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February 4, 2010

Chart of the day: journalistic innumeracy illustrated

Filed under: journalism, media, newspapers — Rocky Agrawal @ 3:38 am

This Bloomberg graphic and its interpretation in the accompanying story is full of errors.

What would readers conclude after looking at the graph above?

  1. Best Buy sales have gone up at least 10 fold in the last 2 years. (Recession, what recession?)
  2. Best Buy’s monthly sales at the end of 2009 were roughly $22 million, at the peak of holiday season.
  3. Newegg is the #2 electronics retailer, after Best Buy. Amazon, buy.com, Walmart and Target aren’t players in electronics.

That’s what the graph says, but all of those conclusions are wrong.

In reality, Best Buy did $8.5 billion in revenue in December. In fiscal year 2009, Best Buy did $45 billion in revenue. $22 million in revenue is a rounding error.

What the graph really shows is how useless these Mint.com data are for analyzing consumer spending by category.

The reporter apparently didn’t understand the methodology behind Mint’s data. Mint allows consumers to track their credit and debit transactions. Consumers enter their account information and mint pulls transaction data from their banks and presents it online. Here’s how that methodology leads to the above erroneous conclusions:

  1. The enormous growth in the graph likely represents the growth in mint.com’s user base. Mint launched in September 2007 and has grown to 1.8 million users. (Mint was recently acquired by personal-finance software maker Intuit for $170 million.) Best Buy’s comparable store sales were down for fiscal year 2009 and up marginally for fiscal 2008.
  2. Only transactions by Mint’s users are included in this number, accounting for the multibillion-dollar difference. Even then, those numbers may not be complete as not all users import all accounts.
  3. Newegg is the #2 dedicated electronics player as classified by Mint. Because Mint collects transaction level data, not item level data, it doesn’t know what to do with purchases from diversified retailers like Amazon, buy.com and Walmart. (Amazon wouldn’t even show up as a leading bookseller; on my Mint account, it shows up as “Shopping”.) By Best Buy’s own definitions, consumer electronics only account for 36% of its revenue.

There’s also zero justification in the Mint data to support the chart’s caption that Best Buy generated these huge returns by “offering discounts on laptops and flat-panel televisions.”

These kind of errors are rampant in our business news because many reporters don’t understand numbers or methodology. When I was in school at the Medill School of Journalism, most classmates took the minimal math and economics classes they could and still get a journalism degree.

One of the most frequent numerical mistakes by journalists is confusing percent increases with percentage point increases. If your credit card’s interest rate goes from 10% to 15%, it’s a 5 percentage point increase, but a 50% increase.

This journalistic innumeracy hurts us all. We can’t make informed decisions about what government is doing if people don’t understand the numbers. Even basics get confused: journalists frequently confuse millions with billions (via Paul Kedrosky).

Journalists are at least partly to blame for the dot com bubble and the housing crash. Not understanding the economics, they repeated the lines of “experts,” such as investment bank analysts and real estate agents — most of whom had clear incentives to keep pumping air into the bubbles. I read many stories about how exotic mortgages were making housing more affordable. What was actually happening was that the easy availability of credit and flood of otherwise unqualified buyers in the marketplace drove up price. Basic supply and demand.

Unfortunately this problem is only going to get worse. Many of the sharpest minds I know from the journalism business have left to go on to other careers for many reasons — the difference in pay (often 2x or more), instability and constant layoffs and backward thinking management.

Additional analysis of the data also takes time, which is becoming harder to come by as newsrooms across the nation shrink. The pressure to do more “quick hits” like charts of the day will lead to more sloppiness and misinformation.

I’ll share some thoughts on how to do better in the next post.

More on: journalism, newspapers

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February 3, 2010

Plowing through the middleman

Filed under: facebook, journalism, media, newspapers, twitter — Rocky Agrawal @ 7:53 am
Snow plow in Arlington County

Snow plow in Arlington County. Creative Commons image by Ron Barber.

The snow day. Growing up in Michigan, it was always a treat. Whenever a significant amount of snow was in the forecast, I’d wake up early to see if I got the day off. I’d listen to the radio as the DJ went through the school closings or watch the crawl on the local morning news. It took some patience as they went through the list, but once in a while that patience was rewarded with a day off.

