Twaxed.com Feature

We don’t care that you are "having a busy Monday," you just "ate a meatball sandwich for dinner," or you "dropped the soap in the shower three times this morning." And we really, really don’t care which “Sex in City” character you most resemble.

Here's where we all went wrong: We took our friendships online. First we began communicating more by email than by phone. Then we switched to instant messaging and texting. Now, we "friend" each other on Facebook, and communicate by "tweeting" our thoughts—in 140 characters or less—via Twitter. We humiliate ourselves by sharing regrettable, often embarrassing text messages late at night while drunk. Until finally, we realize that we have shared way too much, say FML, and tell the world about it.

All this online social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. Thanks to the Internet, many of us have gotten back in touch with friends from high school and college, shared old and new photos, and become better acquainted with some people we might never have grown close to offline.

But there's a danger here, too. If we're not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships and our most powerful tool: communication.

“We’re not communicating and using the words we’ve been given in a constructive and effective way,” Tyrone Schiff, creator of Twaxed.com, said. “We must use our words wisely.”

In August, Schiff launched the new social media entertainment site Twaxed.com. Here ridiculous, inappropriate or simply entertaining tweets are showcased. In addition, users have the opportunity to vote on the tweet by selecting “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”; one may also comment on particularly amusing posts.

The idea for Twaxed came about last summer while 22-year-old Schiff was working in Ann Arbor after graduating from the University of Michigan in May. Behind a graffiti-covered door, at the end of the alley next to the Michigan Theater and one floor below street level, a handful of entrepreneurs brainstormed in the TechArb. With 18-foot ceilings and no natural light, the room glooms from the hubbub of Liberty Street, just one story up. Google opened up the space over the summer and invited intelligent computer programmers and entrepreneurs to focus on building their businesses.

“When you put those two groups [programmers and budding entrepreneurs] together you just make a lot of stuff,” Schiff said. “It’s the kind of place where you just show up if you want to do something cool with your life.”

It was early August 2009 when one of Schiff’s friends sat hunched in front of his computer, astounded. He had just posted something on Twitter, and within minutes, had dozens of people following him. Then he offered the words that inspired Schiff: “You just have to beware what you share.”

“Out of that instance, I wondered, are we really thinking about what we’re saying?” Schiff said. “Because when you say something today it’s out there, in the open, and people can and will see it.”

But let's face it; the problem is much greater than which tools we use to communicate. It's what we are actually saying that's really mucking up our relationships and our communication skills.
By creating Twaxed.com, Schiff hopes to show the world that amidst all this heightened chatter, we're not saying much that's interesting. “The only way we can become a better society is to reexamine what we’re doing,” Schiff said.

With the tagline, “Beware what you share, you will get Twaxed” Schiff hopes that the website will not only entertain, but also inspire people to be more profound and more prudent with what they share online.

“I don’t even use twitter,” Schiff said. “I find it quite strange.”
For instance, a recent Twaxed post by CharliDDS reads, “Every time I write "thesaurus" I imagine the best dinosaur ever. THEsaurus.” The hope is that Charli will find herself on Twaxed, realize how absurd her comments are, and think twice before typing her next tweet.

And it’s working. Since Twaxed launched in August, the website has grown by 4,000 percent and is averaging 2,500 visitors a day. Schiff hopes to see that number rise to 10,000 visitors by the end of October.

“I don’t think Twaxed will ever be as large as Facebook,” Schiff said. “But my goal is to hit half a million visitors a day and I think that can be achieved.”

Twitter projects to have 18 million users by the end of 2009. And in the next sixth months, Schiff hopes that Twaxed will have reached 25 percent of those users. While Twaxed has no revenue stream yet, the goal is that it will be a “freemium” that is advertising and merchandise-based.

“The future is unknown so I might as well see what happens,” Schiff said. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll just create something else.”

This story was produced by Lauren Rosenblum, senior at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

Sunday Comics for the 21st Century

I've been a little sidetracked at the moment with another project, Twaxed.com. It has unfortunately kept me pretty occupied and I haven't had that much opportunity to think of many other things outside of the realm of Twaxed.com. This new endeavor is going well though. Each day it gets larger.

The concept of the website is to aggregate the most ridiculous, inappropriate, and overall entertaining tweets on one site where users can vote and comment on the fresh material. So, I've been devoting a lot of my time and creative resources to establishing it over the past two months. It has been well worth it and I look forward to see how it grows in the next couple of months.

Anyway, lets talk about the idea I want to share with you today. Similar in scope to Twaxed.com, it uses a "Twitter-esque" framework in order to achieve its outcomes. I'll say that one of my biggest gripes with Twitter is that the service itself is pretty useless. I don't mean this negatively, but the actual entity itself does not do anything that has not been done before.

Surely, some can extrapolate that Twitter aggregates the wisdom of the commons into "Trending topics" and this is like a real-time expression of what is going on in the world. Sure. That is a pretty neat feature. Others will say that it has revolutionized communication. And I think that it has and will continue to do so.

But, ultimately, Twitter doesn't really do anything. It provides users with a platform to communicate what is on their minds in real-time with people who want to hear what they have to say, also known as followers. In essence, I view Twitter as a mass text message to all the people in your life that you want to connect with on this service.

That is wonderful and all, but it just sounds like a lot of words to me. And it is. There are so many words. In 140 characters, people convey their deepest desires, funny stories, or news from around the world. But, ultimately, its just a bunch of words and that isn't really doing anything constructive.

Twitter is cool because it has started to branch out and there are several other ways outside of a web interface in which you can send messages through the Twitter service (great TechCrunch Article on Twitter). I think that is a feature that makes Twitter remarkable. It is so open that every sort of communication device, whether it be phone, web, or whatever, can be funneled into the Twitter service, which essentially just aggregates all of these words (which I contend is rather meaningless).

However, I think there is a tremendous amount of meaning and use that can be driven from the Twitter service. Take Twaxed.com for instance. Using some of Twitter's funniest tweets, one can create an internet property that is a source of social media entertainment. That's actually doing something...not a whole bunch of words.

Twitter has an infinite number of applications as I see it. I think if you want to try and draw an analogy, a great place to start would be with Facebook applications. When Facebook allowed people to start developing applications for their service, thousands of things popped up. I think to a large degree, Twitter is going through that same process right now.

My primary thought process in regards to Twitter at the moment is, "how can I utilize 140 characters of text in creative ways?"

Thinking this thought is uniquely human and it has probably occurred to a lot of you as well. Let me explain what I'm suggesting a little further. Humans possess the wonderful capacity to do what is called generative computation. This means that we can create limitless varieties of expressions. Generative computation can be broken down into two types. There is recursive and combinatorial computation. The question that drives me to think about how to create meaning for the Twitter service (which I perceive to lack meaning) is due to recursion.

