Category Archives: Reality checks

August 25, 2008 · 8:23 am

Careful with that fact, Eugene

I know it’s early in the week for an obscure Pink Floyd reference so let me explain.  The Olympics ended the other day and Nielsen is reporting some very large viewership numbers.  In fact, according to the Hollywood Reporter…

NBC Universal smashed yet another historic ratings benchmark: The Beijing Olympics is the most-watched U.S. television event of all time.  Through 16 days of coverage, 211 million viewers tuned in to the Olympics on NBC Universal’s broadcast and cable outlets, according to NBC citing Nielsen Media Research.  That’s 2 million more than watched the 1996 Atlanta Games, the previous all-time record-holder.

Lovely story, good for NBC, go USA.  But let’s spend a few seconds to look behind the numbers as an example of how one always needs to ask questions about any statistic.  There are roughly 115 million homes in the US and nearly 113 million of them have a TV (112,800,000 out of 114,890,000 to be precise). There are multiple viewers per home so there are around 285 million persons 2+ in the universe base.  I don’t have the 1996 people estimates but I think it’s fair to assume that ratio hasn’t changed very much.

In 1996, there were 97,540,000 homes and 95,900,000 TV homes.  So whilst TV homes grew nearly 17 million since 1996, and the number of people in those homes probably grew by 30+ million, Olympics viewing grew only by 2 million viewers.  Now, is that as impressive?  I’d say yes, given the fragmentation of media since 1996 but one could also argue that Olympics viewing has lagged, with 10% – 15% of universe growth actually reflected in viewing.  Heck, you’d expect a 15% pop in viewing just from the growth of homes.

The point is that in business, one can’t just hear a number and nod one’s head.  Ask questions, look for the numbers behind the number.  Challenge whomever is delivering the number to you.  Great executives will beat you to the punch and make sure every number they deliver is in perspective.

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August 21, 2008 · 8:16 am

You’re In

I used to love hearing the coach say “Ritter, you’re in.”  It meant I was going to get in the game rather than just stand on the sidelines trying to stay warm and keep my head involved.  Ironic, I guess, coming from someone who now works in a profession renowned for standing on the sidelines and kibitzing to the players (best line ever – the commercial – where the consultants look at the client and say “oh, we don’t actually DO anything, we just recommend.”)

I’m thinking about this because I had an interesting experience this morning.  You may have seen the announcement that konnects, a new social network, is having its official launch today.  Like you, I need another social network like a third armpit, but I figured I’d search the Twitter community to see what was being said.  Interestingly, of the 35 (as of this writing) tweets in the last 24 hours on this subject, it seemed as if exactly one was from a person who had signed up and was using it.  The other 34 were either people reposting the announcement or asking for thoughts on the network.

How many blogs do you read that are just that?  Folks who are standing on the sidelines but really don’t have the skill required to play the game?  How many naysayers are there like that in your office – folks who are ready to criticize at a moment’s notice but who don’t move the ball up field themselves?

The perspective in the middle of the field or court or rink or tee box is very different than that from the sidelines.  We all need to get in the game and sweat a bit before we make a lot of noise from the bench.  I understand that it’s all a part of the conversation, and it’s certainly OK to ask questions or seek opinions (and I wish more people did both!).  But I think there’s too much uninformed chatter out there.  Maybe it’s peer pressure to blog/tweet/fill up the lifestream.   We’d all be better off sharing experiences, not just opinions.

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August 12, 2008 · 8:17 am

Who touched my stuff?

You just made the list, buddy. Also, I don’t like no one touching my stuff. So just keep your meat-hooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I’ll kill you

OK, so someone touched my stuff.  Well, not my real stuff – my digital stuff.  Specifically, somewhere between my web host, Spry, and the Gmail client I use to access the mail on the Spry server, something changed.  Yes, I’m aware that there have been big problems with Gmail recently, although I must admit that I have not had any trouble with one account while another one is inaccessible.

Nope, all was working quite well until late last week.  For months, Gmail would ping Spry every so often, emails sent to my business mail would pop up and I’d be…umm…in business! Then, nada.  I became Mr. Unpopular.  In fact, in looking at it, it was around 7:30 Thursday evening when the mail stopped flowing.  When I had received nothing via Gmail on Friday, I used the Spry client (not as nice as Gmail) to check mail.  Hey!  Turned out I was the belle of the ball and now officially negligent in responding to the folks who had written.

So fess up.  Someone changed something and now it’s broken.  As businesspeople, it’s important to constantly improve the product, but when something goes wrong, we need to let the people who rely on us know that we screwed up.  Did the folks at Spry do something to change how POP access happens?  Don’t know.  Twitter had way more to say about Google’s problem than did Google (such irony) and that’s wrong.

The problem happened late afternoon Eastern Time and so caused an explosion in the US blogosphere. Google said it didn’t usually respond publicly to such problems, but decided to because: “We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts.”

Doesn’t respond publicly?  The openness of the web should inspire the same open, candid atittude among those who derive their living from it.

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