Kids today don’t have that level of suspense. As a fan of Arlington County on Facebook, my newsfeed showed that school is closed today. A quick check of the Arlington Public Schools Web site also provides that information. No more listening through “Angelus Academy, Anne Arundel Community College, Anne Arundel County Schools, Apple Montessori School, Aquinas and Old Town Montessori School…” (In a large metro area, this is killer.)

It’s yet another example of how media consumers can cut out the middle man and go directly to the source.

In much of the discussion about aggregators such as Google News and digg, what’s left out is that much of the media are themselves aggregators — compiling data from school districts, local businesses, funeral homes, police and fire agencies, etc.

Newspapers didn’t really get to play in the school closing game, but compilations of local events, lunch menus, high school sports scores, police blotters and obituaries have been a key part of the newspaper content mix. Such content is an even greater proportion of What People Care About. Many of these needs are now being better served online as easy-to-use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and flickr get adopted by these news sources.

Instead of reading about promotions and awards in the newspaper, I can get that information delivered to me through LinkedIn or Facebook status updates. Sadly, I’ve found out about the death of a high school classmate through Facebook.

And it’s a much better experience than what fits in a newspaper:

  • The filter is personal. It doesn’t matter whether that person was important enough in the eyes of a newspaper’s editor. I also don’t have to read through long lists of people I’m not interested in.
  • The content is richer. Clay Reid’s Facebook page is filled with photos and remembrances from friends.
  • It’s interactive. With promotions and job changes, I can quickly reach out to friends and congratulate them.

In the case of a snow day, you can make plans with your other friends who suddenly have the day free right on Facebook. And then upload the video of you snow blading down the hill.

More on: newspapers, facebook

August 16, 2009

Building sandcastles on the Web

Filed under: journalism, newspapers, product management — Rocky Agrawal @ 2:41 pm
North American Sandsculpting Championship

2007 North American Sandsculpting Championship, Virgina Beach, Va.

As I’ve been figuring out what to do next, I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about what I’ve done in the past. The sad reality of building Web products is that your work quickly disappears. Just as waves and winds tear down sandcastles, the rapid pace of innovation on the Web means that your best accomplishments get wiped away.

Despite all of the talk about newspapers having failed to innovate these are some of the things we did at the Star Tribune:

  • Created one of the first dynamic publishing systems.
  • Launched a local Yellow Pages product, complete with maps and driving directions.
  • Launched a home search with full MLS listings. Someone actually ran a tape over to the building from the MLS offices to make this work. It even had Google Street View-type pictures of all the homes in a neighborhood.
  • Created a searchable entertainment guide.

We even tried to get people to pay for news! (It didn’t work in the mid-’90s, it won’t work now.)

That work has been washed away, as has most of my other work. My work at Tellme still exists, but experiencing that requires buying a new Ford.

Sure, I have screenshots of some of the products I’ve created. But they don’t capture the essence of  the work. If a Web site can be captured in a screenshot, its creator didn’t do a good job.

My longest lasting legacy is partnering with genius designer Jamie Hutt to create the weather mascot for startribune.com. Someone had pointed out that there was a thermometer on the roof of the Star Tribune building that was recording the temperature for the Strib’s audiotext system. We decided to incorporate that reading on to the front page. To capture some local flavor, we made the weather icon a snowman. He appears differently depending on the weather. This a typical summer look:

Star Tribune Snowman

My favorite is when it gets really hot — you see a puddle with glasses and a carrot. The snowman’s look and placement have changed over the years but the essence of the idea remains.

August 8, 2009

Favorite airports from around the world

Filed under: airlines, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:08 pm

I’ve been doing a lot of travel the last few years and have gone through a lot of airports. There are huge variations in quality from airport to airport and even within terminals of the same airport. A few stand out.

