportunity to go to a couple of games - not in itself a bad thing. Like any interest it's easy to get a bit obsessed and a football free weekend like the one I had in the middle of October is probably quite healthy. And, fortunately, everything aligned for me to hit the 450 game milestone at the game I wanted to hit it at. 

The reason I'm blogging about this, however, is because I realised that my relationship with this app had subtly changed. Before the app I never kept a record of my total games. I would not have known I was reaching 450 games. 

Knowing that I was reaching that total altered my game-going habits. Indirectly, the app shaped my choices. This is an example of how technology shapes our lives through unintended influences. My behaviour change on a micro-level is fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but this kind of influence is being replicated in dozens of ways that we might not even notice. 

Our relationship with technology could well have an evolutionary impact on humans generally and we wouldn't necessarily know. I've blogged previously about how we outsource memories (referencing Futbology!) and the idea that we have digital doppelgangers who will outlive us as shadows on the web. I don't find that overly worrying or anything. It's just something I'm noticing.  It's fascinating being part of the overall evolution into a digital species. 

Interesting developments in communications

I've been seeing some interesting charts and diagrams on Twitter over the last few days, which anyone who works in Comms may find useful. Here are three of them. Obviously all the copyright remains with the organisations who created the diagrams, but as they've tweeted them, I hope they won't mind me reproducing them here with proper attribution.

First up is this breakdown by Microsoft of PC v mobile usage. (Edit: the blue is PC and the pink is mobile in the graph.) The main learning point is that very few people use mobile devices for email. In work we have recently talked about optimising our email newsletters for mobiles, but I now wonder how much we should be concerned. Obviously we want to make sure they are readable, but the assumption that everyone gets email on their mobiles isn't accurate. 

Click the image to embiggen it to readable size

On the other hand, using social media to drive traffic to websites requires making sure the website is optimised for mobile as 66% of social networking usage is on mobile devices. Two thirds of  SoMe consumers will potentially be clicking through from a mobile device. That has implications for website design.

The next graph is from The Economist and shows how Whatsapp is overtaking SMS text messages. What’s also interesting is how SMS has plateaud and even fallen back slightly. 

This usage graph suggests that Whatsapp may give you as much reach as SMS if you were exploring a new comms channel. Although you’d need to know more about user demography. I suspect Whatsapp is still very much an under-30s medium, a bit like Instagram. (These are my suspicions, I haven't checked to see if there is data out there. I'm basing my assumption on the people I know using either Whatsapp or Instagram.) 

We also still don’t know if Whatsapp’s growth is a bubble that may burst when something new comes along. But what it does show is how quickly a new comms channel can develop. In three years it is reaching the heights it took SMS almost 20 years to reach.

The third diagram has been created by Hootsuite and I really like it. It’s a honeycomb of user experience to guide the creation of web content that will engage people. 

I don’t think this is limited to creating content for websites. I have seen a lot of material produced that tick off none of these characteristics. I may even have been guilty of producing some myself - that web-page that someone has requested because they want a web-page rather than for any compelling user-oriented reason.

As a final thought, I wouldn't have seen any of these if it hadn't been for Twitter. People don't often regard social media as a learning channel, but I find more and more interesting stuff that makes me think turning up in my feed these days. There is a lot of data out there to drive good comms. It's just a question of noticing it.

Our first ever hi-fi as a married couple

After almost 17 years together and just over 14 years married, Cathy and I have purchased our first hi-fi as a couple.

It's strange that we haven't bought one before, given how often we have music on. We bought (and played out) several of the small all-in-one units in our kitchen over the years. But this was our first 'front room hi-fi'.

It's taken us a while to get it. We decided to get one last year as a Christmas present to each other.

This is what we were replacing.

The tapedeck was my Dad's, bought back in the 80s, and as dead as a Monty Python parrot. The Pioneer amplifier I bought for a tenner from a friend in about 1993, but as it had originally been his family's stereo, then his, that must date from the early 80s too. The CD player and record player I bought in my first term in my first year at Uni.

Cathy helped me carry the CD player home from the train station to the house I was lodging in in Llandaff North. We'd just started going out. She thought I was crazy blowing my money like that, but as my diet was predominantly Heinz spaghetti hoops on toast, I could afford it. (I didn't like using the temperamental gas oven in my student house. You had to reach right into the back to light it with a match and I was afraid it would blow up and burn my arm off. Hobs were safer. I ate a lot of hoops.True story.)

I bought the record player a week later, because I was a muso and I liked to buy limited edition coloured vinyl singles. I presume the turntable still works. I haven't used it in years. The CD player is okay - occasionally sticky. The amp fades in and out and you have to twiddle the volume knob to get it to function. I'll probably freecycle them as someone could use them.