Recursion is the repeated use of a rule to create new expressions. Therefore, I am essentially using Twitter, which I feel houses units of 140 character comments, in a variety of different expressive ways. I truly believe that the applications are limitless, because the Internet and language are both limitless, and when you combine them, you get limitless squared (wow). If you would like to read more about generative computation and recursion, check out the September 2009 edition of Scientific American - Origin of the Mind article.

Anyway, I hope you explore the possibilities of what may become of Twitter in the future. I know that beyond communication, there are so many really fun and cool ways we can use 140 characters of text.

I'm going to give you one example here now. It is based on a Quirky.com model. Quirky is a really awesome website that creates products based on open-source development. Everything is created by users. Ideas for products are submit to the site, people vote on which they like most, then a logo is designed by users, voted on by users, a tag line is developed, voted on by users, etc., etc. The entire concept is the result of pretty effective market research. With a model like that you pretty much couldn't create a bad product. So, Quirky.com is brilliant, so why not apply its model to a Twitter application model.

Another really good reason to use a Quirky.com model is based on this TED lecture by Dan Pink on the evolution of motivation:

Okay, so now that we have a model (Quirky.com) and pretty solid rationale behind why we ought to build a service in this fashion, what can we possibly do with 140 characters that can be easily submitted from anywhere in the world on any device you can think of?

How about make a comic? (Hence the title of this blog post, comics for the 21st century)

I love comics. I think they're funny, and the only reason I'm happy to get the paper on Sundays anymore is so that I can strip away the colorful comic section and read them and giggle to myself. I imagine there are hundreds if not thousands of people out there who like comics too, and if it were as easy as I'm about to make it, would try contribute to making it.

Comics are beautifully simple. They are made up of a couple of still frames that are drawn together, and contain a small amount of usually witty text that is able to convey the meaning. If I were to guess, I'd imagine that most of the speech bubbles that one would find in a typical section of the Sunday newspaper comic section contain around or less than 140 characters of text each.

Isn't that a wonderful coincidence?

So. We can use Twitter to create open source comics. Here is how the design works and I'll get into a little more detail about how it all comes together.

At the beginning of the week, lets say, Monday, a website opens itself up to (1) submissions of comics. The comics are between 3 and 5 panels each, and contain no words. They have speech bubbles in place where text can go, but otherwise, they are just drawings made by artists.

Wait? Artists? I think one of the wonderful things about creating Twitter applications is that it can bring together people who have various talents, and we should also work on harnessing talents of individuals in the information age by giving them specific assignments that they are proficient at.

So, in this case you are bringing together artists with people who can write witty snippets of funny text. I think that makes the world a happier and smaller place for people, and heck, we might as well be happy.

So, artists submit their comics and they are voted on by the users of the website. This voting process can probably go on for about 3 days. Ultimately, one of the comics per week will be selected. Cool. So now we have a comic for the week. I don't know how people will determine which comic to use, but I think that's what makes it fun.

Okay, so now that we have the comic, we have to (2) insert text into those speech bubbles in order to make this comic really really funny. Over the next 3 days, open the comic up to people on Twitter. Do it one panel at a time or the whole thing at once. For instance, you could have people fill in the first panel of the comic, and then off of that information, create the text for the second speech panel.

Or you could allow people to come up with entire strings of funny text that would go throughout the comic. These are issues that can be dealt with later, but are pretty interesting to resolve.

So, now, you just get people to vote on the funniest. Every Sunday, you can publish a open-source comic that was made by artists and Twitters.

And why would people do something like this? As the Ted.com video suggests, its because we're motivated by something deeper than money when there is ambiguity and cognitive thought involved in any situation. Also, I think that the website could easily pay the people who have their artwork and text selected (stemming from the Quirky.com framework).

For an aspiring artist, this would be tremendous exposure. For a comic writer, it would have a similar impact on their career, and I think that a site like this could easily generate $50-$500 of revenue for each of the people who make the contribution to the final version of the comic.

And there, you have it, a Sunday comic for the 21st century.

Schiff Curve of Creativity

Watch What You Eat

Here's a pretty solid idea: eat well. Seems easy doesn't it? Well, you'd be quite mistaken when you realize just how messed up the food industry has become in the United States, and the world for that matter.

I just watched the film Food Inc., which is a documentary about the industrialization of food in the United States. Though parts of it were grotesque and truly horrifying to watch, I'm glad that I experienced the film and am now more aware of the types of things I'm putting into my body.

The movie starts out claiming that the concept of food has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 10,000. What I find alarming about that statement is that I'm not at all familiar with the process in which I get the food I eat (when you think about it, a caveman had a lot more authority over what sorts of things he put into his body than you or I do today).

But that certainly doesn't have to be the reality. We all have a choice.

However, there are a lot of entities in our world that are against full disclosure, which is absolutely disgusting and horrible. Essentially, it all comes down to dollars and cents. Food giants have grown to such enormous sizes that they have amassed incredible power; power in the form of money (perhaps the root of all evil). Four companies control 80% of the meat industry.

This means that even when we go into our supermarkets, it is very hard to know what came from where and what things contain. For instance, food distributors won't disclose whether or not an item has any sort of genetically engineered food in it. Bills have been brought to various state legislatures in order to release the information to the public, but with little success (California governor Schwarzenegger even vetoed such a bill).

But why does it even matter? Why is this movie even being made? What's the difference if I were to buy my own produce locally or from one of these mega-corporations?

As it turns out, a lot of the mechanisms that these corporations use in order to process food as quickly and efficiently as possible are hurting our world terribly. And what does that mean?

It's hurting the world in terms of pollution. Mega-corporations use millions of gallons of fuel in order to produce the food you eventually buy. Not only that, because these corporations are so dependent on gas and oil, when the price of one of these commodities go up that effects how much you have to pay for the item. Who needs that sort of instability?

Furthermore, the way we are eating is starting to hurt our ecosystem (the interaction between living organisms on the planet). These corporations have started to overproduce cattle, and have begun feeding them corn as opposed to letting them feed on grass. They give them corn because it is a far cheaper alternative. However, the corn can have an adverse effects on the cows. If this happens, a cow can develop a bacteria like e-coli. Then, due to the processing techniques used in handling livestock, it can spread through the entire factory contaminating all the meat. There are several instances in which there have had to be recalls of beef products (usually enough to feed millions of people).

Additionally, the stranglehold that these large corporations have on the growers is immense. Take for instance this situation. A chicken grower is forced into buying new equipment by the large poultry corporation, or else they will no longer extend their contract. The grower feels pressured to do so, or else they won't be able to put food on their own table. So they give into the corporation's demands and purchase the new equipment (probably from a company the poultry executives are on the board of). The startling fact you can derive from this is: growers have an average debt of $500,000 and typically earn $18,000 a year. That is messed up.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and the movie showed that angle too. What we can learn from this movie is that we truly have a choice. As a consumer, it is the corporation who works for you, not the other way round, and the movie put your power very poetically, "you have the opportunity to vote three times a day."

