The monkeysphere has sooo many implications. Read David Wong’s Inside the Monkeysphere for the full account. Very concise and very approachable - and hilarious!

The essence of the monkeysphere is that we are biologically wired to maintain a functional social sphere of about 150 people - neighbours, family, coworkers, friends, etc. Beyond your monkeysphere, people become acquaintances and than strangers.

I’ve argued before that the people with 2000 Facebook friends don’t really have ‘friends’ but a large collection of superficial acquaintances; I wonder about the levels of interaction with all of those people. Anecdotally, a co-worker of mine said that when he went from 50 friends to 75 friends on Facebook, he stopped reading the newsfeed - it was too much to keep up with.

I’ve also talked about comment trolls - the people who show up for one day and leave nasty comments on your blog (blog rage). The question always comes up - why? Why do people feel that they can say hurtful things? I say it’s because you are outside their monkeysphere; you are just another piece of meat to them - they wouldn’t say thing like that to people in their monkeysphere. Think about this the next time you’re driving. Would you scream at other drivers the way you do if you actually knew them? Especially if they were in your monkeysphere? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Problems in the world? Too many people for our monkeysphere:

The primary difference is that monkeys are happy to stay in small groups and rarely interact with others outside their monkey gang. This is why they rarely go to war, though when they do it is widely thought to be hilarious. Humans, however, require cars and oil and quality manufactured goods by the fine folks at 3M and Japanese video games and worldwide internets and, most importantly, governments. All of these things take groups larger than 150 people to maintain effectively. Thus, we routinely find ourselves functioning in bunches larger than our primate brains are able to cope with.

This is where the problems begin. Like a fragile naked human pyramid, we are simultaneously supporting and resenting each other. We bitch out loud about our soul-sucking job as an anonymous face on an assembly line, while at the exact same time riding in a car that only an assembly line could have produced. It’s a constant contradiction that has left us pissed off and joining informal wrestling clubs in basements.

I’m pretty excited about the monkeysphere - it’s one of those rare moments of pure cognitive crystallization.

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Imagine you are driving down the road in the summer with the windows down, a legally purchased CD playing at a reasonable volume on the stereo. Later that week, you get sued by an organization for broadcasting a public performance of the work and they want fees for the artist. Laughable? Not really:

Car maintenance chain Kwik Fit is currently tied up in a bitter legal battle with the UK Performing Rights Society (PRS). It’s alleged that Kwik Fit’s mechanics allowed their radios to be played within earshot of the public - a truly heinous crime for which the PRS are demanding £200,000 in damages.

And if that isn’t ridiculous enough, a charity is being sued because children were singing Christmas carols without the proper license.

Did you know you can’t sing “Happy Birthday” in public? Yup - it’s copyrighted.

Are the organizations that police copyright infringement (ASCAP, PRS, etc.) getting carried away here?

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Another sampling of interests according to Facebook. This week, we look at six American cities. (see last week’s Canadian Interests (via Facebook)).

US interests according to Facebook

Keep in mind that the US users in the 18-24 category are disproportionally represented compared to other countries.

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More stats from Facebook. See the last post for interest trends in Canadian cities, and the post that caught my interest.

Here are some basic demographics - age group and country. It’s pretty basic information, but there are a couple of interesting things here when we compare the US, Canada and the UK.

Facebook Age Spread for USA, Canada and UK

I would assume the 18-24 year old US spike is indicative of Facebook’s origins in American college and university life. While 18-24 year olds in Canada and the UK still show the greatest number of users, I’d suspect this is due more to web and trend literacy than anything else.

Canada shows more users in the 30-39 group than the 25-29 group. I admit that the 30-39 group spans 10 years rather than 5, but the US and UK both show decreases from one category to the next. I’d say that Facebook is seen as a significantly different tool in Canada than it is in the US.

From 30-64, there are more Facebookers in Canada than the US and UK, even though the population of Canada is significantly lower than the US or UK. I wonder if population density has anything to do with Facebook’s popularity in Canada in this group. Could Facebook be popular for relationship management in countries with low population density and high population mobility?

Any other insights or comments?

Tomorrow, education trends.

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 As a follow-up to Buzz Canuck’s interesting Interests by Canadian City (Through the Lense of Facebook), I’ve done my own matrix of interests on Facebook using the ad building tool (you can target your ad by demographic). I used basic keywords that people use in their own profiles, and used Sean’s list of interests, plus a few random interests. I chose the 18-to-any age group, and no other criteria other than city network and interest keyword.

Read yesterday’s post and discussion here.

My results differ from his, due, I suspect, to different data-gathering techniques. Still, it paints an interesting portrait of Canadian’s interests.

We don’t like snow, but Montrealers and Vancouverites like snow better than woodworking.

Facebook Interest Matrix (click for full size)

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Well, according to this chart tracing the interests of Canadian Facebook users, yes. Movies, photography and travelling beats hockey too (except in Winnipeg and Calgary. Go Flames!). Interests by Canadian City (Through the Lense of Facebook) at Buzz Canuck

The fascinating part of this for me is how we all seem to have the same top interest (music), then reading, then movies. For the top three items, the chart is quite consistent across the country; as we go down, the interests by city become quite diverse. Even though we’re pretty similar at the top, our regional differences are quite pronounced in the bottom half. I’d be interested to know if this is representative of the Facebook user demographic or if this is consistent across the broader population? Anthropologists?

