The document discusses three main points about people and technology: (1) people are creative but tools are limited for complex knowledge sharing, (2) most time is spent offline so applications must consider emotional and practical information needs, and (3) both quantitative and qualitative data are needed to understand what, where, how, who and importantly why. Flickr data is used to show distributions of photo sharing activities.

1. People: What we know and what it means
….to us and to them
Elizabeth F. Churchill, Yahoo! Research
Supernova June 2008

2. Three points (1): People
People are endlessly creative
Few tools are good at complex knowledge sharing
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3. -3-

4. Three points (2) : Technology and people
Most of most people’s time is spent
offline
Applications and services are only part the picture;
information finding is emotional as well as practical, it
has meaning for people
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5. 16 million Americans
$1 billion per year
Ads, subscriptions and services
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6. Breaking down the dating cycle
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7. Breaking down the dating cycle
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8. Breaking down the dating cycle
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9. Three points (3) - Data about people
Get data in the large and in the small
Quantitative data over large groups tells you what, where,
perhaps how and who (but note privacy issues)
Qualitative data can tell you why
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10. Example 2
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11. Flickr – Photo sharing distribution
Flickr Photo Sharing Distribution
70%
59.8%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
Percent of Users 15.2%
8.0%
10% 2.4%1.4%1.2%1.2%1.2%1.4%1.8%2.3%4.1%
0%
All
None
0-10% 20-30% 40-50% 60-70% 80-90%
10-20% 30-40% 50-60% 70-80% 90-100%
Percent of Photos Publicly Shared By User
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12. Flickr – Photo sharing by user location
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13. Thanks!
For more information please email
Elizabeth Churchill at echu@yahoo-inc.com
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