How Millennial are you?

To find out, take this Pew quiz: http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz/intro.php

(Chris Swanson scored 84.)

Social Media Governance Rules

This is a link to a database of the range of institutional policies that have been established by various government agencies, NGOs, corporations and schools, governing/guiding their staff regarding use of social media.

American workforce getting grayer

Pew Research Center study shows American workforce getting grayer.

"Why Craigslist is Such a Mess"

Excellent analysis from Wired Magazine about Craigslist, which remains one of the world's most visited websites. Only part of the article discusses Craigslist as a jobs site, but well worth reading.

Employment Index Contradicts Government Data

From Consumer Reports: Employment Index Contradicts Govt. Data

Although unemployment data released last Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics paints a pessimistic picture of the state of jobs in the U.S., the Employment Index indicates more jobs were lost than gained in the last 30 days. The Employment Index examines the change in employment of those that reported starting a new job, compared to those that have lost their job or were laid off in the past 30 days. An index below 50 indicates more jobs were lost than gained, while a score more than 50 indicates more jobs were gained than lost in the past 30 days.

In September, the Employment Index improved from 48 to 50.3, resulting from the decline in reported job losses in the past 30 days, reflecting August 2009, and an increase of those reporting starting a new job in this period.

However, the August unemployment rate jumped from 9.4% to 9.7%, and the total number of unemployed persons rose from about 14.43 million to 14.9 million. In addition, the civilian labor force participation rate, which is the proportion of the non-institutionalized civilian population age 16 and older serving in the labor force, remained flat at 65.5%. Meanwhile, the employment-population ratio, which measures the ratio of employed persons to the total non-institutionalized civilian population age 16 and older, dropped from 59.4% to 59.2%.

The Consumer Reports Index, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, is a monthly telephone poll of a nationally representative probability sample of telephone households. Interviewing of 1,009 adults aged 18-plus was completed between August 27-30, 2009. The margin of error is +/- 3.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

Extensive & growing use of social media

Forrester Research, a leading media research firm, has released an extensive study on U.S. usage of social media. At this point, four out of five U.S. online adults report using social media at least once per month. Half participate in sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Forrester classifies users into categories:

• Joiners — those who simply visit blogs and social media sites;
• Creators — the 25% who create content in one way or another for blogs, social sites, etc;
• Collectors — the 20% who use tags, RSS feeds, voting sites (like Digg and Reddit) to assemble or categorize web content.
• The most rapid growth in social net usage is occurring among those age 35 and older, prompting Forrester to recommend that every marketer needs to be in the social media biz today.

Twitter Message Design

Wisdom from Web Guru Jakob Nielsen re optimal Twitter message design

1. Don't start with word "Announcing" -- "Of course it's an announcement — otherwise I wouldn't be posting it..."
2. "Remember that users tend to read only the first few characters as they scan down a list. Make them count."
3. "Frontload attractive keywords to make the message more scannable."
4. "Users have become somewhat hardened against event promotions" ... make users "feel like they're getting concrete and useful info."
5. Twitter time passes 10 times faster than email time. "One of the big downsides of stream-based communication compared to email newsletters is the highly ephemeral nature of the postings: Once they scroll off the first screen, they're essentially 6 feet under. A look at clickthrough statistics for links posted to Twitter vs. those circulated in email newsletters shows ... lots of clicks the first few minutes, and then almost none. In contrast, email continues to generate clicks for days as people work their way through their inboxes.
   

Grad school fair demographics

This is a very good one-page set of charts from Idealist.org, analyzing the demographics of people who attend their graduate school fairs in DC. By far the largest category among "fields of interest" is "International Affairs/Relations," followed by "Public Policy." Next such grad school fair is Sept 21st, 5pm-8pm at the Washington Convention Center.