Referring to the amount of meals we have in a regular day, we have a choice with each one to determine where we are getting our food. And don't think that this is just some sort of pipe-dream, ridiculous, fantastical notion that the director of the movie wanted to leave me with. There is solid evidence that change happens.

Recently, Wal-Mart, the biggest store in all the world, switched from milk with human growth hormone to milk without human growth hormone. Why did they do this according to the head of dairy procurement at Wal-Mart? Because the customer asked for it. He was very insistent on that message. If the customer asks for something, Wal-Mart will deliver on it.

But now you may be wondering, why would I want to support another large corporation like Wal-Mart? The difference being that Wal-Mart is not in the production of food, but rather in the business of finding supplies of stuff consumers want. If Organic and healthy, local food starts finding its way into Wal-Mart, it is still that organic, healthy, local food, it just becomes that much more accessible to the general public.

I'd highly recommend going to see the movie if any of this resonated in you. Or perhaps, go to a farmer's market the next time you want to go shopping. The end of the movie is filled with really great ideas of taking the lessons learned in the film and using them in your life. I'm going to try.

And The Beat Goes On

The world is change. Today is not yesterday, and tomorrow is greatly unknown. There are few certainties in life, but one of them (aside from death and taxes) is the concept of uncertainty. Consider a world that was 100 years ago. Then think about it 50 years ago. It will likely stun you just how different the world was 5 years ago. But each day, the world predictably spins on its axis giving way to day and night. In these short bursts of light that shines onto our planet, the human species is very busy. Hard at work making minor changes that over a period of time amount to significant differences.

If you've ever heard of the futurist, Ray Kurzweil, you may be familiar with his theory called the law of accelerating returns. Essentially, he postulates that we're living in exponential times. What does that mean? Well, if you've ever seen an exponential graph before, you will recognize that during the beginning phases of the graph it is mostly a flat line that doesn't increase all that much. But with each subsequent step the graph takes, its quantity begins to increase incredibly rapidly. After a while, the graph almost begins to move vertically.

What does this theory suggest about our world? Kurzweil is expressing our species as a function of this mathematical principle.

Consider human existence. To focus our thinking, I'll start about 200,000 years ago, which Wikipedia sites as the emergence of modern humans. 200,000 years ago man lived in caves, had limited ability to communicate, and struggled to feed and clothe himself. This sustained for approximately 198,000 of those 200,000 years. Within the last 2000 years man has made significant strides.

We have begun to organize, utilize language to communicate, express ideas in writing, institute education, take part in agriculture and industry, construct structures like castles, bridges, houses, develop transportation, and even travel the wide expanse of space. These are remarkable changes that have all happened in a relatively short time when one considers the extent of the human species.

Kurzweil is suggesting that we are currently living in a time where those enormous increases in quantity that occur on an exponential curve, are occuring all around us every day.

This is complex notion to wrap one's mind around. The reason being is that a human's function individually on a daily basis, which is defined by the phases of light and dark that the sun shines on our planet as it rotates on its axis. However, due to the fact that there is a large number of humans on the planet these days (exponentially more so than thousands of years ago), and we have improved our ability to communicate and organize, the small actions that we perform daily combine to make enormous strides that were not possible hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I want to apply this notion to the music industry. And I don't want to just apply the notion of exponential progress, but rather, the change that accompanies it.

In order to understand music more fully, I decided to consult a text called Human by Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the University of California-Santa Barbara's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, as well as its Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Chapter 6 of the book addresses why humans have art (music being a form of art). Cultures all over the world display various type of art, whether it is through song, dance, storytelling, or painting. This supports an evolutionary theory of art being a part of natural selection. The fittest individuals were likely to be able to find food, shelter, and clothing, and have enough extra time to be creative.

Music has also been viewed as a social bonding system that assisted in synchronizing mood amd prepared various groups to act in unison, which helped with building coalitions. Music also has the ability to enhance our thinking abilities. Glenn Schellenberg, at the University of Toronto, found that music lessons in children were associated with small but long-lasting increases in IQ.

This makes sense because learning music requires "focused attention, abstract and relational thinking, and what is known as executive control in the brain" (242).

Above all, however, music is pleasurable for humans, and this is apparently a unique quality that our species possesses.

So, what does all of this suggest about the music industry? I think that the music industry is going to change. It is going through one currently. It used to be that major record labels were the only way to "make it" in the music business. However, the information age has changed the playing field.

Music will always be around, because we enjoy it. Yet, the vehichle through which music will be disseminated to the world will likely evolve as all things on the planet have. We ought to be open to these new avenues as they present themselves, because they can only be beneficial. Nothing ever moves backward, only forward in a new direction.

MyBandStock: Defining Perk

MyBandStock is a revolutionary website that enables fans to support musicians through a process, enabled by the Internet, known as crowdsourcing. The idea is that fans buy "stock" in a musician, which is a monetary investment, which the musician can use to complete a project such as recording an album or touring the East Coast. Rather than receiving a financial reward for their investment, fans receive exclusive perks from the musician only available through the MyBandStock web service.

I recently had an opportunity to think about the wide variety of perks that fans may want to receive in order to induce them to purchase "stock" in a musician.

Along with two other interns working for MyBandStock this summer, we were instructed to devise as many realistic and feasible perks as possible. These two qualifiers have a drastic impact on the potential list of perks available. For instance, having these constraints eliminated the possibility of a flight to the moon or a lifetime supply of Aero chocolates (my favorite) as a perk for an investing fan.

This was no obstacle for the three music-teers (an ill-witted play on the three musketeers).

In preparing the group for this project, I proposed an interesting technique in order to develop our many ideas. I suggested that the less we think about the ideas, the easier they will come to us.

In Dr. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's book, "Extraordinary Knowing," she investigates some of the theories and science behind clairvoyance, ESP, and telepathy. She asserts that some of our clearest thinking occurs when we do not focus on thinking. By relaxing the posterior superior parietal lobe, deep levels of meditation can occur in which a sense of connectedness and intuition may be attained. Therefore, by opening our minds, I believed that we would best populate our perk ideas by utilizing this technique of knowing without knowing.

The results were phenomenal. Not only did this strategy allow us to come up with an ample list of perks that could be feasibly and realistically added to the current MyBandStock web service, but it also gave us new perspective on how to think about perks in general.

It occurred to us that perks come in three different, yet distinct forms. Recognizing the difference in perks will enhance the MyBandStock web service's ability to market to the appropriate demographic and will also add clarity to which sort of perk fans are most willing to invest in.