Vancouver's beautiful airport

YVR makes a grand first impression for arriving travelers

Some of the things that I look for in airports:

  • Open, airy spaces. I’m going to be crammed in a metal tube for hours. I don’t want to be crammed in the airport, too.
  • Well-managed security lines. Atlanta (ATL),  Denver (DEN) and Washington Dulles (IAD) go on the hate list for this reason alone.
  • Reasonably priced food with options for healthier eating than burgers and pizza. A big plus for airports that promote local restaurants.
  • Free WiFi and easily accessible power ports. Most large airports don’t have free WiFi (the better to soak business travelers), but a lot of the mid-market and small airports do.
  • Convenient public transit options to the city.
  • Good signage.
  • Big windows to watch airplanes from.
  • Service from airlines that I’d want to fly.
  • Public art installations. They add character and provide a pleasant diversion when flights are delayed.

None of the airports on this list excel at all of these things, but as a whole each airport stands well above average. This list is also available as a Google Map.

Workstations At Airport

Workstations at ABQ

10. Albuquerque International Sunport – A great mid-market airport. It’s one of the few that I’ve seen that have free WiFi and desks with power plugs that are open to all passengers. The restaurants have a strong local flavor.

9. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) Terminal 3/International Terminal – SFO,  much more than most airports, has really highlighted local restaurants in its terminals. They aren’t cheap (but then it’s San Francisco, so they aren’t cheap in the city either), but do give travelers a good taste of the city. I recommend the Boudin Bakery in Terminal 3. Terminal 1 food options are lacking. SFO also features a rotating selection of art, though I have to question the recent display of clock art. The confusing, expensive and poorly executed public transit from the airport is my biggest knock against it. It could be much better, but BART has taken a soak-the-travelers attitude.

What The Hell Are The Guys Doing Inside The Engine

Maintenance workers climb inside an engine with a giant blow dryer to remove ice crystals at MSP after a long delay

8. Incheon International Airport (ICN) Seoul – An architecturally impressive airport with first-rate amenities, including a spa. Like Seoul itself, the airport is littered with American fast food chains. Unfortunately the airport is a long way from the city and Seoul’s brutal traffic makes it seem even farther.

7. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) Lindbergh Terminal – Clean, easy and efficient. Navigating the sprawling tentacles of the airport is made easier with clear signage and trams, but if you’re connecting, you could be in for a lot of exercise. A few Minnesota favorites such as D’Amico & Sons, Dunn Bros Coffee and French Meadow Bakery are sprinkled in among the airport chains. The new light-rail line takes you downtown or to Minnesota’s biggest tourist attraction – the Mall of America – for $2.25 or less. Minnesota’s harsh winters often mean long waits for deicing or missed connections, but I haven’t had the nightmarish experiences of O’Hare here.

DTW makes it easy to get up close to the planes

DTW makes it easy to get up close to the planes

6. Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) – Detroit gets the prize for most improved airport, moving from worst to not-quite-first. The McNamara Terminal is architecturally impressive and has great views of planes. It’s daunting length is reduced by the Express Tram, which provides a birds-eye view of the terminal as it goes from one end of the terminal to the other. The light show in the tunnel between the A and C concourses can be entertaining. The Westin is one of the nicest airport hotels in the country, with its own security entrance. Restaurants are on the chainy side.

5. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) - The gigantic atrium in the central terminal is one of my favorite airport spaces. Sculptures of local fish are embedded in the floor throughout the terminal, with occasional river noises. On a rare clear day, you can see Mount Rainier from the airport. Dining options highlight local flavors including wines and seafood. A new light rail line connecting Sea-Tac to downtown Seattle is one of the simplest and cheapest ($2.50) city connections you’ll find in the United States. (The light rail isn’t complete yet. You have to take a bus to the current end-of-the-line.)

4. Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) – Charlotte has wonderful public spaces, free WiFi and power plugs next to comfy rocking chairs. The last time I was through CLT, there was even a piano player. The food court includes local barbecue options. Charlotte would probably be my favorite airport, but it has one big drawback: the dominant carrier is US Airways.

3. Vancouver International Airport (YVR) – You’ll know you’ve landed in the Pacific Northwest when you arrive at YVR. The entry from international flights is one of the most impressive welcomes I’ve seen in an airport. It wouldn’t be hard to think of YVR as a Native American history museum. Some of the art on display is on loan from museums. Free WiFi is also a plus. The Canada Line mass transit system linking the airport to the city should be opening any day now.

