EDUx, a new collaboration in online learning between Harvard and M.I.T., is newsy enough to receive splashy treatment in the New York Times today, including home-page link placement this morning.
But I think the Times buried the lede, for in the second paragraph is this nugget: “[M.I.T.’s first online course] began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam.”
Or, to be more specific, the inaugural MITx class has an attrition rate of at least 91 percent.
As with all online data reporting, the truth is beyond the glossy top-line numbers. MITx claims 120,000 registrants, but it’s really 10,000 who have a level of engagement, perhaps less if we track it to the final exam; the rest are, in the old brick-and-mortar school terminology, dropouts. Twitter has 500 million users but 50 million daily active ones. Et cetera.
Perhaps MITx is on par with typical Internet usage, with 10 percent of interested users generating full engagement. I much prefer that data point to considering the 110,000 quitters MITx has on its hands. No wonder it’s hard to get into M.I.T.
Page 18 of 128
Sean Bonner: Facebook makes me feel like a shitty friend.
Facebook made it easy. So now I have to wonder am I only staying in touch with those people because it requires absolutely zero effort on my part? What kind of a person does that make me? What does that say about how much I value their friendship?
Earlier this month I found out about a friend’s wife giving birth via Facebook, and only Facebook. It’s not the first time this has happened (indeed, not even the first time with this friend). And, to use Bonner’s turn of phrase, it made me feel kind of shitty.
Social media sites are wondrous things. I am in touch with more people in infinitely more ways than I ever expected. The problem lies with scale and distance, as the same interactions that feel immediate to the author can feel very different to the reader–both more and less intimate than originally intended, depending on the recipient. What Bronner and I are observing is less technological than sociological: replacing important real-life touchpoints with digital ones can be inherently, and inadvertently, disappointing.
Social interactions have myriad levels of nuance. Facebook is different from Twitter, for example. Email distribution lists remain popular alongside social networks (for my demographic, at least). And each type of action carries its own etiquette. Checking into the hospital on Foursquare and tweeting the delivery of a child can be fascinating and energizing and fun. Extreme example: Matt Haughey live-tweeted his vasectomy! But the same broadcast capabilities that bring levity to such things also defy conventional levels of friendship. When inner-circle, 20-years-of-history friends post the same birth notice to you as to 680 of their digital connections, that inner circle takes on a much flimsier feel. (Let the record show that in each case of “hey, I saw on Facebook that you’re a dad now,” I replied with a phone call.)
I rediscovered Bonner’s post because yesterday he quit Facebook altogether. I don’t think I’m in quite that drastic a frame of mind. My own Facebook usage is quite minimal: after all, if you’re concerned about privacy on Facebook, limiting what you tell Facebook goes a long way toward mitigating its pervasiveness. My profile there is no more robust than what you find about me on Twitter, LinkedIn, et al. with the exception of a handful of photos and some basic banter with my friends. My privacy settings are finely tuned. I can live with Facebook knowing and using that much about me.
And indeed, I almost need Facebook, because its wall has become many people’s primary mode of communication. I only log onto Facebook once a week or so, and when I’m gone for too long, I miss out on news of life-altering events. The privacy concerns are valid, sure, but many people have decided, however unwittingly, that they’re willing to live with the trade-offs of privacy and reach. And while I’d probably be fine not residing within the Facebook social graph, I don’t terribly want to dictate terms to my friends regarding how they keep in touch with me. So for now, they’ll post, I’ll call, and we’ll all go to bed happy.
Social media is an amazing tool. Even more so on one’s own terms.
A Veblen good is a product whose demand curve shifts in proportion to its expense. The more it costs, the more desirable it becomes, such as the Hermes Birkin Bag, on which you can spend $124,750 (well, in theory you could).
A Giffen good is a product whose consumption increases as costs increase, defying typical supply-and-demand curves. Giffen goods are inferior goods whose demand disregards quality.
(Via the wonderful Felix Salmon, who actually used the latter term incorrectly–my Prada shoes are Veblen, not Giffen, goods, although I find them most desirable at 60% off.)
Few visualizations of the transition from old media to new media (to which I’ve long been contributing, as both a digital media veteran and a reader) are as stark as the sales trend of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which ceased print publishing this week (edited for clarity):
Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. … Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought. … Now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue.
Brittanica’s been in print for 244 years. (It has the New York Times and The Economist beat by nearly a century.) But in a relatively brief 22 year span, the print encyclopedia’s distribution dropped by 93% and the share of the publisher’s revenue from those books dropped by 99%.
I continue to read many publications in print form, atop the multitude of web pages I consume. But I suspect it won’t be long before my only practical reading option is a tablet.
I am excited to announce that I have joined Proof Integrated Communications as Chief Strategy Officer, effective yesterday. I am a managing director at parent company Burson-Marsteller as well.
It’s a compelling next step in my career, as I’m charged with defining a variety of roles in an environment much different than the autonomous, scrappy startup I’d built at Canopy. From business development to corporate strategy, internal evangelism to organizational details, I’m going to have my hands in a lot of things, working with 70 colleagues in three offices to build upon their successes to date.
I leave behind a bustling agency in Canopy that has become a trusted destination for ecommerce and user experience projects, and an expanded Alexander Interactive that just moved its award-winning organization (and the Canopy team) to huge new digs on my last day at work.
Departing a nice environment is always strange, especially after four years of collaborative, impactful project work. But having successfully built something new for Ai–twice–I am ready for another set of challenges, starting with the ping-pong table directly outside my office. All in a day’s work.
According to LinkedIn, 1% of my profile views in the last 90 days came from searches–more than one!–for (marketing or product or strategy or cmo or intelligence or ceo) and management and director and not president and not sales and manager and not social and not budget and not plan and not direct and strategy and not solution and business and not product and not develop and online. (Oddly, I get no results from that link. Maybe I don’t know anyone like that.)
For the seventh consecutive year I’m chronicling in this space the places I visited over the past 12 months. Per the annual rules, only overnights are listed; repeat visits are denoted with an asterisk, and places visited prior to this year–all of them, it seems–get a dagger. (Hat tip to Jason Kottke, who seems to have given up on this, although I still enjoy doing it.)
New York, NY *† (home base)
Lake Buena Vista, FL †
Orlando, FL †
Livingston, NJ *†
New City, NY *†
San Diego, CA †
Boston, MA †
Palm Beach Gardens, FL †
In short, between the little guy and the hands-on nature of work this year, I really didn’t go anywhere. We’ll see if 2012 produces more exploration.
The Los Angeles Angels have agreed to pay Albert Pujols $254 million over the next 10 years.
Just eight years ago owner Arte Moreno bought the Angels (the entire team, that is) for $184 million.
Southwest is the only airline that was formed before the deregulation of the airline industry that has never filed for bankruptcy.
Related: US Airways is raising its $118 Philadelphia-to-Pittsburgh fare to $698 when Southwest stops flying the route next month, leaving US Air as the sole option.
“In other words: we could all be descendants of Martians.”