The way that our team distinguished between perks is by looking at them as:

• Access
• Merchandise
• Experience

Perks that deal with access involve exclusive insider information about the musician that can only be provided by the relationship between MyBandStock and the particular musician. By purchasing "stock" in a musician that gives one access to the perk, the fan is being admitted into an exclusive club of knowledge that they can only be admitted into by means of the MyBandStock web service.

Perks that deal with merchandise involve tangible objects that the fan can receive that relates to the musician. The extent of merchandise is limitless and musicians can determine any sort of object to personalize in their image.

Finally, perks that deal with an experience relate to opportunities that fans can engage in directly with the musician that they are a fan of. Experiences may vary, but the way that this is different from access, is that the emphasis is on the relationship formed between fan and musician, whereas, access is exclusive information.

Thinking about perks in these terms gives new scope and meaning to what a perk truly is. I think that by using this framework, MyBandStock will be able to grow their perks in the future in an organized, effective, and efficient manner that will enhance business functioning.

It was a fun assignment that I hope will add valuably to the MyBandStock web service as time progresses.

• Music For Thought
  

Tuition Intuition

How does one possibly offset the high cost of tuition to top-tiered academic institutions these days? After conducting a brief analysis of the top 25 ranked academic institutions based on U.S. News and World Report, the average tuition for one year is approximately $34,960. This is a remarkable sum of money to expend on education for a financially well-to-do family, but for a family who is impoverished, a sum of this magnitude is incomprehensible.

Education is the human right to derive knowledge and consume information about one's livable Universe. Ideally, it should be free to all of mankind. However, the rates at which academic institutions are raising their tuition is unfortunately keeping some individuals out of the academic mix. The cost of education has reached a point where it has begun to deny the inherent right of education to those who do not have the financial means.

In order to alleviate the financial burden placed on individuals attending academic institutions, I have proposed a strategy that may be worthwhile if explored further.

The idea that I propose is rooted in a University's Development Department. In University lingo, Development is a sophisticated word meaning "to raise funds from alumni and all individuals associated with the institution." University's have gotten this process down to a science, and that makes good sense seeming though a University is an academic institution that seeks to unveil the hidden mystery of the human condition.

Development departments usually structure their attacks by focusing their efforts on donors who are willing to give at various amounts. There are certain individuals who give millions of dollars away, likely attributing their present success to the foundation provided to them at their University. Other individuals give hundreds of thousands of dollars probably for very similar reasons. But then there are the smaller donors. The ones who typically give less than one thousand dollars a year. And it is these donors who perplex me.

I have to wonder, why is it that these people, the vast majority of the alumni of any academic institution, feel compelled to give small sums of money that on a personal level make little to no dent at all to the University's bottom line?

• First, I could consider that these individuals have a strong tie to the academic institution. Most top-tiered academic institutions are four year engagements, and it makes reasonable sense to me that any institution that one devotes his or her life to for four years would seemingly harbor some sort of connection. Sure, this is a reasonable reason for giving a small donation.

• Second, could it be that the individual was particularly connected to their field of study, and it is not in fact the anonymous institution that motivates these individuals to give their small donations, but rather the faint recollections of classmates, professors, lectures, and events that are truly at the core of the giving? I think this is highly likely as well.

• Third, perhaps the individual does not even care or think of their academic institution, but just out of being asked for a donation they are willing to part ways with even a small amount of money, because they have more than enough to survive on? I think that if people don't have any specific hatred towards the institution based on something "it" did to them "personally", it is quite likely for a donor to give even a small amount of money if they recognize that they can do without it.

• Fourth, maybe it is the donors understanding that the money that they give, although a small amount, will be utilized together in a pool of donor money in order to help the academic institution realize its greater goals.

• Finally, perhaps the means through which the donor was asked for a donation to the institution plays the largest role in their willingness to give. It is a challenge to get donations out of donors at these small levels of contribution. This makes sense intuitively. If you are a large donor, it is likely that your large donation will take up a larger portion of your thoughts. If you are a small donor, it is likely that your small donation will take up only a small portion of your thoughts (I like the symmetry here).

Donors at these small levels of contribution are typically found either through phone or mail solicitations. Obviously, with the help of the Internet, donors could instinctively go to the donation website, but it is unlikely that they will do so without being prodded. People generally don't feel the need to do something unless being specifically asked to do so or unless they are highly intrinsically motivated for some reason or another.

The final method that I suggested that may drive a donor's motivation is particularly compelling to me. For the past couple months I have worked for a University's Development Department, and my job entails calling and soliciting donations from these smaller donors.

I have been doing this work for long enough that I am already considered a veteran. There is hardly anyone on the calling floor who has been there longer than myself. In my time, I have seen people come and go; the turnover rate is incredible. But, what I have also recognized, is that there are people who are remarkably good at the job and those who just cannot get it right.

Over a short period in time, it is quite difficult to assess the quality of a caller, but over the longer term there is a marked difference in those people who either work very hard at improving their solicitation technique or just have a knack for the job. Some people are so skilled that they can get the smallest amount of money out of an individual connected to the institution even after they spend a couple minutes berating it. I propose that this isn't luck, but rather a reflection of the individual's ability to solicit money for a cause.

With that being said, I consider my own case again. For the past couple of months I have worked around 250 hours doing this sort of work for my academic institution. For my time, I am compensated at around $9.25 an hour which is a tremendous sum of money for a college student, and I am grateful that I was able to secure this job and receive the compensation I do. Doing a couple simple calculations, I've netted around $2,200 for my time after taxes.

However, in the exact same stretch of time, I have brought in around $20,000 for the academic institution for which I have called. I feel proud of this achievement and I'm glad that the money that I have raised is going to a worthy institution that I do in fact feel quite connected to.

Yet, in just a few months from now I will need to repay the massive student loans that I took out in order to finance my education here. The sum I will have to pay back is daunting and will take a calculated 15 years minimum (that is roughly 68% of my current age to this point).

I think that academic institutions ought to consider expanding their Development Department to include individual financing. This can be done in one of two ways as I see it.

• The first way would be to allow students to call alumni (as they do already), but enable the student to raise money on their own behalf to offset the high cost of tuition. The call would be very similar, but the donor would know exactly who the donation is going to and for what purpose, exactly. That is a step up in transparency from the current method.

• The second way would be for students to work together collectively to create a tuition endowment of sorts. This could be structured for each individual academic institution or perhaps institutions could even work together in order to enhance the size of their endowment. The interest paid on this endowment would go towards assisting students with tuition. As the endowment grows, and it will do so exponentially (due to compounded interest), tuition will find itself either leveling off or even decreasing.

Individual's expressing concern about this idea will posit that if money goes toward this tuition endowment or towards an individual needing tuition assistance, then the University loses out on that potential money which deteriorates the greater good that the University provides (research, art, etc.). While this is a completely fair assessment, I would contend that small donors could likely match the donations they give without any significant impact to their way of life.

