Market Research Monday #6

How your cell phone usage affects your Facebook post ranking.

Do you answer more calls than you make? What's the ratio of answered calls to voicemails to callbacks?

Do you send more Facebook friend requests than you receive?

All of these data points (and more) influence your post ranking – how high, often, and distribution width – and are folded into a larger marketing concept called GRAVITY (it's an acronym but I don't know what for.)

Individuals with high G-force are characterised by (some) of the following traits:

1. High call-2-text ratio – far more voice calls than text messages
2. Receives higher number of voicemails than sent – uses text instead of voicemail to followup unanswered calls
3. Higher volume of calls that go unanswered
   1. by contrast, a high G-Force person's calls are almost always answered
4. GPS and UID data reveal individuals with high-gravity
   1. Influence destination choice
   2. can decide who is in/out of group
5. Highest interaction rate is in AM when followers “check up”
   1. second highest is in the evening when followers check to see what's going on tomorrow
6. GPS data reveal “warm spots” vs “hot spots”. Low-G users spend lots of time in few places – High-G users spend little time in lots of places.
7. High-G users tend to bridge multiple social networks

If you're a high-gravity person (in the eyes of the Facebook matrix), your posts will be much more prominent than your peers/competitors. Posts you “like” or comment, and events you're attending will be granted more screen space on your peers' feeds.

Odd data point: High-G correlates with slightly above-mean income (in six regions examined), but high-gravity users enjoy a more expensive life. Probably more “perks”. Takeaway: a smile gets you miles further than a scowl.

Weird sidebar: too few linguists working in data analysis, especially within keyword search. Context is everything – language is very “fuzzy.” Lots of poor datasets and even worse algorithms – Google has teams of people that do nothing but look at pictures and decide if they're porn or not – human brains still excel at this. Are there any algorithms that understand irony? (No.)

Important because brands are missing lots of conversations and opportunities to learn from the market. If a high-G consumer happens to use pith and irony, most analytics services will miss or misinterpret the language.