United jet and Kona airport

A United jet dwarfs the airport buildings at KOA

2. Washington National Airport (DCA) Terminals B & C – Wealthy Alexandria neighbors, overblown security concerns and the idiotic perimeter rule keep more people from experiencing this terrific, underutilized airport. Terminals B & C are clean, modern and airy. They feature amazing views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument across the Potomac. The views from Continental’s Presidents Club are especially impressive. Dining is much more chain-oriented than I’d like, but I do try to hit the Five Guys when I’m there. A covered walkway takes you to the Metro which connects you to much of the DC area. Security lines are usually not an issue. The biggest knock: Terminal A, the original airport. A lot of third-world nations would disown it.

1. Kona International Airport (KOA) – OK, the deck is stacked here. A big part of the reason that Kona is my favorite airport is that when you land, you’re in Hawaii. The approach from the mainland includes a view of neighbor island Maui, goes over turquoise water and you land on a lava flow from 1801. (Look out for messages in white coral on the lava.) But the airport itself has a lot of charm. There’s a little bar tucked away in the corner.  There aren’t big windows to see the planes, but that’s because everything is open air, letting you get up close and personal with the planes. (Just don’t take a lot of pictures like I did or you might be interrogated.) Food options at this tiny airport are limited. I was too distracted by the beauty to check if there is free WiFi.

Two other international airports that I really liked are Kuwait International Airport (KWI) and Schipol (AMS) in Amsterdam. My last visits there were too far in the past to include in this list.

And for those who are wondering, here’s the hate list in no particular order: ATL, DEN, BOS, IAD, LGA, JFK, LHR, ORD, MIA, SJC, OAK, FRA, IAH, MSY, CDG.

The benefits of starting from scratch

Filed under: airlines, customer service, travel — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:28 am

Today marks the second anniversary of the launch of Virgin America, an upstart carrier that has inspired many loyal followers. Virgin America is a clear example of the benefits of starting from scratch.

Virgin America cabinAmong Virgin’s features:

  • Brand new planes.
  • Cheerful gate staff and flight attendants.
  • AC power plugs at every seat.
  • In-flight WiFi on every seat on every flight.
  • Live TV.
  • The best in-flight entertainment system on a domestic carrier.
  • The best premium economy offering (Main Cabin Select) in the U.S.
  • The best domestic first class, with the exception of three-cabin transcontinental offerings like United’s p.s. It even rivals some U.S. carriers’ international business class offerings.
  • In-seat, on-screen food ordering.
  • Specialty food choices.
  • A simple frequent flier program with no redemption restrictions.

Virgin America is the airline I’d design if I were designing an airline from scratch. It solves the needs of today’s travelers.

The legacy airlines can’t come close to Virgin’s offering. Retrofitting aircraft is expensive and many carriers are facing liquidity crunches. Union rules make it next to impossible to fire rude and bitter flight attendants. Bureaucratic processes and lethargy prevent innovations like Virgin’s IFE system (see my post Could YouTube have come from a large company?) To the extent that Virgin America has a legacy, it’s the halo from Virgin’s fun, irreverent brand and Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group. (see video below)

On most airlines I complain about things like surly flight attendants, seats held together with duct tape, dirty planes, long mechanical delays and shabby terminal facilities. On Virgin America the complaints are in a different (and whiny) league: the IFE system has some bugs in it, seat-to-seat chat needs status messages, in-flight WiFi can sometimes be slow. The only substantive complaint I’ve had so far is that the Web site is incredibly slow and painful to use.

I’m not the only one who has noticed: Virgin’s load factor has been steadily increasing, even as it has expanded capacity. Virgin’s flights often sell out before those on legacy carriers on the same routes.

Virgin came into the market at a really tough time for the industry, with record oil prices last year and the toughest economy in decades. Here’s hoping Virgin America makes it to its 20th birthday.

August 5, 2009

Past, present and future of online maps

Filed under: bing, google, local search, maps, microsoft — Rocky Agrawal @ 11:55 am

Business names and landmarks on Google MapsGoogle announced yesterday that it has added more detail on its maps, highlighting businesses and landmarks. They even solved the Albert Einstein Memorial problem that I wrote about last year.