Therefore, I believe it is just a question of effective reasoning and solicitation on behalf of the student making the call (a primary reason why I think small donors give over the long term). So long as the message is framed correctly, individuals will act. It is our nature.

MyBandStock at the Blind Pig

I've gotten myself involved in a truly revolutionary enterprise that is set to send waves through the music industry. As we find ourselves moving deeper and deeper into the information age, it is becoming harder and harder for musicians at the start of their careers to find funding in order to get them to the next level. Fortunately, for music bands and fans alike, there is finally a resource that uses the power of the Internet to harness rather than hinder these musicians progress.

Enter My Band Stock (MBS). MBS is a revolutionary website that uses the power of crowdsourcing in order to empower musicians at the brink of their careers find the monetary funding to accomplish projects that set them on a road a path to stardom. The idea is that fans buy "stock" in a musician that they enjoy (one that they are likely a fan in to begin with) and the band uses that money to fulfill various goals that they think would be most helpful to their success.

When a fan purchases "stock" in a band, they are not tying that investment to monetary increase or the potential explosion of a particular artist, rather, fans get perks from the band that they are supporting. This may be things like a free CD, signed drum sticks, cool t-shirts, or exclusive merchandise only available through the My Band Stock website.

My Band Stock is motivated by leveraging the personal relationship that one stands to gain in buying "stock" in a musician that they are a fan of. My Band Stock facilitates this relationship cultivation through entitling those who invest to the aforementioned merchandise, as well as, recognizing those fans for supporting music.

The website was launched in January of 2009 by students at the University of Michigan.

This past Friday, my duties as a music revolution intern included going to the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Michigan in order to market this revolutionary website as well as promote Charlene Kaye, a featured musician on the website.

The experience can best be described as fun-filled. We arrived early in the evening with My Band Stock merchandise and marketing materials and began setting up. Soon thereafter, the musicians who were going to perform began to arrive. The Blind Pig was featuring three wonderful female vocalists this evening and aptly called the event "Super Women."

The night started off with Anna Ash who has a soothing, pleasant voice, that I would liken to Yael Naim, who gained popularity through her Apple Macbook Air commercials.

She was followed by Laurel Premo, who incorporates a double bass into her act, which I was particularly fond of. The headlining act was performed by My Band Stock's very own Charlene Kaye. Charlene's voice and music are both exquisite, and I encourage you to listen and purchase "stock" in this up-and-comer.

Marketing for My Band Stock was not only fun but relatively easy. We were set up right next to the merchandise area for the respective musicians, and people would typically look at the CDs they could purchase, and then happened to glance over at what all this My Band Stock stuff was alongside it.

This is where I was able to engage with the various attendees of the event and help showcase this phenomenal concept. The dialogue was varied for each individual, but typically began by enthusiastically asking if the person had ever heard of My Band Stock. Most of the people who attended this event, even though it featured MBS's Charlene Kaye, were unaware of this remarkable music service.

This gave me an opportunity to enlighten people about the features of the website and why it is vitally necessary to the music industry. I found that people were highly receptive to the idea and were more than willing to check out the website. One individual was so impressed by it that he signed up there and then and even bought some "stock" in Charlene Kaye.

Overall, the event was a complete success and enjoyed by all who attended. I'm glad that I have the opportunity to help spread this phenomenal idea and interact with musicians and fans.

I hope I get a chance to share more details with you about my internship with My Band Stock as the summer progresses. Please be sure to check out the website, listen to some music, and buy some "stock"!

Trading

Several weeks ago I ran a survey through Those Answers Inc. which sought to look at the correlation between a person's likelihood of investing in the stock market if they engaged in a market based system in their younger years, trading cards.

The first thing to address when tackling this question is to define what a market is. A market is merely just a conceptualized form in which one good or service is traded for another good or service. There are countless forms of markets in today's modern world. There are more formalized markets like the stock market or the currency market or the futures market. But then, there are also far less formal markets, such as a yard sale or craigslist or even kids trading baseball cards (or any sort of cards) on the school yard.

The purpose of my survey was thus to verify whether informal markets had the propensity to lead to individuals partaking in formal markets. The particular type of informal market that I studied was the last example that I gave, that of young children trading cards with one another, and the formal market that I hoped to correlate these findings with was the stock market.

The underlying theory that gives me reason for this connection to exist is based on socialization. Sociologists use this terminology in order to describe the "process of learning one’s culture and how to live within it" (Source). I think that bartering is a human behavior that individuals must learn in order to survive. Therefore, I gathered that if individuals were exposed to market environments at a younger age in an informal setting, they may be more likely to participate in markets when they are older through socialization and conditioning.

It also may be more natural and intuitive for individuals to participate in formal markets when they have already taken part in informal markets.

That was the first objective of the survey I gave. The second objective was to seek out something far more psychological about the thought processes of individuals partaking in formal markets based on their socialization from informal markets. I sought to find whether or not individuals were likely to hold similar beliefs about the value of items with the influence of time.

• Results

The results are based on the survey results of 34 respondents. 19 of the 34 (56%) of the respondents were male and 15 of the 34 (44%) were female. The average age of a respondent was 22.6 years and ranged between a low of 19 years and a high of 42 years.

The first thing that I wanted to know from my survey participants was whether or not they had ever collected any sort of trading card. 65% of individuals (22 of 34) said that they had collected some sort of trading card.

Then I wanted to see whether the intent of the individual collecting the trading card was similar to the intention of formal market speculators. The way I did this was to ask whether the individual when collecting their trading card anticipated selling that trading card at a later date.

The answer to this question reveals a great deal about human behavior psychologically and culturally. A high percentage of individuals willing to sell their trading cards at a later date indicate that people instinctively collect belongings recognizing that they will part with them at a future date. This seems odd doesn't it? If I know that I am going to have no use for a particular item in the future, what is my motivation to horde that item now? I think intuitively it comes down to exclusivity.

When an item is highly desirable and highly exclusive the value of that item is inflated. This isn't because the item itself has gotten any better, but rather, the psychological drivers of desirability and exclusivity make an individual perceive a particular item to be more than it is worth. It is based on this premise that people will opt to collect items today in hopes that their perceived value will be greater later on (in effect, attempting to horde an item that has "stable" value, money).

Of the surveyed individuals, 63.6% (14 of 22), anticipated selling their trading cards at a later date.

Next, I wanted to figure out what those individuals who anticipated selling their trading cards at a later date thought would happen to the value of their trading card over time. I gave them the option of the value increasing or decreasing over time. A staggering 100% (14 of 14) believed that by adding time to the equation, the value of their item was surely to increase.

