Go read this five-part blog series from Erroll Morris and then ask yourself the question, How do I make sure that I know when I’m wrong?

Morris is writing about a condition termed Anosognosia, which you can broadly define as not having a clue how wrong you are. No matter how smart we are, none of us are exempt from the condition: we all will encounter the famous “unknown unknowns” that influence our life on a macro- and micro- scale.

As one expert tells Morris:

But when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.

The challenge for those of us who are in positions in responsibility is to minimize the potential for anosognostic behavior as much a possible.

The most important way to do this on a daily basis is to try to see things through other people’s eyes. When someone presents an alternative point of view, no matter how aggressively or impolitely, we are obligated to try to understand how that point of view makes sense to them.

When you are in a position of putative power and authority this is one of the hardest disciplines to exercise. But it is one of the most important.

I was struck the other day by the observation that the start of our current recession was sharper than the Great Depression and that the steps taken by governments around the world to provide financial stimulus helped to moderate the decline.

That observation got me thinking about how different the images of this recession are from the images of the Great Depression.

The New York Times had a long article in the Week in Review section this week that captured some of the underlying difference.

A great many people have lost faith in powerful institutions, from Congress to Goldman Sachs. Yet beneath the bitterness coloring national affairs — down at the level of neighborhood, family, coffee shop, tavern — a tenuous belief in the collective good remains, perhaps moderating national dismay.

I don’t think that the Times article intended to demean the level of suffering and pain that individual people a experiencing during this downturn. But they captured something of the zeitgeist that I experience as a I travel around the country. People are carrying on, often with a tremendous amount of energy and a degree of mobility and connectedness that is unmatched by any time in our history.

That perspective made the chart above particularly powerful.

One dramatic difference is the relatively low cost of food in the U.S. compared to other places in the world. The affordability of food is driven by diverse factors, including vast natural resources of our country, federal subsidy programs, efficiencies in distribution and innovations in preservation.

And compared to other countries, there’s no other place on the planet that has cheaper food than the U.S. (2008 data here). The 5.5% of disposable income that Americans spend on food at home is less than half the amount of income spent by Germans (11.4%), the French (13.6%), the Italians (14.4%), and less than one-third the amount of income spent by consumers in South Africa (20.1%), Mexico (24.1%), and Turkey (24.5%), which is about what Americans spent DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and far below what consumers spend in Kenya (45.9%) and Pakistan (45.6%).

When you don’t worry about where your next meal comes from, you can afford to feel optimistic and energetic. The relatively low cost of food in our country is an important element in keeping that positive viewpoint up

The flush of this Spring’s economic activity is wearing off and the American consumer is being realistic about the economy’s prospects.

One indicator can be seen in the muting of the consumer outlook from BIGResearch in June.  Sentiment about the chances for a strong economy were down from May and unchanged from a year ago.

Sentiment is up a long way from the dark summer of 2008, the mood of the last year has stayed relatively unchanged, despite renewed economic activity.

The embedded caution about the economy is reflected in how Americans describe their approach to spending.  74.1% of Americans say they are living a simpler life, according to BIGResearch.   On balance, they are happy about this increased simplicity.  For sure, they are redefining luxury:  84.1% say they aren’t ready to spend on luxury items.  The way luxury gets defined is shifting also, as demonstrated in people’s responses.

This sentiment puts some of the recent economic reports in context.  As summarized in the blog Calculated Risk’s weekly update, the momentum in retail sales is lagging and underlying economic activity is steadying after a rebound to refill inventories that had been allowed to diminish during the initial slump in consumer spending.

These observations were echoed last week in the release of the Federal Reserve Beige Book, which looked at economic activity through May

Economic activity continued to improve since the last report across all twelve Federal Reserve Districts, although many Districts described the pace of growth as “modest.” Consumer spending and tourism activity generally increased. Business spending also rose, on net, with employment and capital spending edging up but inventory investment slowing. By sector, nonfinancial services, manufacturing, and transportation continued to gradually improve. Residential real estate activity in many Districts was buoyed by the April deadline for the homebuyer tax credit. Commercial real estate remained weak, although some Districts reported an increase in leasing. Financial activity was little changed on balance, although a few Districts noted a modest increase in lending. Spring planting was generally ahead of the normal pace, while conditions in the natural resource sectors varied across the Districts. Prices of final goods and services were largely stable as higher input costs were not being passed along to customers and wage pressures continued to be minimal.

The signs suggest that consumer has recovered, but that the recovery is marked by a wide-eyes pragmatism about a weak economy with little momentum for growth.

• Experts Talk Beige Book, Bernanke Testimony (businessweek.com)
• Beige Book and Flow fo Funds Overview (fivethirtyeight.com)
• Economy improving modestly: Fed’s Beige Book (financialpost.com)

While the buzz about social networking has shifted to the hot new thing, mainstream consumer adoption and usage of social networks is exploding.

eMarketer this week shared some of its conclusions from a recent research report defining the scale and opportunity of the social networking category.

