Girl Scout cookie pie chart

With Girl Scout cookie season around the corner, Wired pies it up with cookies showing percentage of sales. It’s all about the Caramel deLites. [Thanks, Elise] via Girl Scout cookie pie chart.

- via Flowing Data.

Share/Bookmark



Source:Adecco USA – Labor Day Survey

Share/Bookmark

Click to Enlarge

Today, I stumbled upon a really cool social network graphing tool from the creative folks over at LinkedIn (part of the LinkedIn labs projects).

Basically, once you connect your account with this LinkedIn web application, you’ll see a visual rendering of your LinkedIn network, neatly organized by colorful groups of your network connections you’ve created over time.

So, for example, my connections relating to my 10 years in New York and my Social Media Club group in Rochester, NY are grouped together. Not only are physical connections like these obvious, but also virtual connections, such as “social media” connections. My largest network is comprised of my Technology industry connections; no surprise there as technology permeates my entire career.

Click to Enlarge

To get started go here: http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/network and allow LinkedIn labs to connect with your profile.

When complete, you can view the social graph rendered and then “label”your networks.

TIP: Use the magnifier tool in to zoom in and read the names in each color area. Then begin labeling accordingly.

I find this sort of visual rendering to be very appealing, not only because I am a visual learner, but because it allows one to see how their career connections are related. You can also easily spot key influencials and people who are very connected to the same circles of friends and industry connections you have. Some of those folks are the same ones who helped me make connections… very interesting data!!

What do you think of this? Do you find this useful and intriguing like I do? Does this kind of tool make it easier or harder to group your network of friends and professional connections?

Here’s a visual step-by-step of the screens you’ll see as  you generate your very own LinkedIn network social graph:

[slideshow]

Share/Bookmark

Share/Bookmark

Share/Bookmark

December Data on Facebook’s US Growth by Age and Gender: Beyond 100 Million

Facebook has been steadily climbing towards 100 million monthly active users (MAU) in the United States, and it finally reached the milestone late this past month, according to the self-reported data in its advertising tool.

Here’s a closer look at how those numbers break down by age and gender. Be sure to check out the caveats for these numbers at the end of the article — the short of it is that you should take all of these numbers as estimates.

Overall, growth appears to have continued at around the same rate as before: Nearly 5 million users joined the site in December, pushing the total from 98.1 million MAU to nearly 103 million MAU. The previous two months saw increases of around 4 million apiece.

Women, especially younger women, continue to comprise the single largest demographic groups within the US. In total, women constitute over 56% of the overall Facebook population — a continuation of a long-time trend.

Younger users saw the biggest numerical increases in December and the 26-34 range saw the largest overall increase, adding 839,000 new MAU, most of whom were female. Earlier last year, we were seeing stronger relative growth in older demographics. Maybe Facebook is facing challenges retaining older users?

In terms of growth rates, younger people and older men saw the fastest growth, as you can see below, with women over 55 not joining the site as fast as they had been earlier last year. In December, men over 55 on Facebook grew over twice as fast as women over 55.

As we enter 2010, only 40% of Facebook users are under the age of 25 – 60% are 26 or older, and nearly 20% are 45 are older. While it started as a site for students in a few colleges, American use of Facebook today is very intergenerational.

Note that the total number of users in a given age group is higher than the combined number of males and females within it, and for a couple reasons. One is that not every user designates their gender on Facebook, either by choice or because they forgot to. Another reason is that overall demographic numbers are estimates.

And now for the caveats, as there are significant irregularities in this data. Facebook’s advertising tool typically reports traffic numbers around a month later than what the company sees internally, judging from what we have observed in the past. And, repeated sampling of any demographic within a single day will typically show a few variations for the numbers. For example, when we took a sample from the advertising tool on January 1 to compare against our sample in early December, we saw the following results for the total number of MAU in the US: nearly 103 million but also 99 and nearly 104 million. Problematically, these estimates appear to differ whenever one sorts the advertising tool for a specific demographic, meaning we don’t have a good window into whether or not each demographic is high or low. The best we can do, given the irregularities in the data, is to look at overall trends. So, don’t assume any of these numbers are facts, but rather loose estimates that are better than nothing.

via insidefacebook.com

via December Data on Facebook’s US Growth by Age and Gender: Beyond 100 Million – Susan Beebe’s posterous.

Share/Bookmark

Source: OnlineCollegesandUnviersities.com

via Is College Really Worth It? #Infographic hat tip to @FastCompany (Source: http://www.onlinecollegesanduniversities.com/) – Susan Beebe’s posterous.

Share/Bookmark

Microsoft will close the decade the same as it started, as the worlds biggest tech company, as measured by market capitalization.Will Microsoft still be on top come December 2019? It doesnt look likely. Its a whole different world for Redmond. At the start of the decade, Microsoft seemed invincible. Now, its just trying to catch up as Google and Apple blow past it with search and mobile.

via CHART OF THE DAY: Microsofts Decade Of Dominance MSFT, IBM, CSCO, AAPL, GOOG.

Share/Bookmark

We’ve discovered an adorable yet highly useful little product that could significantly ease some pain and lead to greater levels of productivity for smartphone developers.

It’s ridiculously simple as a concept, yet it allows for more creativity, freedom, and portability than any other tool we’ve seen for mobile developers, hands down. The product of a design shop and a web development lab, both based in Australia, these nifty and inexpensive toys have been popping up in offices all over Silicon Valley. Read on to learn the secret behind your favorite mobile dev’s favorite Christmas present.

It’s made of paper.

Yes, the Notepod is the Moleskine of the digerati, an ingenious little sketchpad shaped like an iPhone. The front of each sheet features “52mm by 77mm of blank space floating in darkness,” and the back of each piece is a blank grid of graph paper, perfect, as the site says, “perfect for notes or jotting down the phone number of a hot geek.”

Notepods each contain 100 pages, and you can snag a 3-pack for around $18USD. Shipping will take between 7 and 12 business days, unless you're lucky enough to live in Australia or New Zealand.

As we all know, the best ideas often hit you at inappropriate or inconvenient times. As Inventive Labs posted, “It’s incredibly fun to come up with an idea in the pub over a few beers;” however, how fun is it to decipher those indecipherable, scrawled-on and soggy cocktail napkins the next morning? Keep one in your bag, one on the nightstand – wherever inspiration strikes. It might be made of paper, but we think smartphone developers will find it a fun and simple productivity tool.

via @rww The Ultimate Gift for the iPhone Developer in Your Life: Notepods.

Share/Bookmark

Share/Bookmark