Internet Psychologist
The latest articles from Internet Psychologist and Business Academic, Graham Jones
Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, appears to misunderstand the Internet at every turn. It seems she now wants to monitor everything – yes everything – you do online. Whether it’s a simple email message, a search on Google, a Tweet in Twitter or a posting on a social networking …
Victims of swine flu and their families will doubtless disagree, but the current web-based panic over this disease is something of a nonsense. True enough, flu can be a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease – but that has always been the case. The current brouhaha would make you think, however, …
Word of mouth marketing is so important there is even an association for it. You certainly want people talking about you and your business – but only if it is positive. Yet many online businesses struggle with getting people to mention them in the first place. If you don’t get …
Alistair Darling’s latest budget was brilliant – at least that’s what you think if your name is Gordon Brown. The body language at the Dispatch Box yesterday was remarkable. As soon as the Right Honourable Member for Edinburgh South West had delivered his budget speech, his boss from Number 10 …
Internet marketers could only be scratching the surface of what’s possible online. New data suggests that making money online is dependent more on what you do offline than how well you run your web site or optimize it for search. An analysis of money-making applications on Facebook shows that less …
People who use the Internet for personal things during work time are actually doing companies more good than harm. Called “cyberloafing”, the act of looking at YouTube, or doing some shopping on eBay during office hours can make people happier in their work. According to a new study of cyberloafing …
Your eyes do funny things when you look at a web page. Eye tracking technology shows us that they tend to follow an F-shaped pattern of eye movement across the screen. But new research could bring this into question. The new research shows us this may be down to the …
Web site owners the world over want more traffic. It’s highly unlikely that you want less traffic for your own web site, or that you are happy with the traffic you get. No matter how many people who visit your web site, you probably want more. You want crowds of …
Are you in the middle of your Easter break? Having a nice relaxing time? Eating lots of chocolate and maybe going to church? That’s great – but take care; while you are off on your four-day break, your competitors are grabbing your customers and getting them to spend money with …
Product developers often want to ensure that the “baby” they have lovingly produced for the world is as complete as it can possibly be. They want the design to be right, the features to be perfect and the testing to be so thorough that no-one will find fault at launch. …
Increasingly vocal criticisms of Google suggest that its halo is slipping. In psychological terms, it is teetering on the edge of falling victim to the “reverse halo effect”. The “halo effect” itself is whereby we judge a brand, a company, or a person based on just one fact we know …
People searching for restaurants online will now be shown localised results with maps to potential eating places, thanks to the latest innovation from Google. Indeed, if you are looking for anything that could be found locally, Google will now insert a map into the search results for you, largely by …
Bloggers are wasting millions of hours of productivity around the world – and it’s getting worse. Just over two blog postings are made every second of every day – and that’s only for the regularly active blogs. According to the latest figures from blogwatcher, Technorati, around 3m blogs are updated …
Google is in the final stages of negotiations to buy Twitter, according to “people close to the negotiations” who have informed TechCrunch. If this turns out to be true, it could be a disaster for Twitter users. Google’s virtual monopoly position online means it will be able to do almost …
Facebook users are better employees. According to new research from the University of Melbourne, people who are allowed to use Facebook at work are more productive than people who don’t have access to the social networking site. The study shows that in offices where people are allowed access to Facebook …