Businesses and landmarks are important because they make maps more in line with the way people think, instead of the way that computers operate. This change also means that businesses won’t have to resort to painting their rooftops to be easily identifiable.

There are two big challenges with what Google is doing:

We’ve come a long way from the early days of the Web when maps consisted largely of roads and a clunky user interface. We’ve seen the addition of aerial imagery, building outlines, photos, public transit, Street View, neighborhoods, user-generated content and live traffic. Google has driven much of this innovation, although to be fair MapQuest had aerial imagery first and A9 had a version of street view early on.

There is still a lot of work to do to improve maps:

  • College and corporate campuses. Campuses such as Google’s and Microsoft’s buildings have numbers, but these aren’t shown on the map. If you were meeting someone, they’d probably tell you to go to “Building 43″. My friend Adam at Google keeps a custom Google map to show where his building is. (Oddly, Microsoft’s Bing maps show building numbers for the Microsoft campus, but don’t let you search for them.) The same thing applies for airport terminals.
  • Controlled-access facilities. Businesses in controlled-access facilities should be hidden by default — few people are going to park and go through security to eat at an airport restaurant. On the other hand, if I’m in the airport, I want to know what businesses are in my terminal.
  • Handling nonstandard locations. Databases are organized around cities and states in the United States. This works for most places, but is problematic in areas that don’t follow the convention like Hawaii or Las Vegas. Hawaiians talks about islands, but the local databases don’t know the concept of an island. This is made worse by the fact that the same town name is used on multiple islands — there’s a Waimea on Kauai and Hawaii and a Kailua on Oahu and Hawaii. Local constructs such as “North Shore” and “South Shore” aren’t understood either. Navigating using local search on my recent trips to Hawaii was error filled.
    In Vegas, hotels are a primary navigation construct and many of those hotels have more shops and restaurants than do a lot of American towns.
    Given how popular these destinations are, I’m surprised this problem hasn’t been solved.
  • Parking availability. In a big city it’s rare that you can drive up to your destination and park right in front; finding parking can easily add 15-20 minutes to your trip. Companies like Urban Mapping are already collecting this information. I had a book called Park It Here! that showed street parking restrictions for every block in Manhattan. I’d love to see that data online.

More on: google, maps, local search

August 3, 2009

Missing out on the big stuff on Twitter and Facebook

Filed under: facebook, social networking, twitter — Rocky Agrawal @ 3:44 pm

One of my friends recently got engaged and posted that fact on Facebook. I missed it.

It’s one of the frustrations of the constantly flowing river of news in social networks — births, deaths, weddings and job changes get lost amid the links to pictures of kittens, “what state should I live in quizzes?”, stories about Internet celebrities and the other trivia of life.

There’s no way to get a summary of the important stuff. On many news sites, we have a variety of clues: the size of a headline and the relative placement of stories serve as indicators a story’s importance. We need similar clues for social media.

One place to start is the publisher: the author knows how important it is relative to other entries they write. I post content to social networks on average 5-6 times a day. About once or twice a month I post something that I’d want to call extra attention to. But short of posting it repeatedly (further polluting the stream) there’s no way to call attention to it.

Something like this wouldn’t work in an open Web environment where spammers would designate everything they create as spam; but in a social context, the network serves as a check against excessive spamming.

Another way to identify important content is to look at how many people act on it. If a lot of people like a post or comment on it, that post is likely more significant than others. This should be normalized so that someone with a lot of followers or a more active network doesn’t drown out others with smaller networks.

Identifying important content also helps when looking at a longer period of time than the last hour or last day. It would be useful to be able to look back through my Facebook or Twitter history and see what were the most important things this year.

June 30, 2009

Bing, Yahoo! try to capitalize on Google’s Michael Jackson traffic surge

Filed under: advertising, aol, bing, google, search, yahoo — Rocky Agrawal @ 2:23 pm
Bing, Yahoo! ads on Michael Jackson results on Google

Bing, Yahoo! ads on Michael Jackson results on Google. Click to see full version.

Seen over the weekend: ads for bing and Yahoo! on Google search results for “Michael Jackson”.

The bing ad led to bing’s xRank page for Michael Jackson. The Yahoo! ad bizarrely led to a Yahoo! shopping results page for Michael posters, most of which had nothing to do with Jackson.