Note to Sean: I’d like to know either your methodology in creating this chart or the source of this chart.

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Things that go on behind the scenes of advertising, marketing, filmmaking and other industries where illusion is crucial.

When the illusion fails, it ends up in Consumer Reports “Selling It” feature  :)

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Hi Doug,

You can stop crying for your industry. I saw Kevin Nalts’ wonderful Ten Lessons for Marketers Using Viral Videos. Comes as a sweet relief after Dan Ackerman Greenburg’s horrible The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos. The White Hat rides again!

Cheers,
Dave

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Greenpeace is running a vote for the name of their adopted whale, and thanks to some Reddit (they even changed their logo) and Boing Boing postings about a “super clicker“, the name “Mister Splashy Pants” is out in front with 69% of the vote. The next most popular name has 3%.

Looking at the list of names and their meanings, it’s not much of a surprise that “Mister Splashy Pants” is the clear cut favourite.  There is no distinction between the other names.

Virtually ever other name has a very earnest sound and meaning. It may be my bias towards the English language, but I don’t make a huge distinction between “Aiko” (Japanese for “little love”), “Malaya” (”free” in Tagalog (Philippines)) and “Shanti” (”peace” in Hindi). While there may be a certain lilt to the word, nothing jumps off the page until, halfway down, “Mister Splashy Pants” shows up. This name jumps out of a sea of otherwise pretty but neutral names and smacks you between the eyes.

Now, I know that a lot of earnest, sandal-and-hemp wearing people will be offended by this (”it’s a name a grade 3 class would give a hamster”), but nothing will bring attention to Greenpeace like a whale named “Mister Splashy Pants”. On December 1 (the day after the contest ends), the newspapers will be full of “Mister Splashy Pants”. Not so much if the whale was named “Talei”. Why? It appeals to us on so many levels. It’s goofy, it’s unusual, it’s fun to say and write (Mister Splashy Pants, Mister Splashy Pants), and it is incongruous.

What are you doing to stand out and bring attention to your product/service/cause?

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Blogging can bring out the best and worst in a community. Commenting on blogs is the fundamental way to create conversation and build community, and legitimate commenters can extend and enhance the conversation. Unfortunately, open comments attract people “who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it, in some sort of sad attempt at self validation by being nasty towards others for the sake of it.” (Duncan Riley, “Comment Trolling Has A Psychological Explanation” on TechCrunch).

Certain posts tend to bring out the trolls, especially any post slamming Apple, so it seems. Rob Hyndman went through this experience recently when he blogged about the difficulties he had upgrading to MacOS Leopard (an upgrade that’s gaining some notoriety).

My favourite comments from the Comment Trolls:

• “So what you are saying is you didn’t understand the install proccess, and then finally did an archive and install and yet didn’t understand how that worked either? Why would you be using some idiotic, 3rd party password file when Apple builds this functionality into both Tiger and Leopard? What other obscure software have you installed? My 12 year old understands this stuff far better than you do.”
• “I sure hope no-one ever follows your advice.”
• “wow rob, you are a dummy.”
• “buddy, you deserve a typewriter for being such a retard. along many here who added likewise zero computer knowledge.”

Comments like these add nothing to the conversation, and, for a novice blogger (which Rob certainly is not), can be quite difficult to manage. Andy Wibbels writes: “A big fear among newbie bloggers is how to handle things when a rogue commenter starts using your blog’s comments as their own private graffiti board - especially if they start hurling abusive language at you or other commenters.”

So, what can you do when a rogue commenter shows up? Here are 8 strategies:

1. Ignore it. If the post is getting a lot of comments, often the commenting community will chastise the troll. It may not stop the troll, but it may add a new dimension to the conversation. However, if this is not the tone you want to set for your community, you need to take action.
2. Step into a flame war. If a member of your commenting community (regular or casual) gets into a flame war with a troll, step in and tell them you won’t stand for this kind of discussion, and block them if necessary. This is your blog and unless you encourage this kind of aggression, it will poison the community.
3. Delete the comments. This won’t stop the comments coming, but it will remove the offensive material from the site.
4. Block the troll’s IP address. There are tools on the administration side where you can block the address from where a troll is coming. Persistent trolls can switch IP addresses, but they’d have to be pretty dedicated. Check the help forums for your blog tools to find out how to do this.
5. Moderate your comments. Moderating comments doesn’t allow for spontaneous conversation, but you can preview comments before they are posted. Be sure to moderate new comments promptly.
6. Use a comment spam filter. Spam filters can catch comments based on language (usually a list of offensive words); this can prevent some of the more offensive comments from being posted. Try the Akismet plug-in; it’s been good for me.
7. Review what you write. Some types of blogs seem to bring out the trolls. If you want to bring out the Comment Trolls, try slamming a Mac product. This will bring out the evangelists.
8. Don’t fight them. The Comment Trolls aren’t looking for debate or discussion. Responding to the comments will invite further flaming - any response is often what they are looking for. Ignore them, and hopefully they will go away.

Blogging is about putting your ideas out to the public. Everyone has different ideas, and you must expect some controversy once in a while. The majority of comments are usually well-reasoned and extend the conversation, but the trolls can sour the experience. Just remember, it’s about them, not about you.

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