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?

What to do if you Online Social life becomes messy?

Whoops!

.... You called sick at work, but posted a public party picture of the night before on Facebook

…. You have posted a Tweet about your annoying colleague…which follows you

…. After a bad day at work you call your boss a ‘Grumpy old man’ at Twitter. He reads it.

…. You called sick today to apply for new jobs on the internet… And you wrote a Tweet about it. Again, your boss reads it.

…. When you came back from your holiday in Spain you thought it would be fun to share your bikini pictures with your girlfriends…and boss on Facebook.

If this sounds familiar to you, your Online Social life is probably a mess. What should you do with an account on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to keep your audiences and multiple identities separated?

There is a lot going on in the Social environment online. Employers screen their candidates before hiring them, employees get fired because of their Social Network Sites posts and people do not know what their identity should be on the many different Social Network Sites. Besides the fact you always have to pay attention to what you say online, it is hard to manage your Online Social life. How do you manage to keep your posts separate so only the people the message is meant for will read it? With the current social life it is hard to stay true to your multiple identities. But maybe there is a solution…

With Whoopaa you can manage all your personal and business activities online. Connect your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on Whoopaa and start sharing.  With a timeline you can manage all your incoming and sent messages. Maybe this could help us to stay true to our identities and organize our Online Social life. It is definitely worth trying if you have problems with the examples above. The only downside is that if you already have problems managing three Social Network Sites, will it be easier to do this all in once or is it just another complicated tool that does not make things better? I will definitely try it out in the hope that all my messages are sent to the right people.

Go Real-Time!

For years marketers advertise by using text advertisements, photographs, tv commercials, radio commercials, online banners, online video's and so on to get the target group to buy their product. Nowadays, none of these strategies are really special anymore. To get the job done you have to go creative. Consumers are spoiled and see an abundance of ad's everywhere they go. They only pay attention to the best, so be the best. How? Use interactive advertisement! Let your target group play and tease them with nice designed real-time ad's. Involve them in your ad and let them experience your products. If you won't do it, someone else will.... 

See this subway station in Shanghai for example which alone is worth a visit by the cool ad's:

Or let your target group move by using gesture based technology:

But be quick because it's only a matter of time before the ad's will be watching you...

Become a Mistress of Task Domination with Epic Win

Almost everyone has a smart phone nowadays and downloads as much applications as possible. Whether it be casual games such as Angry Birds or communication applications such as Skype, we spend a lot of time using them. Because of this we forget to do the things that really matters according to Rexbox & SuperMono. Therefore, they designed an application named Epic Win that helps you to manage your 'to do' list. No boring "ticking off the boxes" app, but a good developed game in which you can choose a character and leveling-up to become a 'C.E.O of Pain' while doing your daily tasks. The interface makes the whole game a new experience and doing the laundry is suddenly a lot more interesting. By completing tasks you move further on the map and collect rare items which you can share on Facebook or Twitter. Though the app is not for free, it helps you to manage your life to really getting things done. Epic Win is a successful interface that makes daily activities a lot more fun.

Online, Offline or Both?

We are living in a digital age where we can buy and sell everything online twenty-four hours a day. Pets, clothes, computers, food and services can be bought by just one click of the mouse. Furthermore, we are connected to the internet almost all day long by using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on our mobile phones, IPads or laptops. We present ourselves to the world and all our personal information could be read by complete strangers. But that does not scare us at all. We seem to like it to present ourselves in the most positive way to maintain relationships online and meet new people. But could online contact lead to a deeper and more serious relationship? Or do we get more individual by each message we post?

Research showed that the more frequent people post messages online, the higher the intimacy-level. On the other hand, the so called lurkers get more and more individual by just reading posts and watching pictures of others. So how could we expand our offline intimacy-level while we are posting online messages all day long? And how could we increase our online intimacy-level while we are posting no messages at all on our social network sites? Do we have to make a choice between online and offline, lurker or poster? Or could we be both?