The bing ad appeared every time I reloaded the page. The other ads were much less frequent.

Update: AOL has joined the fray with ads for AOL Music, including a pitch to download a “Michael Jackson tribute toolbar” on the landing page.

June 16, 2009

How do you pay for a ride on SF Muni with a $20 and a $1?

Filed under: random — Rocky Agrawal @ 11:37 am

Coming back from Berlin yesterday, I decided to take public transit. I took BART from SFO to Embarcadero station, where I had to switch to Muni to get home. The fare was $1.25 (after a paper BART to Muni transfer discount) and I had a $20 bill and a $1 bill. I also had about $40 on my BART ticket, but that doesn’t work on Muni. Here are the parameters:

  • There’s a staffed booth, but the staff can’t make change and you can’t just hand them money.
  • You can’t buy a pass with a credit card.
  • The turnstiles take only coins.
  • There’s a change machine that will give you $1 coins for $5 and $10 bills.
  • There’s another machine (marked for BART) that will make change for $20 bills and give you $5 bills.
  • There’s a BART ticket machine that has an option to get change for $1 bills.

It worked out to be a 4-step process using 4 different machines (not counting the machine that issues the BART to Muni transfers):

  1. Put the $20 bill in the BART bill change machine and get 4 $5 bills.
  2. Put the $1 bill in the BART ticket machine to get 4 quarters.
  3. Walk across the hall and put one of the $5 bills into the Muni change machine to get 5 $1 coins. Whoops, it won’t take it. Turns out it doesn’t take the new $5 bills. Fortunately, I had gotten one of the old ones.
  4. Put the $1 coin and a quarter into the turnstile and hand the paper slip to the agent to let me through.

No wonder people hate using public transit.

June 7, 2009

What the AP must do now

Filed under: google, journalism, newspapers, publishing — Rocky Agrawal @ 10:13 am

I’ve written before about how the Associated Press blew it in the early days of the Web by choosing to not play in the online news space. More than a decade later, AP still has tremendous assets that it can use to become a great news source. Rather than fight expensive legal battles that it will almost surely lose, it can try to build a great product:

  • Unlock the content vault — AP content has typically been available online for no more than 30 days, which means that links to AP content goes bad quickly. AP could provide exclusive access to all of the content that it has. Not only does this provide a great service to users, it’s also great for search engine rankings.
  • Exploit the photos –- One of my favorite things when I was working in a newsroom was to look through the AP LeafDesk. AP employs some of the world’s most talented photographers and the LeafDesk was my window to the world. From there, I would choose which photos would appear in our products. In the online world with infinite space, there is no reason to have editors limit the availability of pictures to what they can fit in print. Online access to AP’s photos would be a pageview goldmine; slideshows are incredibly popular. At the New York Times, 11 million of the 49 million pageviews on the day after the inauguration went to slideshows. (Bonus tip: talk to the folks at Cooliris.)
  • Geotag the content — AP journalists are in the best position to include relevant geographic information in articles and photos. Geotagging would provide users new ways to explore AP’s content. Imagine browsing through a map with the latest photos and news. Or using geotags combined with archived content to explore a region in time. Google News tries to do this using algorithms, but often misses or adds irrelevant geotagging.
  • Organize the AP’s information and make it universally accessible – Instead of letting Google organize the AP’s information, the AP should do it. This may be hard to do given the AP’s DNA, but it needs to move from generating disposable news stories to creating longterm news resources. There is a lot of information and judgment that goes into the newsmaking process that doesn’t make it into the final story. If embedded in a database, that information could be used to automatically generate timelines of the major stories of significant news events. AP’s obit file could become a reference source about newsmakers.
  • Talk to NPR – NPR faces channel conflict similar to AP’s, yet they’ve managed to build one of the best news sites and they’ve done it under the NPR brand. NPR.org is frequently a leader when it comes to adopting new technologies, including open APIs, social media and search. Learn from their experts.

AP needs to do this under the AP brand instead of obscure local brands. It needs to focus on page performance, usability and searchability.

If AP does all of the above, it will have built an unparalleled news product. Maybe one that consumers would pay for.

More on: newspapers, geotagging

See also:

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