This reveals something quite compelling about the natural tendency of individuals partaking in informal markets. It illustrates that perceived value over time increases. If this is instinctive in informal markets, can the same be said about the value over time of objects in formal markets? If the socialization effect appears to hold, this could be a reasonable deduction to make.

Now, I began my inquiry into the interaction with formal markets of our surveyed participants. I asked respondents if they had any capital invested in the United States stock market (our formal market).

Out of all respondents, only 38.2% (13 of 34) had money currently invested in the stock market as of May, 2009. According to 2002 data by the Investment Company Institute, 35.9 million households, which represent 33.7% of the households in the United States owned either stocks or mutual funds or both (Source). Based on the close proximity of these two percentages, I can conclude that we are looking at a pretty representative sample of the United States stock ownership community.

This is where I can finally get at what I was really after. At this point, I can determine if there is a significantly higher percentage of individuals who traded cards when they were younger (in informal markets) who participate in the stock market (our formal market).

In order to perform my statistical tests, I used a one-proportion z-test for the four particular conditions that I had. The first condition was yes informal - yes formal (YIYF), the second was no informal - no formal (NINF), the third was yes informal - no formal (YINF), and the fourth was no informal - yes formal (NIYF).

• YIYF

After conducting the one-proportion z-test for this condition, a z-value of 0.55 was achieved which has a p-value of 0.2088. This is not considered a statistically significant value, and thus one cannot conclude that if an individual was involved in informal markets then that would predict for their involvement in formal markets. (A larger sample is needed to truly verify this result).

• NINF

A z-value of 3.4 was achieved which has a p-value of 0.0003. This is considered a highly statistically significant value, and thus one can conclude that if an individual was not involved in informal markets then that would predict for their non-involvement in formal markets. (A larger sample is needed to truly verify this result).

• YINF

A z-value of 2.27 was achieved which has a p-value of 0.0119. This is considered a highly statistically significant value, and thus one can conclude that if an individual was involved in informal markets then that would predict for their non-involvement in formal markets. (A larger sample is needed to truly verify this result).

• NIYF

A z-value of -0.59 was achieved which has a p-value of 0.7224. This is not considered a statistically significant value, and thus one cannot conclude that if an individual was not involved in informal markets then that would predict for their involvement in formal markets. (A larger sample is needed to truly verify this result).

These findings truly get at the crux of the survey. It appears as though there is no correlation between involvement in informal markets and formal markets.

The survey also sought to verify whether the beliefs held about perceived values were still consistent between informal and formal markets. Recall that in informal markets individuals believed, with a 100% success rate, that the value of their good would increase over time. When it came to formal markets, it appears as though beliefs mirror that of the informal market. 92.8% (13 of 14) respondents believed that the value of an investment is likely to increase rather than decrease over time.

This seems to be highly correlated. Beliefs seem to remain embedded regardless of the market type, and that belief is that value increases over time.

With the belief structure that value tends to increase over time it was not that surprising to find that only 59% (20 of 34) of respondents knew the difference between a long position in the stock market and a short position. Long positions are based on the belief that investments will increase, whereas, short positions take the stance that investments will decrease. A short position is probably counter-intuitive to a lot of people's thinking based on the results of this survey.

Thanks to all participants!

Stroke of Insight

Reflect Inc.

Feeling good is all a state of mind. There is a great poem that I was exposed to when I was in high school called the Optimist's Creed. Essentially, the poem suggests that one's attitude is what makes your life. I think there is a great deal of truth to this idea. If you feel good, then you it shines through your work, your interactions, everything that you do.

Recognizing this, I was introduced to a phenomenal online shirt company called Reflect Inc. The concept of the website is brilliant and practically mirrors the invocation to this post that I just gave.

Reflect Inc. provides transformational clothing. What is transformational clothing? Well, the shirts that they create contain simple affirmations on the chest written in a cursive-like script and on a black shirt. However, if they merely just had some sort of affirmation on the chest of the shirt, I probably wouldn't take the time to write about it as I am. What Reflect Inc. does differently that truly separates them from other shirts I've seen is the unique way in which they convey their message.

The affirmation that is written across the chest on the shirt is written in such a way that it is read normally only by looking into a mirror. This type of script is referred to as mirror writing and it was employed by people like Leonardo Da Vinci.

This isn't to suggest that the only good purpose of the shirt is to wear it in front of a mirror. Hardly. The way that the writing looks across the chest is pretty eye catching and makes one hell of a conversation piece. However, it also happens to double as a wonderful affirmation that can get you in the right mindset to take on the world.

There are a variety of affirmations that the company provides on a number of different topics. There are affirmations relating to one's Life, Relationships, Health, Self Confidence, etc.

They are currently running a promotion where they are shipping items for free.

Great concept. Unique idea. Implemented and ready to soar.

Understanding Animal Spirits

Thompson Creek Metals Company, Inc.

I have just started utilizing a new trading strategy that is based on a study done at a highly accredited University based somewhere on the planet. Based on the study's findings, my own investment knowledge, pure intuition, and good old fashioned luck, I thought that I would start blogging about some of the ideas that I have on this front. I guess it is a little bit of a risk putting my stock ideas down in writing due to the fact that both you (hopefully there is someone out there) and me will know if we got the stock pick right.

I will also let you know that if I will never blog about a particular stock I am invested in. This doesn't necessarily mean that I will never invest in the stock, but I think that my own portfolio is my own business.

Anyway, the first stock that I am going to pick is Thompson Creek Metals Company, Inc (TC). As of May 19, 2009 at market close it is currently trading at $9.00. It has just had an incredible day as well, but that is hardly why I am pitching it. I'm actually going to first make a case why the buying price right now is overinflated and that if you're wise you will wait to it pulls back before getting in.

First, a little about the company. According to Google Finance, "Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. is a Canadian molybdenum mining company with vertically integrated mining, milling, processing and marketing operations in Canada and the United States."

Okay, a couple interesting things to point out here. First, they are Canadian. That means that they are subject to Canadian laws and all that jazz. Second, they are a mining company that mines this substance called molybdenum. Excuse me, molybdenum? After further analysis, I learned that molybdenum is a pretty incredible substance.

If you're familiar with the Periodic Table, it is atomic number 42. The applications of molybdenum is really what we're interested in though, seeming though a company's livelihood is contingent on its usage. Molybdenum is able to withstand extreme temperatures, which make it helpful in "the manufacture of aircraft parts, electrical contacts, industrial motors, and filaments" (Source).

They have plants in Northwest Canada, Idaho, Colorado, and Langeloth.

What drives me to pick this stock is based on the following. Although we're in a recession, molybdenum is a substance that is necessary to the ongoing growth and expansion of the world. And, as the world becomes more globalized, we're finding it easier to transport materials for usage. With that in mind, consider China and India. These two countries are still going to develop a great deal over the next 20 years and they are going to need molybdenum in order to satisfy their growth needs.

