Peter is 110% correct and as a Marketer I agree fully with him that is why Consumer Communications was formed to help companies access this market with the biggest Growth Potential
The Via Afika initiative sounds like an exciting intervention. Well done on your initiative. I agree that the dismal reports on Matric pass rates and educational outcomes can be quite disheartening to educators, many of whom are working so hard to improve outcomes. While it is necessary to honestly evaluate the state of Education in the country, evaluations with no action tend to be innocuous over time. Like Via Afrika, IkamvaYouth SA is a big player in the education sector in South Africa, looking to improve the country's skill set, improve Matric results and enable young people to access a dignified living. The organisation's model of after-school peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring is producing remarkable results. Since our first Matric cohort in 2005, IkamvaYouth's results have been between 82-100% even though we work with learners from under-resourced schools and township communities. Our work is in 5 provinces currently and we're looking to expand, through partnerships with like-minded organisations, individuals and businesses. Ultimately, the country's education is the collective responsibility of every sector of society, so let us all play our part.
Popularity, as the source of statistics, is not needed anymore: Google and Facebook obsolete and must disappear forever.I discovered and patented how to structure any data: Language has its own Internal parsing, indexing and statistics. For instance, there are two sentences:a) ‘Fire!’b) ‘Dismay and anguish were depicted on every countenance; the males turned pale, and the females fainted; Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle grasped each other by the hand, and gazed at the spot where their leader had gone down, with frenzied eagerness; while Mr. Tupman, by way of rendering the promptest assistance, and at the same time conveying to any persons who might be within hearing, the clearest possible notion of the catastrophe, ran off across the country at his utmost speed, screaming ‘Fire!’ with all his might.’Evidently, that the phrase ‘Fire!’ has different importance into both sentences, in regard to extra information in both. This distinction is reflected as the phrase weights: the first has 1, the second – 0.02; the greater weight signifies stronger emotional ‘acuteness’.First you need to parse obtaining phrases from clauses, for sentences and paragraphs. Next, you calculate Internal statistics, weights; where the weight refers to the frequency that a phrase occurs in relation to other phrases.After that data is indexed by common dictionary, like Merriam, and annotated by subtexts.This is a small sample of the structured data:this - signify - : 333333both - are - once : 333333confusion - signify - : 333321speaking - done - once : 333112speaking - was - both : 333109place - is - in : 250000To see the validity of the technology - pick up any sentence and try yourself. After that try a paragraph?All information will soon be structured and put into database; information is going to search for users based on their profiles of structured data, which cannot be read, used and understood in any way.The Era of Absolute Privacy is coming. No more spying!
Excellent article Scott. You are basically saying what most people are afraid to say. The stats don't lie, but people and businesses are often forced to ride a wave they don't need to even when it's clear there are no results.Your article is reminiscent of the Y2K bug that drove the entire world insane about nothing and made a lot of people money that they didn't earn. In my view, it's the "cool effect" of being on the bandwagon regardless of knowing better.The thing with technology is that it has to constantly show evolution even when there isn't necessarily any....Windows Vista comes to mind, and more recently, Windows 8. As you correctly pointed out, ICQ and mIRC are the godfathers of social media. I don't have the stats, but what I can say is that these apps were extremely busy and chatrooms were big back in the 90s. They were, as now, more important for social networking rather than business networking. ICQ launched a corporate version of their software, which died in beta mode, but actually worked.In the end, email has stood the test of time in business. I will acknowledge that a lot of money has been invested by business and governments in the social media frenzy. Who wants to look foolish and pull out now, even if it cuts the losses? You look and sound too retro otherwise.Great article Scott, very frank, but you are likely to have rubbed a few people up the wrong way!TC
Hi MarionI'm delighted (if a little frightened) to have come across this article. This is exactly what I'm going through right now as I attempt to re-start a freelance writing career after taking a break for a couple of years to do other things that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer all day. Well, here I am doing it again. 'Working' from 8am, only 90% is technically not working - it's trying to find work. On the one hand I'm glad I'm not alone; I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. On the other hand, it’s a little scary to consider the possibility that I might be wasting my time...