Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. – Maya Angelou

Mr. Walker's Classroom Blog

  • I ran across this article by GoChime on analyzing Data on the Internet.  Give it a read and wonder what job and career you are going to be involved with.

    In our business we come across a lot of interesting data points about what people are talking about social media. Data that make us think, laugh, or wonder. Starting this week, our plan is to begin sharing some of those interesting stories with you on a regular basis.

    For instance, we were recently working on a campaign for which we needed to identify people expressing ownership in the context of family and relationships in social media. That is, people talking about their own mother, father, sister, brother, girlfriend, boyfriend, grandma, uncle, and so on.

    Our Intent Mining Dashboard tracks the relative volume of mentions for each member of the family or relationship, so we could quickly see the breakdown as we worked. The engine behind it is able to determine the difference between people just mentioning the word “mom” and people talking about their own mom, so that makes this pretty interesting.

    Overall, we’ve observed that men are more frequently mentioned in conversations about significant others (Husbands/Boyfriends) while women are much more frequently the subject of conversations about family (parents/grandparents).

    We think its appropriate to see Mom top the list of most frequently discussed members of your family in social media. People are talking about the Mom in social media more than any other member of their family including Dad, husband, wife, girlfriend, and boyfriend. Dad took second place (same was the case for Grandpa versus Grandma).

    But, the twist for us was in Mom’s margin of victory over Dad. People talk about their Mom in social media almost three times as much as Dad.

    Point: Moms (and Grandmas)

    So, Mom definitely wins that one, but let’s take a look at who she and Dad talk about the most when it comes to their kids: Sons or Daughters. This one is a little bit of a closer call, but the boys still win this round. Sons are 54% more likely to be discussed than Daughters.

    Point: Sons.

    However, if we take a look at how much the siblings are discussing each, Brothers and Sisters, we find that they actually discuss each other equally. The difference in conversation volume was so minimal that we’ll call it a draw between Brothers and Sisters.

    Tie: Brothers & Sisters

    Looking to husbands and wives, it’s very close. Husbands are talked about more frequently than Wives in social media. The margin of difference isn’t as great as with Moms and Dads though. Husbands are only 0.2 times as likely to be discussed as Wives.

    Point: Husbands.

    We see lots of conversation in social media about dating, so we wanted to see who’s dominating the mentions in social media. It turned out to be no contest: boyfriends are discussed 2.6 times more frequently than girlfriends.

    Point: Boyfriends

    Looks like girls and guys with a boyfriend are much more eager to openly discuss their relationships in public – but that’s not much of a shocker, is it? Social Media is often a very accurate (and measurable) mirror of our culture.

    That’s part of why we love what we do. We learn so much about ourselves by studying how people express intent, ownership, and interests in social media. And now, we’re excited to start sharing more of our learnings with you.

    This round was an analysis based purely on volume extracted right off the top of our usual campaign creation process. We’re actually able to go much deeper into these conversations to mine conversations for deeper insights. If we took this a layer deeper, we’d want to see what’s driving the conversation for each family member. The overwhelming volume of people talking about their Moms could simply be driven by angsty teens complaining. Suddenly, we would have another story on our hands.

  • Flip bits, not burgers: Google Summer of Code 2013 is on!

    I am proud to share the news that Google Summer of Code 2013 will be happening again this year.

    This will be the 9th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past eight years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 100 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

    Spread the word to your friends! If you know of a university student who would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2013 website where they can find our timeline along with the FAQs. And stay tuned for more details coming soon!

    By Carol Smith, Open Source Team

  • From the NYTimes

    By VIJAI SINGH

    The original version of Monopoly has eight game pieces. The game's manufacturer plans to replace one of them.Courtesy of Hasbro The original version of Monopoly has eight game pieces. The game’s manufacturer plans to replace one of them.

    Despite the onslaught of high-tech games played on smartphones, tablets and giant flat-screen televisions, some old-fashioned board games played at a more methodical pace endure. Of those, perhaps the most popular is Monopoly, which was born 78 years ago.

    And even though there are any number of variations — a NASA edition, a New York Yankees edition, a Star Wars edition — the Monopoly of Park Place, Boardwalk and the Community Chest has remained largely unchanged.

    Until now.

    Hasbro, the company that manufactures Monopoly, has decided that the journey around the board for one of the eight classic tokens will end soon. And, in a modern twist, it has taken to social media to seek input from the public. So after Tuesday, when voting closes, the thimble, car, boot, Scottie dog, battleship, hat, iron or wheelbarrow will go to jail, forever, and a new token will take its place.

    Of course, the company is not leaving it entirely up to the public to decide such an important part of a classic game. Hasbro came up with a list of potential replacements, conducted an internal vote and narrowed the field to five finalists: a robot, diamond ring, cat, helicopter and guitar. The classic token with the fewest number of votes will be replaced by the new token with the highest number. The winner is to be announced on Wednesday.

    As of Monday afternoon, the boot and the iron had the fewest votes and were most in danger of being replaced. Hasbro would not say which of the new pieces had the most votes.

    “The token is key to the game and key for all of our fans,’’ said Jonathan Berkowitz, the vice president for marketing at Hasbro Gaming, in a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Pawtucket, R.I. “You ask anyone what their favorite Monopoly token is and most people have an answer. There’s always a reason.”

    The creation of Monopoly is widely attributed to Charles Darrow, an unemployed heating contractor from Philadelphia, though there were earlier versions of a similar game. Darrow’s 1933 version named the properties after places in Atlantic City, which experienced a boom in the 1920s, before the Depression.

    “Because it was a game and because games are entertaining and they’re fun, Atlantic City seemed to be the perfect partner to use for the property names,” said Philip E. Orbanes, the president of Winning Moves Games Inc., a game manufacturer. Mr. Orbanes has also written four books about Monopoly and has been a chief judge at the United States and world Monopoly championships.

    In 1935, Parker Brothers negotiated and signed a contract in the Flatiron Building in Manhattan to acquire Monopoly from Darrow, Mr. Orbanes said. (Parker Brothers is now owned by Hasbro.)

    “J.P. Morgan, the legendary financier, was the inspiration in 1936 for the styling of the little Monopoly man who today we call Mr. Monopoly,” he added.

    Monopoly rose in popularity during the Depression. “Twenty-five percent of the work force was unemployed,” Mr. Orbanes said, “so playing Monopoly was an opportunity to vicariously feel rich.”

    The game has remained essentially unchanged, which some say is part of its continued success. “When I played Monopoly as a kid,” Mr. Berkowitz, the Habro executive, said, “it’s exactly the same as when I play it now with my kids, and the same is true of my parents and that’s very, very rare, and I think that’s one of the great things about the brand.”

    Mr. Orbanes said, “The main appeal of the game is not necessarily the charming equipment, but rather it’s the dynamic that takes place when you and I and our friends sit around the table and we start negotiating, deal-making, bantering, making decisions, seeing the results of the decisions we make.’’