Lie On The Couch And Tell Me About Your Email

from the social-scientists-invade-techie-domains dept

It appears that social scientists working on techie projects are multiplying. While all the hype has been on all the various "social software" startups, the big companies are taking slightly more academic routes. We had already mentioned about Microsoft's efforts to analyze Usenet, and today there are two more articles on that subject. The first is News.com interviewing Marc Smith, Microsoft's in-house sociologist who came up with the project. Meanwhile, SFGate is comparing Smith to a counterpart at HP who is studying patterns in how people email each other. For example, he goes around asking people why they take so long to reply to some emails and reply immediately to others, suggesting that by waiting, you are trying to suggest that you're important and busy.