“There is no doubt anymore that social networks, reaching more than 50% of the total US Internet audience, are an essential part of the Internet experience,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Social Network Demographics and Usage.”

The research points to broad usage of social network among all demographic categories and continued expansion in the market.   eMarkerter forecasts that two-thirds of Internet users will participate on social networks every month by 2014.  Williamson comments that “the connections and interactions that social networking makes possible didn’t even exist a few short years ago.”

An analysis of the growth in Facebook‘s US users since this past January underscores the robust growth in the social networking category.

iStrategyLabs has been using Facebook’s ad targeting system to track the growth of key demographic cohorts on the service for the past couple of years.  In 2009, for instance, US users of Facebook gained 145% — an incredible explosion.

I was curious just how strong growth was in 2010 and went to the ad targeting system to update the iStrategy figures.

In the first five months of 2010, Facebook’s US users gained 22% to more than 125 million.  The rate of growth is remarkably strong, following the explosion of the past year.

Usage continues to grow more rapidly among adults, with the 25 – 34 cohort increasing 23% over the past five months, and the 35 – 54 cohort increasing 25%.  Interestingly, the number of adults 55+ appeared to decline over the past five months. The net effect of these trends is that the average age of a Facebook user continues to increase.

The service is remarkably mainstream.  And, as the usage data that Facebook shares indicates, remarkably utilized.

Facebook reports as of the end of May that is has more than 400 million worldwide users.

Half of Facebook’s users log in every day.  They interact with 130 friends on average and are connected with 60 pages, groups and events.  Each user is creating more than 2 pieces of content a month:  a photo upload, a status update, a link share, a comment.

This is a truly social phenomenon.

Let’s consider, for a moment, the potential impact for marketers and media brands.

If each user has 130 friends, that means that their first degree of influence is 16,900 friends…the friends of their friends.  Their second degree of influence is 2.2 million friends …the friends of the friends of their friends.

Each time a user interacts with a page, or a group or an event, that interaction is broadcast to her 130 friends.  The interaction can be clicking the “Like” button, or becoming a member, or commenting on an update, or sharing a photo or a post.  If one of the 130 friends then interacts with that page or group, that interaction is broadcast to his 130 friends.  The multiplying effect of interactions with content expand with every Facebook user.  Each of these instances of sharing are a moment where a brand inserts itself, within the context of each users identity, into the awareness of other users.

This is part of the power of marketing on social networks.  The skill is in creating instances of content that people interact with.  Remember, the interaction isn’t just about “engagement.”  Clicking a Like button or sharing a piece of content is just as powerful as leaving a comment.

The Facebook universe is one powerful indicator of the mainstream character of social networking, and the dynamics of user activity underscore how potent this new marketing platform can be for large businesses, small business and media brands.

When you are using content to influence consumer behavior, the context that the content is delivered in has a big influence on how consumers respond to the messaging. This maxim is an important factor in designing content marketing and social media programs. Experience suggests that consumers impute authority to two types of content: content that is considered and structured; and content that is personal and authentic.

Take recent research from SheSpeaks and iVillage that was reported on in eMarketer this week.

The survey examined how women interact with brands on digital platforms. The big headline was that while women follow brands on different social platforms, brand content delivered on those platforms has relatively lower impact on purchasing decisions.

I was struck by the relative weighting of different kinds of online content in influencing shopping behavior, and the degree to which context appears to have an impact on influence.

For instance, three categories of content had consistent impact on female consumers: reviews on message boards; articles on general interest websites; and content about products on brand websites.

Each of these three venues has assumptions built into the context that the content is delivered in. Messages boards and review sites have a self-policing nature, where reviewers gain credibility by their relative weight in the social group. General-interest websites present the same kind of editorial independence that traditional magazines have long benefited from. And brand sites have an underlying regulatory framework, since consumers understand that brands are required by law to make supportable claims about their products and services.

Each of the three categories has an foundation of trust that creates a positive context for the content.

The survey suggests that social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are less credible sources of information to women shoppers.

This assertion assumes, however, that the primary purpose of the social platforms is to communicate information about the brand.

Within a well-structured social media marketing program, social platforms serve two important purposes: content distribution and consumer engagement. In each case, the purpose of the program is to create awareness and to give the consumer easy access to points of contact and information.

The brand web site — and by extension, a brand blog — are the appropriate distribution points for brand content. Consumers are more inclined to trust content that lives within a trusted context.

Social media marketing is the integrated execution of two different marketing activities that are supported by content and engagement. Consumers will respond to authentic content, but not when they encounter it out of context.

In the 455 posts since I launched ViralHousingFix on January 4, 2009, there hasn’t been a longer gap than the one between Post 454 and this post, number 455:  11 days.

The workbook I use for my professional notes is chock full from the past two weeks, and the program I store interesting snippets in has a long backlog, but there haven’t been any posts.

Being busy with a lot of exciting developments at NCI is part of the explanation.  Getting engaged in a personal writing project is another.  But there are a couple of other reasons for the fallow spell that I think might be interesting to those of you who follow this blog regularly.

