Yesterday was a sick day – nasal congestion on par with the iPad-induced streaming lockdown of a week ago. Today, I’m clearing both my inbox and my head to the backdrop of Múm’s Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy…
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Brands eager to gain a foothold in the online recruiting space ought to consider eschewing a strong Facebook presence – or so say a handful of Wharton seniors in this fascinating roundtable from Human Resource Executive Online. Says one:
It really takes away from the credibility of the firm, especially because we know Facebook so well — just the connotation that comes with it; it’s not necessarily this professional, reliable tool that you want to use.
Another key point made repeatedly within the article: Young, skilled employees have an innate desire to understand the role that their work plays in the larger objectives of their employer. A point which is, in my own experience, frequently overlooked.
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Ralph Lauren for The USA for Ralph Lauren
It appears that there exists some confusion among Olympic athletes regarding IOC policies for the use of social platforms during the upcoming Vancouver games. IOC guidelines prohibit those without press credentials from reporting on the games and events themselves, although there is no official policy banning updates to Twitter or Facebook by athletes. Perhaps Lindsey Vonn and friends are just confused because their official uniforms more prominently feature a corporate brand than they do the team’s country of origin1.
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Herd presently has a prescient post on the notion of influence within networks, reaffirming that influence in social behavior more strongly reflects the willingness of the influenced to be directed than it does the strength of the influencing party. Even more significantly, it is not the number of connections we maintain, but the tensile strength of those connections that guides influence.
Still more interesting is the take of Stowe Boyd, who writes the following:
The most connected people in a social network — those with the highest number of incoming and outgoing connections — have high eigenvalues. These eigenvalues can be calculated — like Google’s PageRank algorithm — by weighting the value of each connection based on the eigenvalue of the originator.
Welcome to the world of personal social page rank. Of course, we were already there. Of course, if you’re looking to optimize this, there are plenty of people aiming to help you. Amanda Rykoff has a rundown of a panel on Social Graph Optimization from Social Media Week, with (among others) David Berkowitz and the indomitable Hashem Bajwa.
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Crayola Colors
For those of you who prefer pretty pictures to social graphs, a few key links:
Flowing Data has a great tutorial on making heatmaps, in this case leveraging R – a wonderful, easy to use statistical programming language that I’ve posted about on several occasions. Visualization nuts will love this.
The always-interesting ColourLovers has a visual history of Crayola Crayon Colors. This, of course, makes a wonderful bookend to the classic chart of Crayola to Hex to RGB chart released by the same folks in 2008.
Finally, I’m quite enamored of the repeating patterns created by WeLovePatterns, headed by Argentine illustrator Gaston Caba. The work appears to be largely custom, but gorgeous and detailed (particularly for patterned work). Take a few moments to browse their catalog.
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- yes, I know that ROOTS has been prominently featured on several consecutive Olympic uniforms. The Polo brand here feels more egregious, though, does it not? [↩]
Related posts:
- Weekend Reading: Christgau on the Decline, Spoon Holding Steady and Kismet on the Rise
- Using Weather to, Apparently, Preoccupy the Entire British Planning and New Media Apparatus
- New is a Product of Context
- Tangible Data, Blank Signage, Garlic Presses and Rare Books on Architecture
- The End of Days, Anti-Anti-Socialism, Polarizing Filters and Splitting Heirs