How to Change the World
Need Examples: availability heuristic
The “availability heuristic” is the related concept that the more easily people can think of example, the more often they think it happens. For example, people think murders occur all the time because of news coverage and television shows, but far more people die because of suicide.
I’m looking for positive examples where you notice something like “lots of people using iPods” so they think it’s very popular, so more people buy it, and it becomes more popular.
Thanks!
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Hiring people to cry at funerals
Have you heard of the practice of hiring people to cry at funerals? Could your fill me on how this works? The more details the details the better: which country? Are there levels of crying? How much does it cost? Etc.
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- 50 reads
Examples Needed: Reciprocity
Robert Cialdini tells a great story about how the people of Ethiopia provided money to Mexico in 1985 despite the crushing hardships in Ethiopia. This was because Mexico supported Ethiopia when Italy invaded it in 1937.
I'm looking for more examples of reciprocity that's above and beyond the call of duty. Please stick them in the comments section below.
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Examples Needed: Salient points
A salient point takes the truth or the fact and makes it communicate the impact of your decision. All salient points are truthful but not all truths are salient points. For example, imagine if a label on the cheeseburger you were about to eat said, “Eat this, and you’ll gain half a pound” instead “Total calories: 1,500.”
Do you have other illustrations of how companies illustrate the salient point and therefore do good marketing? As opposed to providing factual points that don’t…
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Examples Needed: Cognitive fluency
I’m writing my next book, The Art of Enchantment. I could use some help with finding real-world examples of the principles of enchantment, so I’m going to use this space to make requests.
The first example I need is to illustrate the concept of “cognitive fluency.” This the idea is that people prefer things that are easy to think about compared to those that are not. For example, the stocks of companies with easy-to-pronounce names do better than those of difficult-to-pronounce names.
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My advice to Twitter developers
The Twitter developer community is doing backflips because Twitter bought an application called Tweetie. Here’s my advice to the community.
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- 49 reads
How to stay on top of photo-editing
If you’d like to stay on top of photo-editing, Alltop has you covered:
And, of course, there’s general photography coverage at Photography.alltop.
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- 52 reads
Apple announces laptops
Did you hear that Apple announced a laptop? Of course it happened in a parallel universe, but all the pundits loved it. See what I mean here.
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- 49 reads
Analysis of Twitter Buying Tweetie
I wrote an analysis of yesterday’s big news that Twitter bought Tweetie. Check it out here. It’s an interesting issue of separation of church and state versus serving customer needs.
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How small businesses can use LinkedIn
My buddies at LinkedIn help me create a list of ten ways to use the service if you’re a small business person. Read about them here. There is also a great collection of LinkedIn tips and tricks at Linkedin.alltop.
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- 80 reads