I talk a lot about research here, and I wanted to alert you to an excellent blog post made by Charlie Buchwalter, SVP of Research and Analytics at Nielsen Online.
The post, made on the always-worth-reading Nielsen Online blog, draws parallels between the current financial meltdown and the state of research in digital, or perhaps I should say "research" with little quote marks around it.
One of the reasons I like Nielsen (all of it, not just the online part) is that they work very hard to develop sound research based upon accepted practices and ideas that have served research well for decades. This is not to say that they do not innovate but rather that they don't allow fads and a desire for certain outcomes to guide their product development processes. They innovate prudently.
When I see the Nielsen name on a piece of research, I have a great deal more faith in it.
Anyway, back to the blog post. The central idea is about how the exuberance surrounding the Internet has led some people to want and expect outrageous business results from the sector, with the result that stock prices (among other things) were bid up far beyond the typical P/E and other ratios would suggest are warranted. Similarly, in Internet research we have the same tendency, or at least some of us do. Want proof? When was the last time you looked at projections for the size of a market of a new digital platform that didn't grow 300 fold or so in five years? To be sure, some markets will experience that. But in many cases, I think exuberance has gotten ahead of horse sense.
Anyway, please give the post, and the blog, a read. Good stuff. Consistently.
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Because people have been abusing the comment platform to place phony links to deceptive sites, I am now moderating all comments. If your comment is legit and contains a relevant link, it will be published.