How writers exaggerated the significance of a Facebook #infographic



Contributing Writer
Photo: That's Lame Bad and/or Stupid Credit: Leoele


I’m just as skeptical (and maybe more so) than others when it comes to Facebook.  But some posts this week crossed the line for me.  It all stems from headlines run on certain social sites reporting an infographic (shown below) generated by SodaHead.com that shows that users are growing weary of technology.

Here’s a sample of headlines from the blogosphere:

INFOGRAPHIC: Facebook’s Popularity Slipping?

Is Facebook’s Popularity Falling On Its Face? [Infographic]

Public growing weary of popular technology (infographic)

The problem?  The data behind this isn’t randomized or diverse enough to draw such a broad conclusion.  It’s a sample of 1300 users of SodaHead.com, the majority of respondents being over 25.  Drawing from a homogenous group amplifies the sampling error of any data that is collected.  It’s like drawing a conclusion about the Presidential race by polling only Californians – it’s a big group of people, but not at all representative of the viewpoints and interests of people in the other 49 states.  It also should be noted that the polling was done post-IPO where user sentiment appears to be colored by their fluctuating stock performance.

In speaking with SodaHead founder Jason Feffer, they are aware that is inherent sampling error to their methods .  So why would prominent bloggers treat this information to make sweeping generalizations?   I suspect that Facebook + infographic + conflict is probably a good recipe for getting people’s attention.  As Reuters demonstrated a couple of months ago, it’s important to approach these opinion polls with a healthy dose of skepticism.  People oftentimes misrepresent their behaviors when asked.  This is nothing new: John F. Kennedy won his Presidential election over Richard Nixon with a minuscule majority of the popular vote, yet a year after he took office 60% of people said they voted for him.

A more reliable indicator of user sentiment (measured by time spent on site) towards Facebook would be Comscore or Nielsen.  Their sampling methods generally focus on tangible action and can reduce the sampling error (most times) to as low as 2%.

As a post-script – the original draft of this post misrepresented some aspects of SodaHead’s business, which is actually quite unique.  I made some assumptions about the content on SodaHead based upon an initial glance into the site, and demographics informing their polls based upon traffic to their site.  SodaHead actually places their more sensational polls on their landing page (which I understand, since I still get a fair amount of search traffic from my posts on Alyssa Milano and Kim Kardashian) and much of their polling is done off of the site, so drawing conclusions about their content from the landing page is inaccurate as are conclusions about poll respondents based upon site demographics.  I’m really grateful to Jason Feffer for taking the time to reach out and explain how my assumptions about his company were wrong, and to introduce me to a company that has established itself by taking a great idea outside of the box.  More about that in a future post….

 

Sodahead infographic

Photo credit
Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

Infographic: How to scale relationship building with social media http://t.co/PT2zn8PrKf – 10 hours ago

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

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  • http://www.fredericgonzalo.com Frederic Gonzalo

    Well said, Jim. I had not seen this particular infographic but I also agree there seems to be at least 2-3 article per day announcing the doom of Facebook, while another 2-3 articles speak of its growth and incredible ads effectiveness. Go figure!
    That’s the big problem with social media and twitter, most specifically. Many of us tend to share and retweet without even bothering to read the article or post, appreciate its content and vouch for it through comments or sharing. It’s so much easier to just click on +1, RT or “like”, ain’t it…
    Thanks for setting the record straight on this one.
    Cheers from Quebec City,
    Frederic

  • http://www.twitter.com/monirom Monirom

    It’s not just the skewed Infographic sampling, it’s the entire machine. Right now there seems to be no line between objective reporting and subjective editorial – especially since everyone is blogging these days.

    As for the data, you know what they say, “there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.”

    To add insult to injury, even established news sites are including fatalistic, click bait headlines to entice readers to click/tap their way to an article – only to be disappointed by the misdirection and a less than compelling article.

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks Frederic! I think there are necessary shortcuts that we need to use to filter all of the information we can and infographics offer a really easily digestible set of data. But SodaHead doesn’t assert any statistical significance to their polling, so how writers took the leap to draw broad conclusions about this is a little surprising. Appreciate you reading and commenting!

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks for reading and commenting – a lot of rich insight in your comment. Anyone that’s used a pivot table to “massage” data knows that there are a lot of ways to look at it – and particularly when data is informing decisions on how to market a business I think it’s worthwhile to scrutinize. I mention my conversation with SodaHead Founder Jason Feffer in the post, and he elaborated that SodaHead makes demographic data available for these polls, so users can dig in the data to understand who was represented and how to interpret the results. So much of what we do is simply interpretation, so it does surprise me when people are discurious or make giant leaps in interpreting an infographic. But I am quite often the victim of analysis paralysis, which isn’t an advisable affliction! Cheers!

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