The first is that I’ve stepped back for a bit to see how things are going to turn out.  Over the past 16 months, I’ve written and shared a lot of analysis of the economy and the housing market.  The two big questions were exactly what the composition of the recession was and what the beginning of the recovery would look like.

Right now, we’re in the recovery and it’s a choppy and uncertain time.  The macro trends have been positive, as a fairly random selection of charts picked from the blog Carpe Diem shows.  Our business at NCI is hyper-local and consumer-driven, and our experience is showing us that while the recovery has settled people’s nerves, it is neither expansive or extended enough to dramatically shift consumer sentiment to the degree that households are getting reformed and the consumer’s near term outlook is upbeat.

That sense of stasis has diminished my urgency to write about economic trends.  I don’t feel like there’s anyway to really project when consumers are going to have a baseline change in outlook.  It’s going to happen.  When it happens we’ll be happy about it, and a little surprised that we didn’t see it happening at the outset.

In a New York Times column, Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings, Inc., summed up the current zeitgeist:

The funny thing is that despite their recent success, most of these folks seem reluctant to acknowledge that things have gotten better. Why? Well, I have two theories about that: one, people feel so burned by the last few years that they still fear a double dip — and they’re still waiting for another shoe to drop.

I think that’s a pretty good characterization.

A second reason for the dry spell on the blog is that I’ve been digging in on the learnings that we’ve developed around our DigitalSherpa social media marketing service over the past year.  It’s been pretty rich and exciting, and part of an overall organization audit and assessment that we’re doing across the service.

I haven’t written about the things I’ve learned because there’s a lot to synthesize:  the outcomes and experiences of more than 1000 client engagements.  We’ve essentially got thousands and thousands of proof points around the power of content marketing on social platforms, the relative value of different types of engagement, and the impact that a consistent content marketing plan has on search traffic and referrals.

Some of the facts are fun for their sheer scale.  For instance, we’ve generated more than 1 million social interactions for our clients in the multi-family space since launching CommunitySherpa last summer.  Some of the facts are engaging for their business impact:  one client has been able to cut more than $200,000 of search marketing spend because of the impact of the content marketing program that we’ve executed.  (That $200,000+ savings is net of the cost of the program, by the way.)

When you man a blog single-handedly, you’re going to experience ebbs and flows.  What you were writing about isn’t always what you are going to be writing about, and when you get to a juncture where you see a new avenue to explore, sometimes you just need to set back and sift through facts for a while.

The last three weeks have been partly busy and partly sifting time.  Thanks for your patience.  The one thing that has really impressed me is how strong the traffic to the blog has stayed.  That’s because of the way that all of you have used the content — the sharing, the commenting and the reading.  I appreciate it.

Sometimes it’s worth taking the long view: we can see just how far we’ve come in a relatively short period of time.

The first decade of the 21st Century marks a pivotal point in the modern technology revolution: digital information become portable, storable and easy to get. A world that had been defined by computing and software applications expanded to include uses that were considered to be futuristic fantasies just a few years before.

This graphic from Mashable tells the story of the iPod, the single most influential digital device of the past 20 years.

Harvard professor Mark Perry has been one observer who has consistently chronicled the silver lining in the recovery, sharing discrete pieces of data that show the economic engine gearing smartly back up.

Last Friday, he shared another in a series of posts that have looked at the recovery in local real estate markets. The subject of this post: Minneapolis.

I’m struck by the impact on the economic vitality of real estate agents. Commission income has bounced back to where it was in 2008. With fewer agents in the market, that should mean the opportunity for agents to boost earnings is significant.

Agents will play a big factor in the continued recovery of the resale home market: the more confident and upbeat they are, the more excited home buyers and sellers will be.

The team over at Electronic Frontier Foundation brings two things to its view of the web: a sense of perspective and a sense of history.

That makes this blog post by Kurt Opsahl, which provides excerpts from Facebook‘s privacy policy back to 2005, particularly powerful.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2005:

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2006:

We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2007:

Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa November 2009:

Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information. …

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa December 2009:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.

Current Facebook Privacy Policy, as of April 2010:

When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

Note the accelerating pace of the changes. It’s not a coincidence that the commercial imperatives of the site — valuation, funding and getting money off the table — have become more widely reported in the press.

The economics of investment and return force products and services, regardless how innovative, into fairly predictable patterns of behavior. Note: Craig Newmark of Craig’s List, by retaining entrepreneurial control and keeping what many feel is an idiosyncratic focus around the principles of his site, is an exception to this rule, thus far.

Go to the EFF post to find links to the specific Privacy policies.

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Interesting data point: TV’s per household grew at the fastest in a decade last year, according to Nielsen.

The TV is at the core of the multi-media experience. And, as The Economist points out in a recent special report, TV programming is being consumed across more platforms than ever before.

Compelling argument for the power of TV.

I do wonder, though, how many of those TV sets per household increased because of people combining households and brining their favorite TV with them….

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• Question for Nielsen: What the Heck’s a Television Set? (adage.com)
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• Nielsen fluffs up the TV ratings (thoughtgadgets.com)