Some time ago, I stumbled across an crude yet interesting way to measure the internet reputation of any “brand” – be it companies, products, or people. The concept is simple: Count the number of times somebody says something nice about the brand, and compare it to the times somebody says something not so nice about it.

• As a counter, we use Google
• As measure of “nice things”, we search for mentions of (“I like XYZ” OR “I love XYZ”)
• As measure of “not so nice things”, we search for mentions of (“I don’t like XYZ” OR “I hate XYZ”)

Tabulated against each other, “number of nice things” vs. “number of not so nice things” gives you an impression of the overall online reputation. To relativize things, we can additionally introduce a measure of how often XYZ is mentioned at all.

This measure is by no means perfect or even remotely scientific. Search results could be distorted by all sorts of effects, and the reputation search criteria could be much more refined. Still, it’s a wonderfully simple instrument which might be useful to measure what the online world thinks about a brand. Try it!

And just for fun, some online reputation ratios:

• Paris Hilton: 32′300 positive vs 20′600 negative (ratio = 1.57)
• George W. Bush: 13′300 positive vs. 11′200 negative (ratio = 1.19)
• Microsoft: 58′400 positive vs. 103′000 negative (ratio = 0.57)
• Apple: 295′000 positive vs.  66′400 negative (ratio = 4.44)

Disclaimer: If you don’t like math, you might want to skip this post.

I have been asked if I had an idea for a numerical indicator showing the amount of diversity within a group. Let me make an example:

We have a population of N=100. Each member of that population has a favorite color. The population is therefore divideded into subgroups with the size of n(i) representing those favorite colors (e.g. n[blue]=50 people, n[red] = 20, n[green]=10, n[orange]=10, n[yellow]=8, n[purple]=2).

What I’m looking for is a one-dimensional, linear representation of the diversity of color preference, limited to the extremes 0 (=no diversity, i.e. everyone has the same favorite color) and 1 (=full diversity, i.e. everyone has a different color).

Specification: The difference between two colors can either be measured (a) nominally (i.e. light yellow and dark yellow are equally different as green and red), or (b) on an interval scale (i.e. red and green are measurably more different than light yellow and dark yellow). For simplicity’s sake, let’s leave ordinal measurement aside.

Measurement (a) is probably easier to calculate than (b), as we can neglect differences between colors. I suppose that (b) will involve some kind of internal consistency score.

Any ideas?

PS: Yes, this really has a business application.

UPDATE

Two solutions for problem (a):

1. As suggested by my friend Chris, take the square of sums divided by the sum of squares, or in Excel-speak =(N^2)/(SUMSQ(n1:ni)); this will give you an absolute diversity value between 1 and N, which can then be normalized to the scale 0 to 1 by the formula =((N^2)/(SUMSQ(n1:ni))-1)/(N-1)
2. The solution I came up (during a visit to Art Basel yesterday) was to take the geometric mean, normalized to 0-1 and inversed. In Excel-speak: =1-(SQRT(SUMSQ(n1:ni))-SQRT(N))/(N-SQRT(N))

At the extremes, both solutions are the same (0 for no diversity, 1 for full diversity). In-between those extremes, solution 1 is more conservative than solution 2 – you need more diversity to get a high score. For the example above, solution 1 gives you a diversity of 2.2%, solution 2 one of 48.6%. From this perspective I prefer solution 2, but I might have miscalculated the scaling in solution 1.

UPDATE 2

As I thought, I used the wrong scaling approach for solution 1. It’s easier to just inverse the value (sum of squares divided by square of sums), then it’s very similar to solution 2 (with the difference that it’s open-ended, and 100% can only be reached with N -> infinity).

Overheard in the corridor: What does it say about you if you accidentally call your Blackberry “Blackmail”?

From colleagues in various companies, I hear a lot about banned internet sites – especially Facebook and YouTube. While I understand managers’ reaction to limit employees’ opportunities to pursue work-unrelated and seemingly unproductive activities, it still is shortsighted:

• Firstly, these tools can and are used for work-related activities (Facebook for networking, Youtube for marketing activities, etc);
• secondly, even work-unrelated activities can prove productive in the long run (otherwise work-life aspects wouldn’t be considered as part of a companies’ reward strategy);
• thirdly, limiting employees’ activities is an unhealthy sign of a companies distrusting their employees to do the job they are hired to do; how time is spent on the job should be regulated via the performance management system.

Hutch Carpenter from the “I’m Not Actually A Geek” blog argues that companies should start employing Social Media Managers, because Web 2.0 tools – while phenomenally successful on the internet – will be difficult to implement in companies, because the pool of social media activists is smaller:

“The thing about social media is that once people get it, they really get excited about it. Facebook has experienced terrific growth. Twitter is edging more closely to early mainstream. FriendFeed is rapidly growing. But all of these companies had a chance to incubate and grow an enthusiastic set of early adopters, which leads to broader usage.

There are two issues for companies to address in the adoption of social media:

- Slow internal adoption can cause the initiative to die from lack of focus and budget.

- The real benefit of social media comes when many people participate. Slow adoption means companies won’t see good benefit for a while.”

Hutch continues to rally for Social Media Managers as socially active media advocates who

“- initiate discussions

- participate in discussions

- report on discussions”

and who “likely emerge organically from early users”.

