Indian Crabs – A story

Taj Mahal, Agra, India.
Image via Wikipedia

I heard the following story /parable as a child. I don’t know who is the author. It may be someone you know like most jokes it is more widespread than the author. If you already have heard it ,let me know it.

There was once a crab competition for all countries in the world.All countries sent their crabs to compete. Then someone noticed that the stall from India had a huge box, but it was open. There was no lid for it to keep the crabs in. So people asked the man standing there  Why is there no lid for these crabs. They may escape and spread here and there. The man replied , These are Indian crabs. They don’t need a lid. They are too busy pulling each other down.They wont escape.

Bi , Ba and Bs

Business intelligence is an over-used term that has had its day, and business analytics is now the differentiator that will allow customers to better forecast the future especially in this current economic climate.Business intelligence doesn’t make a difference to the top or bottom line, and is merely a productivity tool like e-mail.

Quote from Jim Davis ,

SAS Institute Inc.’s senior vice-president and chief marketing officer.

Pigeon-holing one element or another as backward-looking and another as forward-looking doesn’t even make much marketing sense, let alone being a tenable intellectual position to take. I think it is not unreasonable to expect more cogent commentary from the people at SAS than Mr Davis’ recent statements.

Post from Peter Thomas, Business Intelligence Guru.

Bottom line, it’s all fluff. I don’t like the term business analytics; it doesn’t tell me anything. Frankly, I think business intelligence as a term is downright laughable, too. What does that mean?

Post from Neil Raden Founder of Hired Brains

Here are my views on this

  • Is the distinction pure branding or semantics. Or is it rebranding  because SAS is the leader and the biggest business analytics and would not be the biggest business intelligence vendor- thus marking a tactical and aggressive shift in their strategy –
  • Also SAS remains the largest independent private business and the recent consolidation in this industry could be unsettling to people who want to keep it independent.
  • Ultimately customers vote with the cheque books –

call it business intelligence, business analytics or business as usual.

Bi,ba or bs

LinkedIn Apps : Blogging and Twitter

I like the following two LinkedIn Apps the most for sheer usefulness .Try them out – the blog gets extra readers and Company Buzz helps you track company. See them right below the all new LinkedIn inbox.

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This would take you to the Application Directory.

http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=application_directory

The WordPress blog helps me when I need to post some article to one of the 50 groups.

I then use the Add to Any button from www.addtoany.com and click share on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn indeed is quite convenient for sharing ( but be careful of overdoing it –lest it goes spam)

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I use the Company Buzz with a slight twist though.By using broad keywords I get a list of say people I want to follow in the world of data mining or business intelligence.

Next I follow NOT the people following the influential tweeters, but the people who they are using RT or messaging replies @.

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Hope this helps your LinkedIn account. You can send me a LinkedIn Invite at www.linkedin.com/in/ajayohri .

And do take part in the Social Media School group on LinkedIn here http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1854626

The Knowledge Discovery Conference

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Here is a great event and conference in June for people living in Europe ( or willing to travel ) .Do check out the tutorials on data mining and some research work and PhD dissertations – this is cutting edge for people wanting to keep up to with data mining and knowledge discovery.

PopURLs

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This is the site that inspired All-Top.com (see footer at the site )

the buzz making focused aggregator website by Guy Kawasaki that is beating Google News and older aggregators currently.

Very very stylish and recommended . Winner of 2007 Webby Award. You can use it to see practically what is happening across major sites here http://popurls.com/

Social Media and Unemployment

Graph of Unemployed People

( courtesy Andrew Sullivan)

Unemployment Rate Courtesy http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000

Continue reading “Social Media and Unemployment”

Metrics and Tools for Social Media Analysis

 

An interesting question put on Linkedin group here by James Wright  is

What kind of metrics are currently out there for social media marketing?

Some responses were –

  • number of "friends" on Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn,
  • number of blog subscribers,
  • number of comments on blog posts,
  • the number of links to blog posts,
  • the number of brand related tweets
  • where your leads are coming from
  • a Google alert for phrases that are important to your business,
  • referrals from embedded content/re-tweets that originated (use www.tr.im)
  • ROI
  • a follow-up email or sign-up page that asks "How did you hear about us?"
  • Cost per lead,
  • cost per engagement,
  • cost per action

 

Some recommended tools were  –

 

(Ajay- Let me know if you know any more tools or metrics for social media measurement )