Overestimation of a friend's ability

Asking your friend for choosing a dress for you can actually be a disaster. Research has shown that we normally overestimate our friend's knowledge about us. So they are not the best agents when it comes to making choices for us. And the reason for this over estimation is over confidence. This overconfidence is the over confidence about the knowledge about us. Our friends normally have an automated part in their memory that knows all about us and the mind does not bother to reason that automated part, because it is expensive to use the memory. Ultimately the big question is "Does our friend even bother about us ?" Well research has not ventured into that domain, but it can be argued that the "Know it all attitude about a friend" may cause insensitivity.

The impact of this research is more for consumers than marketers. The bottom line: "Never trust a friend in making choices. They are bad agents."

Giving the finger to a scripted life!

It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age. ~ Warren Buffet. You have plans for your life, career etc. You've built an entire script but what is this based on? Scott at Ted talks about how almost 80% of the people around the world don't like the job they do. In his career, he found one day that most of the job he did was automated by his competitors. Building the resume was clearly not way forward. It was during that time he he heard the quote by warren buffet, " It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age ". This was when he left his job. While there are know universities, which talk about finding your passion, Scott talks about a lens that can help in finding the job we love.

Twitter and the world of hate - Delhi Gang Rape

Common wisdom says that venting out reduces frustration. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs help us achieve the same. While what normally starts as a "venting out" experience, I suspect is turning out to be an anguish enhancer. When I look at trending topics on twitter all what I see is a world of "Hate". Small pieces of hate messages turn out to be a big collective bunch of hate. Take the case of Delhi gang rape and some ill-minded comments of politicians and spiritual gurus. What started as scattered bickering remarks against a comment made by "Asaram" has now become a full fledged ball of rage. This rage was "non-directional", had no agenda and was oriented towards sarcasm and wit. While Delhi gang rape highlights poor governance, societal problems and problems of law and order, venting out on a forum that accumulates the frustration by many such people only adds to the low well-being. It is time we use some discretion and post messages that...

Twitter vs. News - Effectiveness in building relations

Social Media has been termed as an effective way to build relationships. Brands are trying to harness this capability by building social presence on this new media. Celebrities today account for the maximum amount of followers on the web with twitter being a fine example for this. But is this new media effective in creating relationships with this vast list of followers, which celebrities often tend to have? In an interesting research by Lee and Jang , they explore the effectiveness of celebrities in building social presence on new media. They compare twitter and a news website to check the relative effectiveness of enhancing social presence. While the traditional PR machinery used by celebrities might give them news coverage, they contend that their tweets can reduce the barrier of relational development as compared to a news website. Their findings are counter-intuitive and very interesting.

Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

Search This Blog