• How Twitter works in theory
  "It is said that an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders whether it works in theory. Twitter clearly works in practice…" – but how does it work in theory? In this articulate and erudite post, Kevin Marks explains the theoretical framework he uses to understand Twitter's undoubted appeal.
  (tags: twitter technology socialmedia strategy)

• How Many Marriages Started With Online-Dating Sites? – The Numbers Guy …
  The WSJ's Numbers Guy looks critically at dating sites and their claims of success. Online metrics provide powerful insights but are very easy to manipulate, exaggerate and spin. The online dating industry is particularly prone to this sort of thing as these numbers are what their business live and die by
  (tags: research)

• Sales Process… meet Buying Process; and why context trumps segmentation | Information Answers
  (tags: VRM)

You might not have heard of Google Knol, the service Google launched in an attempt to eclipse Wikipedia as a world-accessible font of knowledge. In a post last year I included it in a list of reasons why Google might be thought to have jumped the shark, and asked in vain if anyone reading this blog actually used it.

The resulting silence probably said more about my obscurity than Google Knol’s, but it turns out that Google Knol is indeed floundering. As TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfield wrote yesterday:

[Knol’s] model doesn’t work so well if nobody bothers to read the articles… Quantcast estimates that only 174,000 people visited the site in the past month.

And Knol is seeking to counter this evident public apathy by repositioning itself as a competitor to Craigslist. But Schonfield doesn’t see this working out:

Google should just end its misery, just like it did when it killed other under-performing projects such as Lively and Google Notebooks. Knol will never come close to Wikipedia. It can’t even cut it as a classifieds listing site.

Ouch!

I’m hoping that News International will end up looking back on their move to paid content as a serious blunder. Not because I’m irked at the idea of paying for the Sun or the Times (I don’t read either) or even because I’m a particularly ardent defender of free content. I just dislike News International in general and Rupert Murdoch in particular, and would rather live in a world in which their influence is greatly diminished. I also believe that Rupert Murdoch has a history of serious miscalculation when it comes to the internet and would like to see that belief borne out.

If I’m wrong, it’ll at least be interesting to see what paid-content providers end up doing to differentiate their output from non-charging competitors. We might end up seeing a period of accelerated innovation in digital content as it becomes a product in its own right – as opposed to a vehicle for selling advertising.

But to go back to my original point – I do hope that this all turns out to be a major cock-up on Murdoch’s part.