Real Influence

So, Facebook has deleted more than a quarter of their users' accounts. These were deleted because they were deemed to be fake accounts.

In related news, Klout, the major social media scoring system company, will be shutting down on May 25th.

Marketers in the new world of social media try to maximize their reach and impact. The influence they attempt to generate or control is worth big money. According to Statista, this spend was almost 31 billion in 2016, which was a rise of almost a third from the previous year.

I know many social media marketing partners that struggled with their Klout score competitiveness. There were certain strata that people fell in, and for some reason, many were unable to really take off to those really great scores. But, as with Facebook, Klout had to try to calculate for non-real influence. For instance, we hear millions of Instagram followers have been faked for certain accounts. Many of the most successful marketing partners had these inflated numbers, which resulted in high Klout scores. However, they actually weren't reaching real people.

Real influence, which is being focused on more and more, is about connections. It is about connecting with real people. The mommy blogger with 300 *real* followers on various social media outlets has a real connection with her followers. They know her. They know her family. Her story. The followers are invested.

This goes back to the concept of the Human Scale. Fewer real connections are more likely more influential in the long term than many fake and loose connections. Invest in what is real.

Warren Spector's Commandments of Game Design

A wonderful list that is well worth examining.  Warren Spector is highly respected in his field, and has been involved in development of many successful games such as the Wing Commander series, the Ultima series, and the Deus Ex series.

Warren Spector's Commandments of Game Design

With regards to quality, we can take some good lessons away from this.  When we analyze a design for any type of user experience, we look for things like rewarding the user, making the goal visible, giving multiple ways to achieve objectives, avoiding unnecessary steps.

But, even more than these:  when game design meets user experience, it can be an amazing thing.  You tap into people's motivation to help them achieve their goals in a pleasant way.  Every solution should strive for this result.  It reminds me of an article I read recently where developers are bringing video-game-like-achievements into real life. 

If you can tap into people's motivations, not just their behaviors, you have created a successful user experience. 

You've gained the 'Floss your teeth' achievement!

US Dialects- fascinating maps

Once again, I love visual representations of data.  This is an enthralling map of US dialects.

American Dialects Mapped

I admit, I still say 'coke' for a generic soda.

More on Perception

An interesting quote I ran across today:

"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

This is known as The Thomas Theorem, from two sociologists in 1928.   This highlights the disconnect between  [perception + expected rational behavior] versus [reality + actual behavior].

Again, we should expect this and prepare for this as test engineers.

See my earlier post on this subject:  On "managing" perception?