Facebook Facts

Currently we live in a digital era in which almost everything is possible through the internet and new technologies. Social media sites are used by people of all ages in all countries but how much people actually use Social Network Sites? Facebook counts over 600 million active users worldwide. Twitter counts over 100 million active users and MySpace and LinkedIn take the second and third place with 80 million and 50 million users.

Marketingfacts.nl studied the Facebook behaviour in the Netherlands where this medium is the second most popular SNS. The most common age of Facebook users in the Netherlands is between 18 and 44 years as shown in the graph below.

Although most accounts are personal accounts, there are also a lot of fan pages. According to Marketingfacts.nl, the fan pages of “New Kids” and “Oh Oh Cherso” count the most Dutch fans. Some other interesting user details are listed below:

• Users spend an average time of 54.3 minutes per month on Facebook
• Users log in 27 times a month which is almost every day
• The average user has 93 friends on Facebook

Going to the mall? Watch a sad movie!

Do emotions influence shopping behavior? That was the question with which 6 students of Tilburg University started their research. In a short period of time they had to investigate whether people buy or less when they are in a particular state of mind. There were three conditions, namely: positive, neutral of negative. To create the emotions that matched the condition, the participants watched one of the three video fragments: a fragment of Friends, Schindlers List or a neutral fragment about planets.

The results were striking. Unlike the expectations that people buy more when they are happy, they bought actually less! Participants of the conditions negative and neutral spend the most money in the experiment. 

From these results I can conclude that I am never going to watch a funny movie before going to the mall! Happiness leads to buying less products but buying more expensive products. While sadness leads to buying more cheaper products. If you are interested in the experiment, I will upload the poster with information soon. For now: just keep on shopping!

BuddyAbroad: Meet each other!

In the year 2010 over 75,000 international students are registered at a university or higher education in the Netherlands. Tilburg University counts more than 500 international students. Studying abroad  can be a real adventure for international students and besides help of the universities they have to arrange a lot of practical issues themselves . Examples of such issues are housing, travelling, financial help and much more. The students are going to live in a new country and new city so they need all help they can get! The results of seven conducted interviews were striking:

Ø  “I feel a bit isolated”

Ø  “ It is hard to make any friends because everyone has already formed peer groups”

Ø  “It would be nice to meet people to share interests with”

Ø  “We had no problems with arranging practical issues”

Ø  “It is difficult to meet other people”

Ø  “It would be helpful to share information with each other”

In order to help these international students, five students of Tilburg University designed an interface called BuddyAbroad. BuddyAbroad is an application for international students who are studying or going to study abroad. By using this application students can  exchange experiences, meet other students and share information. In the video below an outline of the application is shown.

Spice up your presentations!

Sometimes presentations can be quit boring and the audience will lose its focus quick. What can you do to spice up your own presentation? One option is to make a large research poster, another is to design an interactive presentation. Both options can work in different situations. When you are in the middle of a study, a poster can give a nice overview of your findings. When you have to sell your ideas to other people an interactive presentation is the best solution.

When you are going to design a large poster, keep the following statements in mind;

• Less in more. Too much text is too much work for the audience so keep the poster clear and just use the most important statements.
• Make it fun. An attractive poster gets more attention and can manage to draw the attention towards your design. A nice image or picture does make the difference.
• Structure well. An unstructured poster is hard to understand so if your research includes different groups or phases, structure the poster with this information.

There are many examples on the Internet to structure a poster but when you do not want to design it yourself, there are many templates which can be downloaded. Words like ‘examples research posters’ or just ‘A0 posters’ give a lot of results in Google.

Another tool to spice up your presentation is to make a presentation in Prezzi. With this program you can design the greatest presentations with interactive parts, video’s, audio and movement. Success is guaranteed if the presentation is designed well. It attracts the listener en manages to keep the attention high. The features of Prezzi are endless and with a little time and creativity you can design a really nice presentation. Use video’s, music and a lot of movement to attract the audience and present your ideas. In the movie below an example of the possibilities of Prezzi is shown.

Future visions

Only 50 years ago developments such as the iPad, touch screens and smart phones seemed impossible, but with the developments over the last years these inventions are just the beginning of a new digital era. With new technologies and possibilities the future will be overpowering. Intel uploaded their future vision about one year ago and when you watch this video it becomes clear that this vision came true in several ways.

However, the future vision of Intel has become outdated because we already use some of these product predictions. A more relevant vision is the vision of Microsoft which states that touch screens will be everywhere and people can connect with many channels anytime and anywhere by just the movement of their hands. In the video below the developments of the future are presented and if we may believe this video, our lives will be much more digital and will closely resemble the technologies as seen in the 'Minority Report'.

Is online dating the future?

Everyone wants to have a partner with which they have common interests, lots of fun and most important, a long lasting relationship. Nowadays, more and more people find a partner at online dating sites such as Lexa or eDarling. Are these sites the future of dating or are they developed because people become more picky? Are they just too shy for offline dating? Or does is have another cause? Fact is that, according to Lexa.nl, people find love in the online dating world every 45 seconds!

In an interview Dr. M. L. Antheunis which is a researcher and lecturer at Tilburg University, shared her vision on online relationships. As a teacher in online relationships, social media, CMC and friendship formation, she is an expert in online dating and broadens de knowledge and vision that people have of online dating sites. She currently studies they possibilities of having eye contact during computer mediated communication (CMC) conversations by using an eye catcher (In the film fragment below, Dr. M. L. Antheunis is talking about her study and how this study was set up). Because of the face to face contact via the eye catcher in CMC conversations, the features of offline and online conversations are becoming more alike. 

Plausible is that the eye catching possibilities become accessible for everyone in the future. For the online dating world, this could mean that two people can have personal eye contact while getting to know each other. By only using a computer people can select a partner based on common interests, personal characteristics, appearance and also personal eye contact. Why would you still want to go to a bar to find a partner while it becomes so easy to find one by using a computer?

How could we help the tsunami victims in Japan?

"It is the greatest disaster in Japan since the second World War" said Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister of Japan, Friday. Everyone has seen images of the tsunami in Japan on television. Thousands have died because of the tsunami and this morning, they found over two thousand bodies at the coast of Japan. The residents are still waiting about what is going to happen next.

Organizations in Japan are trying to help the victims by collecting money for the Red Cross. The Groupon Company in Japan started a special donation page where people from all over the world can donate money for the victims of the tsunami. Google helps in another way by launching a ‘crisis response webpage’ where people can see where the disaster areas are, can read the latest news about the tsunami and can search for missing persons. Google and Groupon set a great example for all other countries how to help Japan. But how could other organizations help the victims? On Twitter the tsunami is a trending topic and on YouTube the videos are the most viewed by visitors. Why not use this information to help the victims? I think the more we support the victims in Japan, the more we get connected and together we could make the difference. Donate by sending a Tweet, posting a wall message or share your videos at YouTube. The possibilities are endless so why not starting right now?