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Analyzing Labor Data Via Facebook Status
from the the-power-of-public-status dept
Sean over at the 463 blog has a cool post comparing mentions of "hired" vs. "laid off" on Facebook wall postings, and noticed a bit of a trend:
Who knows if it's really indicative of anything in terms of whether the "worst" of the recession is over, but what I found worth noting was how cool it is that we can even analyze such data. Traditionally, trying to get a sense of whether or not more folks were getting laid off than hired, you were pretty much limited to various official stats that would be released. But thanks to the fact that people now share such things via Facebook or Twitter status, you suddenly can get at least a proxy bit of data. Now, there are obvious caveats, including the fact that the population on Facebook is clearly not a representative sample of the wider population (and, many of those most impacted by layoffs are probably least likely to be on Facebook), so I wouldn't go tossing aside national labor stats just yet -- but it is a sign of the new types of data that can increasingly be built from the fact that people are now sharing status information publicly.
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Another Source
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More like Bushwacked.
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A lot of companies invest quite a bit in market research type activities. Seems that Twitter mining could offer a unique view of.. well, everything.
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Since the internet tends to skew towards slightly younger and slightly more affluent people, the numbers would tend to be off.
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I can envision situations where you'd want to mine this segment though. Apple might be one example. Any companies targeting programmers might be another (Portions of Adobe or Microsoft for example).
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you are missing the point, people
of course, if you are a professional researcher or an economist you are going to weigh for statistical and demographic inconsistencies, etc. you also know that there are a lot of terms possible that will have different impacts.
one of the points of this is that the ability to measure the thoughts and impulses of many millions of people is available to anyone with an Internet connections. You only need about 45 seconds on your hands (that's the time it took me). You won't get perfect results, but what do you expect?
and, if Joe Blow can do this now, what could those mentioned professional researchers, advertisers and economists do once versions 2, 3, 4, etc come out?
and, btw, all this said, try to tell me that this chart doesn't paint an interesting picture.
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Re: you are missing the point, people
This sort of data is remarkably unreliable, because you are depending on people to tell the truth, the same people who are using screen names, VPNs, and all sorts of other stuff. About as trustworthy as asking inmates about how to be model citizens.
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Re: you are missing the point, people
But yeah, the trend lines are not indicative of any specific trend in the economy, even though they are interesting to see. If you through in the S&P short term market rally across this graph you'd see it is actually rising as the hired & fired trends are falling (mid March the rally started and continued strong through May, now is rolling off). This could tell you many companies are getting their resources in line (manpower to needs), but it could also tell you nothing at all.
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