Wednesday, March 03, 2010

"Find your inner web animal with the BBC Web Behaviour Test"

You are a Web Fox

We need as many people as possible to complete the experiment. Share your web animal with your friends and invite them to take part.

Fast-moving - Web Foxes like you are great at finding information quickly,

just as real-world foxes are always ready to pounce on an opportunity.

Sociable - Foxes are highly social animals, maintaining complex relationships with the other members of their social group. When you browse the web you are also a social creature, often using social networks, or other sites whose content is created by its users, as sources of information.

Adaptable - Web Foxes are highly adaptable multitaskers, able to do several things at the same time – just like real-world foxes who can rapidly change their behaviour to suit their environments.


How we worked out your web animal

Our web animals are just for fun, but the test is based on solid and rigorous science, so your results should tell you something interesting about your web behaviour.

Three aspects of your web behaviour were used to work out your web animal.

Adaptable or specialised?

We aren't always as good at multitasking as we think we are

The internet allows us to do lots of things at the same time. You might be listening to music and updating your blog while receiving news alerts and chatting online with friends. Then an email arrives. Can you switch seamlessly between different tasks? Or are you actually less efficient?

Indeed, a study from Stanford University in California suggests that people who spend their time multitasking might actually be less good at juggling tasks than non-multitaskers.

If you are an ‘adaptable’ web animal, then you scored highly on our tests that measured your ability to multitask. If your web animal is ‘specialised’, then you are probably better suited to taking on one task at a time.

Fast-moving or slow-moving?

BBC World Service - Special Reports - SuperPower: The Extraordinary Power Of The Internet

3 comments:

phillip skinner said...

Twenty years on from its invention, Dr Aleks Krotoski continues her investigation of how the World Wide Web is transforming almost every aspect of our lives.

In the third programme of the series, Aleks offers the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonised the world wide web - and reveals how internet users are paying for what show up to become 'free' websites and services in hidden ways.

Joined by some from the most influential business leaders of today's internet, including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube), Bill Gates, Martha Lane Fox and Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), Aleks traces how business, with different degrees of success, has attempted to generate profits on the world wide web.

She tells the within story of the gold rush many years from the dotcom bubble and reveals how retailers this kind of as Amazon learned the lessons. She also charts how, out from the ashes, Google forged the company model that has come to dominate today's web, providing a plethora of extremely appealing, overtly free of charge internet services, including search, maps and video, which are in truth funded via a sophisticated and highly profitable marketing system which trades on what we customers appear for.

Aleks explores how internet advertising is evolving further to turn out to be more targeted and related to person buyers. Recommendation engines, pioneered by retailers this kind of as Amazon, are also breaking down the barriers among commerce and consumer by advertising long term purchases to us dependent on our previous choices.

For the area, the web seems to possess brought about a revolution in convenience. But, as companies begin to construct up databases on our on the internet habits and preferences, Aleks questions what this may imply for our notions of privacy and personal space within the 21st century.

The Virtual Revolution - 3. The Cost of Free

michaelvk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fabian Smith said...

Thanks for the tip! This will come in very handy over the coming weeks. Good timing.

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