TC also happens to be one of the world's largest producers of molybdenum. When you consider anything in the world that is the largest (outside of economic collapse), these companies tend to perform very well because they have a solid foundation and are able to use those economies of scale very nicely. They have an entrenched network that can grow rapidly as well, so when this recession does come to an end they will be first movers.

TC was also hit badly by the economic downturn. They fell all the way to $2.44 before starting to recover. It would have been nice to get in that low, but there's a saying and it goes, "woulda, shoulda, coulda."

TC has been on this ascent since November, 2008 and has shown that they're a solid company that was hit hard by a psychological attack on the market (see Robert Shiller for further information). They're recovery over the past month, however, has been far too rapid (they are up 70%).

My grandfather explained to me that as the market goes up it also has to come down. The reason for this is primarily profit-takers. Think about people who got in at $2 or $3. They're ready to cash out, because they've tripled their profits. The greedy ones will be hit hard though. Due to the fact that the stock market, like any market, is reliant on supply-and-demand, a percentage of share owners will leave the stock creating an overall increase in supply and further downward pressure.

You may notice that I'm not referring to any sort of Stochastic Indicator when I walk you through my reasoning. The reason being that I look at the stock market as a market like any other. People have just had a little too much time on their hands over the past 150 years to create these mathematical models that, I would contend, got us into the current mess we are now. If we are just conscious and think about our reality, it starts to make a great deal of sense.

One metric that I do focus on is the P/E ratio. This is one of the only financial metrics that makes valid sense to me. It takes the price of the current stock and normalizes it based on its earnings. Stocks that have lower P/Es typically outperform stocks with higher P/Es (see Irrational Exuberance - Shiller). TC has a P/E of 8.28 which is ridiculously low. This reveals to me that their stock is trading at a premium.

However, as I mentioned earlier, the stock is overinflated and needs to come down. It is hard to say what it will come down to exactly, but at the current price, I wouldn't buy it before it got down to at least $7.50. At which point I am a buyer and in for approximately 3 months or until my pockets get full enough for me to be happy. This stock has high momentum and so I wouldn't be surprised if it went down to $7.50 and up to a price objective of roughly $20 by the end of 2009.

There you have it.
TC - Thompson Creek Metals Company, Inc.
Current Price - $9
Recommended buy at - $7.50
Price objective - $20
Investment time - 3 months or until the end of 2009 if slow

The Next Big Sound

The world is changing dramatically. In Detroit, Michigan, the motor industry is having to evolve due to competition and the necessary minimization of oil consumption in the United States. Along with that, the general philosophy on energy consumption is shifting gears. We are starting to look into new technologies like solar power, bio-diesel, wind power, and hydroelectric power in order to meet and sustain our energy needs. A lot of the methods are still highly experimental and uncertain, but the fact of the matter is that there is change coming and we are readying ourselves for it by testing out all different elements.

In a similar way, the music industry has been going through a change. I would contend that the music evolution began with the establishment of Napster in 1999. Napster was a truly revolutionary service that harnessed the Internet in its purest form. Using the intrinsic communicability of the Internet, Shawn Fanning, a then Northeastern University student, began the largest scale music sharing platform the world had ever known.The image above describes, in its simplest form, just how Napster worked. Essentially, the Internet worked to connect all of our computers together into one central mainframe. Then through a simple system of sharing files with one another, people were able to transfer music on their own system to other systems that tapped into the same network. To be perfectly honest, Napster is brilliant due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Similar to using Google, individuals would merely search a song that they wanted and the system would show all of the files available in the system. The user then just selected the file that they were most happy with and the download began. Unfortunately at the end of the 20th century, download speeds were still relatively slow for individual users, and thus a 5.0 kbps/second rate was considered optimal (we've certainly come a long way since then).

Anyway, the emergence of Napster was the inflection point -- or as Malcolm Gladwell would tell us, the Tipping Point -- of the musical industry. No longer was music truly in the hands of large record labels or even the artists themselves. The musical power had been transferred to the user. We were free to share music and essentially make all of it available to the whole world through the Internet.

Since then, music has had to deal with a great deal of transformation. Steve Jobs and Apple have worked hard to legitimize the public dissemination of music through their program iTunes which allows users to purchase songs at a rate of $0.99 a song and typically $9.99 for a full album. Downloading music for free is still very much available. If you prefer a little more of a risky approach you could try using Kazaa, but this illegal downloading program is full of viruses and I personally don't like the system very much. Another approach is to use Pirate Bay, which is a search engine full of torrents. This program is working very hard to legitimize its downloads and does well due to its comments section and a rating system of safety associated with trusted torrents.

However, the concept of music and its dispersion is still being determined. As NPR reports, in time people may pay for music based on the bandwidth that is used. Furthermore, consider websites like Pandora that allow individuals to listen to music of their liking for as long as they want as though a radio, while Pandora pays a fee to the artist each time their song is played.

Considering all of these different elements and recognizing that we are truly still in the midst of understanding how music will evolve with the Internet, I present a revolutionary concept called The Next Big Sound.

• The Next Big Sound

The Next Big Sound might in fact be the future of music on the Internet and the world. The concept of The Next Big Sound is that individuals, people just like you and me, "sign" musical artists to our very own record labels. Rather than waiting for DefJam, Columbia, Jive, Zomba, Universal, or Arista to come along and throw the musical artist a bone, this system circumvents that process by getting listeners who already enjoy the music to micro-finance the band (in a sense).

The concept of micro-financing is brilliant and is really only possible due to the power of the Internet. In a sentence, micro-financing allows bands to request $10 for 1,000 rather than $10,000 from one person. Due to the connectivity of the Internet and the ability to expose oneself and one's product or service, the Internet is an unbelievably conducive environment to allow this sort of transaction to take place.

Anyway, the website is also a place where individuals can expose themselves to new music. In fact, a person using the website (the Next Big Sound calls these people Moguls) is encouraged to sign musical artists that they think will gain enormous popularity. This is incentivized on the website by a Mogul Score, which is based on how many people sign the same musical artist after you. So, if I invest in Band X and they blow up and 20,000 other people sign them, my Mogul Score will be huge and I can gain a reputation on the site for spotting talent early.

The Next Big Sound also only allows individuals to sign a maximum of 10 bands at a time, which adds an added element of strategy into the mix. I like this component of the website, because it makes an individual think carefully about how they use the service and further augments the meaning of the Mogul Score due to the fact that it becomes slightly more challenging to gain a good score and thus more impressive when a person on the website does so.

There is a great deal of benefit to the musical artist who signs into The Next Big Sound. First, users of the website are looking to follow and invest money into bands in order to increase their own Mogul Scores. This will help the bands attain money if their music is perceived to be good by the user on the website. Second, the website provides free streaming music of songs to individuals before investment. Therefore, musical artists are likely to increase their exposure even in the event that they are not invested in.