Anyway, that was about half our lifetimes ago. So, today we went and bought a micro hi-fi that cost less than my CD player separate did back in the day. It can play CDs and you can plug a USB into it - a technology that was simply science fiction when our old hi-fi was built.

It's freed up some space, which was easily filled. It sounds amazing. Happy Christmas to us 10 and a bit months later!

Retrotechnophile

My Dad uses an old 35mm camera, and then has to take the film in to be developed. He likes to tell people about this. He says he's the last person using film in Shrewsbury.

Anyway, this cartoon really reminded me of him.

The Social Network, or, Facebook: the myth

I saw this film a couple of weeks ago and really liked it. Script-wise, shot-wise and acting-wise it is pretty much perfect.

But it is also a fictionalised account of a story that plays a little bit too emotively with the truth.

So, is it a good film? Can a film be technically perfect, while misrepresenting true events?

That in itself is an interesting question. Can myth replace, and somehow convey, truth? (Well, we all read our Bibles, don't we?)

The real truth of everything that happened in the formative years of Facebook is known only to the participants, and even then we have to account for subjective bias.

But this movie works because it rings true. For one thing, none of the characters are particularly likeable. They are all flawed in one way or another. They take each other for granted. They act in their own interests. So far, so true to life.

Criticism has been levelled at the film for being misogynistic. I'd say that's misguided. Yes it shows young men taking advantage of young women and treating them disrespectfully, and it doesn't outright condemn that. But speaking as a man, this is how many men act. Portraying it isn't misogynistic. It's embarrassing to think such chauvinism is perpetuated, but not portraying it would be dishonest.

In another way it rings false. Mark Zuckerberg has said that in reality Facebook was a lot of hard mundane graft, not partying with co-eds. Experience seems to support Zuckerberg. The geeks I know don't party hard while coding.

The end verdict is that it's a believable version of events and really that's what counts. I loved the way the story was told, and am smart enough not to believe that it's true. That's kind of how I react to films, especially ones 'based on' a true story.

And there was one stand out piece of dialogue. Zuckerberg is asked whether The Facebook is finished and says it will never be finished. "It's like fashion. It will never finish." I loved that line. There are so many things in life that will continue on. Facebook is probably one of them. The general trend towards technology is another.

Some people have described The Social Network as the movie about Facebook for people who hate Facebook. But, if so, this is a sinister message for them, because the central premise of the story is that there is no stopping point.

And that's food for thought for all of us.

Jongudmund's rating: 9/10

Disconcerting tech*

I'm not a tech person so to be left in charge of the sound desk for an event is a little disconcerting.

But nothing went wrong. I just paid attention when the bod told me which dials to twiddle and what flashing lights to look for. I'm convinced that often the fear of tech is what makes you make mistakes.

In fact the biggest problem we had was trying to fit a wide-screen projector's projection onto a normal screen, possibly the most non-technological tech problem you can have.

*This title deliberately apes the title of the previous post. I wonder who will spot it...!

I don't get turned on by Apple products and I don't really understand the strange fascination

Have to admit though, the iPad looks a bit nifty. I won't buy one though because, well, because I don't want to become an easily-manipulated gadegt-buying drone.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one. Having waded through the reams of commentary devoted to the ridiculous over-hyped launch written by techie journos too busy creaming themselves and slavering at the hype, I did find this at The Daily Mash.

And I thought it he-larious. "Shiny thing make it all better!" indeed!

Something I never thought I'd hear my Dad say...

"If you didn't see it, you can always catch it on i-Player."

Seriously, if you knew my Dad you'd have had your flabber totally gasted just like I did.

Micro SD Cards and the pace of technological change

Almost two weeks ago I bought a new phone. My previous phone was one of the first ‘flip phones’ produced by Samsung, which had a ‘call screen’ on the top so you could see who was ringing you before you flipped the phone open.

My new phone is also a Samsung. It’s an iPhone wannabe with touch screen and scrolling menus and other gizmos. Like just about every phone these days it has a camera. I can get the web on it and update my Facebook status and so now I am constantly fiddling with it like a teenager!

It also has a Micro SD port to ramp up the memory. I bought a 2 gigabyte card which promised me space for 250 songs, 1200 photos, and 3 and a half hours of video. The card was tiny – about the size of my fingernail.

Just over ten years ago, when we set up our own business, Cathy and I paid a small fortune for a ramped up computer with 6 a gigabyte hard disk! At the time it was the most we could afford.

Years later we took that computer apart for spares and the hard disk was the size of a dinner plate. Now I’m carrying around a third of that space as an optional extra in my phone, and if I’d bought an 8 gig card, then I’d be carrying round a more powerful machine in my pocket than we bought for our desktop back in the day.