22 August, 2011

How Much Credibility Should We Attribute To Anonymous Reviews?

Customer review sites can be very useful when researching during a decision-making process but how much credence should be attributed to anonymous reviews?

Frustration and injustice are strong motivators which lead to a high volume of reviews being negative. It's our method of 'pay back' when we feel that we've been treated badly; we want the usurpers to take notice of our power as customers by warning others to avoid or tread carefully.

So it follows that when reviews are overwhelmingly positive, it's worth digging deeper starting with the reviewers' other reviews. This is obviously impossible with anonymous or 'Guest' reviewers whose reports may be valid but are unverifiable.

Many anonymous reviews are credible but, in general, are often be treated with a little suspicion an have less influence on decisions. It's easy for companies to fake their own good reviews or for their competitors to submit negative reviews - it doubtless happens - and the reviews may not be anonymous either, which is why we should take a quick glance at reviewers other reviews/opinions when building as complete a picture as we can.

To summarise, anonymous reviews may be better than nothing - but not much.

15 August, 2011

Review your Twitter Profile - and others!

Recently launched to help Twitter users decide who to follow, the twtrland tool is useful for analysing your own profile as seen by others.

Information goes into more detail beyond that shown in the image, listing the top tweets, retweets, mentions, links, pictures, etc. The application enables you to review your tweeting style.

It's free, why not try it?

11 August, 2011

Are Linked-In & Facebook Being Helpful or Taking Liberties?

First, Linked In.
There's a default setting that uses our names and photos for third-party advertising. If you take umbrage at such practices and don’t want to be included, here's what to do:.
  • Top right of your Linked In page, hover over your name and from the drop-down menu, select 'Settings'
  • From the 'Settings' page, select 'Account' (bottom left)
  • In the next column to the right, click 'Manage Social Advertising'
  • De-select the box for 'LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising'
Next, FaceBook.
There's a feature that enables the contact details from your mobile 'phone to be uploaded to your facebook Phonebook. To find it, go to Account, Edit Friends, Contacts. On the page you will see this information:
Phonebook contacts
Facebook Phonebook displays contacts you have imported from your phone, as well as your Facebook friends.
If you would like to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook, you need to disable the feature on your mobile phone and visit this page.
... and, unless you have disabled this feature, a full contact list from your mobile phone is also displayed.

I'd rather not have my contact details listed on various FaceBook accounts but it's entirely out of my control. A plea to friends and business contacts to disable this option is my only option. Isn't it?.

05 August, 2011

Another use for the scroll button on a PC mouse

I use Google Chrome most of the time which is set up to open new tabs rather than new browser windows.

When researching on the internet (which I need to do a lot!) I often find several links on a page that I want to explore, which may be relevant to the project. This is when the scroll button comes in handy ... clicking with the scroll button to link automatically opens a new tab as I click each item that I may be interested in.

It's then easy to quickly browse each of the new tabs and dismiss the ones I don't want. I also still have my original page open in the first tab so if, for instance, it was page 1 of Google search results, I can move on to page 2 and use the scroll button to select another few links.