The Next Big Sound has already received a great deal of press from the New York Times, Mashable, Daily Candy, Decision Factory, and The Guardian. The reviews generally speak to its innovative nature and its new way of approaching the music industry. After reading excerpts from these publications, I cannot agree more with them.

The Next Big Sound is a phenomenal concept that is a necessary wave of change that the music industry needs. It is fresh and cutting-edge. The idea has been worked through logically and the management has clearly considered it from several different angles in order to attain the desired effect that they set out to achieve. I look forward to seeing great things from this website and general concept in the future.

iTunes Play Count

I recently ran a survey on Those Answers in order to measure how accurate the number one played song on an individual's iTunes reflects that persons preference for their current favorite song. There are several reasons that drew me to make this conclusion and thus seek out the necessary data to verify it.

First, I considered that when people enjoy something, they tend to expose themselves to it more. For example, consider a person who is a vegetarian. This person has consciously made the choice to not eat meat. They might choose to do so because they are against animal cruelty, are trying to save the environment, or are just opposed to the taste of meat products. As a result, they don't expose themselves to any meat.

I feel like this is true for most other things in a person's life. If they enjoy it, they will continue to expose themselves to it, if not, they will likely avoid it all costs. Therefore, a person would probably choose to expose themselves to their favorite song as much as possible, thereby increasing the number of play counts on their iTunes.

Second, I consider the psychological theory of the mere exposure effect. This theory states that as an individual is exposed to a stimulus more and more, they will gradually begin to like that stimulus. This reasoning is the reverse-logic of my first point, suggesting that exposure drives favoritism, rather than favoritism driving exposure.

I ran this survey without the intention of determining which principle is truly driving the amount of times a song is played on iTunes, but rather to check whether the top song played on a person's iTunes is in fact an individual's favorite song. In order to test either of my inferences about iTunes, I needed to determine whether if the top played song was in fact a favorite for people on average.

The results that follow provide both a visual and analytical attempt at answering the question: Is the number one played song on iTunes considered a person's current favorite song, on average?

• Results

The results are based on the responses by 61 participants. 28 Females, 32 Males, and 1 Unidentified. The average age of a respondent was 21.24 years with a standard deviation of 3.82 years. The youngest respondent was 14 and the oldest respondent was 45. The data was compiled between March 3, 2009 and March 8, 2009.

Respondents were first asked to sort their iTunes so that it was ranked by Play Count, which is easily ordered by clicking on the tab at the top of the iTunes program. Participants in the study were asked to list the artist and the name of the song that came up as their most frequently played. The list to the left summarizes the 61 respondents' songs and artists that are the most frequently played song on their iTunes.

I'd like to point out the diversity in music tastes exhibited by this list. There is only a few artists that are featured more than one time. These include: Radiohead, Jack Johnson, Wilco, and The Fray. Part of my motivation to perform this survey was to increase the variety of music I am exposed to, and this list certainly has helped.

Following these questions, I found out how many times the individual had played their number one song. Respondents averaged 90.51 times played for their number one song on iTunes. This had a standard deviation of 91.80, with a high of 465 times played and a low of 5 times played. The median was 67 times played. With these amount of times played, on average, I think that this sample is pretty generalizable. I recognize that some people listen to their iTunes and music a lot more than others, but there is a wide diversity in the range of times played, which make the results of this study interesting to a large demographic of people (those who listen to music a lot, and those who do not).

The image to the right reveals a histogram of the number of times the most played song has been played on iTunes. As you can see, the majority of respondents have listened to their number one played song on iTunes less than 150 times. There are some individuals who have listened to their number one played song more than 150 times, but this makes up a vast minority of the respondents.

The next question I ask really gets at the crux of the question that I posed. I asked participants if the number one played song was their favorite song right now. According to the results, only 8 participants (13%), said that the number one played song on their iTunes was their favorite song right now. That is countered by 52 participants (87%) who said that the number one played song on their iTunes was not their current favorite song.
In the previous question to participants, I suggested that the top played song was their favorite song right at this moment. I anticipated that some people may have liked that song in the past, played it a lot, and have perhaps moved on to other musical endeavors. Therefore, I also asked if this song had ever been their favorite song in the past. The following graph reveals that there is a general spread as to when people liked their number one played song on iTunes.

There certainly isn't any prevailing time period at which this was their favorite song. It is important to note, however, that five individuals stated that they actually never liked their top played song on iTunes. There is a minor trend to take away from the respondent's answers; that being that the song that is most played was their favorite sometime within the last year. A good majority of participants agreed that this song was their favorite at some point within the last year.

I was also curious as to where the top played song on a person's iTunes ranks in terms of their all time list of favorite songs. This question gives participants a wider degree of freedom in terms of how much they enjoy their top played song on iTunes. Only a small number of individuals revealed that their number one played song on iTunes was their favorite. An even larger number revealed that they didn't even like the most played song on their iTunes.

A majority of respondents ranked their top played song on iTunes as one that would fall in their top 25 favorite songs of all time. There was also a relatively high frequency of individuals who ranked their top played song on iTunes as one that merely falls within their top 100 songs of all time.
Finally, respondents were asked to list characteristics about their second most played song according to their iTunes Play Count. The second most played song was played on average 70.14 times with a standard deviation of 70.08 times played. The most amount of times the second most played song was played was 380 and the least amount was 4 times played. The median amount of times the second most played song was played was 56 times.
Respondents were then asked to make a determination about whether they considered their number one or number two played song on their iTunes their personal favorite. This is another very good way of measuring the extent to which the number one played song is the current favorite of the person being surveyed. The results indicate an almost perfect split. 31 of the 61 participants (51%) indicate that their favorite song of the two is the most played song on their iTunes. This means that the other 30 participants (49%) chose their second most played song on iTunes as their favorite song.

• Conclusion

The purpose of this survey was to test the validity of the Play Count function on iTunes as a measure of an individual's favorite song. According to the results, this measure's validity seems unlikely.

Only 13% of individuals considered their number one played song their current favorite. Additionally, when individuals were given the opportunity to decide between their most played song and second most played song on iTunes, the preference was almost perfectly split, which does not suggest that the top song on iTunes necessarily holds any extra clout in measuring a person's favorite current song.

However, the number one played song on an individual's iTunes may suggest certain generalizable attributes. First, it appears as though the most played song was the individual's favorite song at some point, but not necessarily at the present time. Additionally, the most played song on an individual's iTunes at least makes the top 25 list of all time favorite songs for a majority of people.

Though, I cannot assert that the most played song on iTunes is an individual's favorite song now, it certainly can indicate the musical preference of that individual at some point in time.