[link to the blog post]

The Webomatica blog asked the question what criteria should be fulfilled in order for a technology to be considered “mainstream”. After all, not everybody is as tech-aware as, let’s say, the readers of this blog. Webomatica suggests four tests to find out:

1. “Joe Average Test”: Has the technology ever come up in casual conversations with “non tech obsessed” friends and co-workers?
2. “Spousal Approval Test”: Does your significant other like the technology, or think is has value?
3. “Aged Relative Test”: Have family members of older generations (e.g. your parents, in-laws) asked troubleshoot questions about the technology, or if it is worth using?
4. “David Letterman Top Ten List Test”: Did the technology appear in mainstream talk shows, for example on one of David Letterman’s top ten lists?

The post goes on to test a number of technologies that way (e.g. iPhone, Amazon, Facebook: mainstream; Digg, RSS, Twitter: not mainstream), states that

“a lot of stuff that the early adopter might consider ‘passe’ hasn’t yet hit mainstream awareness”

and makes a number of recommendations to increase the chances of a technology becoming mainstream – if that’s the plan at all.

[Link – via ReadBurner)

The art world, influenced by what happens in the business world, has picked up PowerPoint as an art medium some time ago. The most prominent example is “Talking Heads” founder David Byrne, who published a DVD Rom as well as various art installations exploring PowerPoint as an artistic medium.

Now a new art movement using PowerPoint has emerged: It is called “Pecha-Kucha” (“peh-chak-cha”), which means “chit-chat” in Japanese, and takes on the form of quasi-Poetry Slams using slides. The rules are simple:

• Create a 20 PowerPoint slides about any topic
• Show each slide for 20 seconds only

The result is a concise 6 minutes, 40 seconds presentation, which is quite fun to watch. This 20×20 format is slowly adopted in businesses as well.

[more about pecha-kucha]
[pecha-kucha official website]
[pecha-kucha examples on youtube]

The ReadWriteWeb blog says that Enterprise 2.0 – i.e. web 2.0 apps applied to business settings – will become a $4.6 billion industry by 2013:

“The top spending category will be social networking tools. (…) After social networking, the next-largest category is RSS, followed by blogs and wikis, and then mashups.

(…)

What this means is that much of the Web 2.0 tool kit will simply “fade into the fabric of enterprise collaboration suites,” says Forrester. By 2013, few buyers will seek out and purchase Web 2.0 tools specifically. Web 2.0 will become a feature, not a product.

(…)

Over the next three years, millions of baby boomers will retire and the younger workers brought in to fill the void will not only want, but will expect similar tools in the office as those they use at home in their personal lives.”

[Link]

According to studies (which unfortunately I can’t cite), public speaking is something that elicits a great fear in many people, greater than many situations of graver danger.

I like presenting, and if I am offered to do a speech in front of an audience about a subject I know well enough, I usually take it. The biggest internal audience I presented to was 200 people (on the introduction of the HR intranet); the biggest external audience 150 people (to psychology students at the University of Berne, about internal communications). I have copywritten many presentations for the my employer’s HR leadership, and a good friend of mine is a presentation coach – so I know a little bit about the subject.

There are three tips I can give you about preparing a good presentation:

1. Know your audience

The fear of public speaking stems mainly from a stress caused by uncertainty about the audience’s expectations. For this reason, you should be aware who is listening to your presentation, and what they expect from you.

• Write down a description of who you are presenting to, and why they are in the audience (out of curiosity? does their boss want them to be there?)
• Try to figure out what kind of questions you would have, if you were one of your listeners.
• Answer the most important of those questions in your presentation.

2. Structure your presentation

A good and easy model to structure presentations of almost any length is the WHAT/HOW/WHY model:

• WHAT is it you are talking about? – e.g. “Performance Management”
• HOW does that work? – e.g. “By setting goals, measuring achievements, and rewarding accordingly”
• WHY is it relevant to the audience? – e.g. “Because it motivates people to work well”

WHAT states; HOW explains; and WHY convinces. Make one slide for each of those questions, and you will have a neat, short deck you will be able to talk to. If you have more time, you can add sub-slides for each of the three parts.

3. Tell the audience 3 things to remember

The most common mistake in presenting is to confront the audience with too much information. You can present 20 different things to your listeners and tell them those are all important facts to remember. But guess what: If you’re lucky, they are going to remember one or two – and you have no control which ones they are going to be.

For this reason, summarize your presentation at the end to three things, and ask your audience to remember them. When I present, one of my final sentences is always: “In summary, there are three things I want you to remember – don’t forget them, even if you forget all the rest I have told you”. Not only does it make your message more effective, it also makes for an excellent wrapup.

In a recent article on the Harvard Business website, researchers John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas argue that people who enjoy computer games – especially those who play Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) possess skills and traits that suit them well for today’s business world:

• They are bottom-line oriented (gamers are used to assessments, measurements and comparisons)
• They understand the power of diversity (because game challenges require the collaboration of diverse talents)
• They thrive on change (because in games they are involved in change itself)
• They see learning as fun (overcoming obstacles is fun)
• They marinate “on the edge” (push the boundaries of given systems to find unusual solutions)

The authors call the combination of those skills and traits “The Gamer Disposition“.

This idea is not new (and I advise that Talent Management professionals to look into this), but it is refreshing to see it published on a non-geek platform like HBR.

[Link | via Jon Taplin's blog]