How did you discover that new web game or hilarious video? Between social bookmarking, social networking, socializing, the internet has made sharing information and ideas as simple as pointing and clicking. So do we need anointed trend setters anymore? Two conflicting theories are hashing out the marketing debate, but both forget to give credit to the real influencer - the internet. The internet has flattened the playing field for anybody to contribute to starting or spreading a trend.

Marketing conventional wisdom has followed the teachings of books like The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and The Influentials by Jon Berry and Ed Keller. These books claim a few well connected individuals inspire the vast majority in terms of the clothing we wear or movies we watch. These people are often called influentials. Marketing companies promote their connection with these influencers and often focus advertising budgets strictly to reaching this oligarchy of culture.

New research is challenging this conventional wisdom. Clive Thompson writes for Fast Company about Duncan Watts research on social trends.

[Duncan Watts] has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs. He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend. And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random. Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

“It just doesn’t work,” Watts says. “A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.”

Watts theorizes trends are more random, or at least harder to track. All the research done on trends has looked at successful trends. Trends that failed to catch on are harder to study. Watts computer simulations give more credit broader social networks, meaning marketing to a larger group is more important than a select group. Simply, if more people know about your product or idea, the odds are more likely someone will share that information.

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People may be reading less books, but don’t judge that by its cover. A new study from the National Endowment for the Arts finds Americans are reading less books. Spending on books dropped 14 perfect between 1985 and 2005. But more telling was Americans between 18 and 24, college years, read less voluntarily - only 52 percent in 2002 versus 59 in 1992. And all this lack of reading is causing test scores to drop.

The study attributes many “social benefits” to reading including readers getting more exercise, visiting museums, keeping up with news and current events, volunteering, and voting.

Sadly, the 100 page study appears to link declining readership in books and newspapers as a sign of American’s decreasing reading habits. What the study fails to establish is what people are doing instead. Has everyone become a video game addict or, as the statistics in this very study show, are people navigating online for their information. The study cites a 53 percent increase in home Internet use from 1997 to 2003 but fails to ask what people are doing online.

This study also contradicts the increase in book sales targeted at teens.

Further, there’s more to read than ever before. Email, instant messaging, blogs, and websites all require extensive amounts of readings and writing. I rarely pick up a newspaper, but instead read news stories from papers around the world through RSS feeds.

The study cites David T.Z. Mindich’s article “Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News” which claims only 11 percent of 18-24 year-olds list news a major reason for going online, thus not making up for the more than 20 percent drop in college -aged newspaper readers.

I question the definition of “major reason” since so much online overlaps. I want to check my email on Yahoo! and right there on my mail page are the most emailed news articles. If I’m waiting for my friend to IM me, I might check out the New York Times while waiting. Further, the NEA’s own study provides statistics showing “32 percent of teens and 46 percent of young adults actively ’seek’ news on the Internet, while 65 percent and 48 percent ‘just happen to come across it.” When compared to the 46 percent of college-aged Americans who read newspapers in 1972, interest in news seems somewhat steady.

The NEA wants to attribute less reading of books to dropping test scores and writing proficiency in students but again I worry the correlation does not translate to cause and effect. The New York Times today, in reporting on this NEA study, links dropping test scores with the decline in time spent reading but also finds these drops in test scores are across all academic subjects, including math and science. Could there be other causes affecting test scores (and do we really know what these tests are testing for)?

People, young and old, have untold amounts of knowledge on their little laptops, cellphones, and even gaming consoles (the Wii and PS3 have web browsers). This requires more reading, writing, and understanding than ever before (like how do you get that web browser to work right).

People aren’t necessarily getting stupider by not reading print novels and newspapers. They just might be getting information in new sources and new ways, especially those tech savvy kids. Maybe with all the new technology and resources, it’s our tests and studies that need changing, not the number of pages we read before sixth period.

Picking the right college affects everything. It decides whether you get a good job, good money, get married, and now, whether you’ll beat BioShock before the summer.

The Global Gaming League ranked the top 10 best colleges for video gaming. They ranked schools based on student population, techiness, and the quality of internet connections. Surprisingly, no Ivy Leagues made it in to the top 10 which I can only blame on prejudice against rich, white kids.

Ironically, Digipen Institute of Technology, with one of the best video game programs in the country, was number five. Other schools like UCLA (#4) and University of Southern California (#6) are also very well regarded academic schools. So I say this is proof video games is good for education. Yes, is. (For the full list, check after the jump).

Compared to further research by Anderson Analytics and Pew Research, half of students surveyed admit gaming cuts into their studying. Only nine percent use games to avoid schoolwork, and 83 percent play less than six hours a week. Not surprisingly, male students played for fun while female students played cause of boredom.

For now, I doubt schools will be advertising their attractiveness to gamers. But I wonder if, much like party schools, students will care about which schools care about its student’s tech geekiness. Just always remember. Independent studies are your best friend. Study the history of Grand Theft Auto. Your homework: beat Grand Theft Auto III over the weekend. Complete 100 taxi missions and get extra credit.

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Newspaper editors can relax. Geeks aren’t replacing them yet. The Project For Excellence in Journalism reported a study compared the leading stories on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious to 48 mainstream news outlets, finding great differences in the types of stories that get the most visible placement.

Social bookmarking sites, who’s stories are chosen by anyone with an account on the site, have a greater focus on blogs and other user generated sites like YouTube. These stories rarely overlapped with the lead stories in major news outlets. Social bookmarking sites focused more on technology like the iPhone and video games, crime and celebrity stories, and a lack of international coverage.

The study tries to hold social bookmarking sites to task for being standards of what’s news and what’s not. The study says:

Despite claims that the Web would internationalize consumers’ news diets, coverage across the three user-news sites focused more on domestic events and less on news from abroad than the mainstream media that week. Yahoo News, both on its main news page and three most popular pages, meanwhile, stood out for being decidedly more international that week.

Unfortunately, the study forgets one important detail about social bookmarking sites: the people. Social bookmarking caters to niche, often geeky audiences who pick stories they like to recommend to others. Digg thus far is not positioned nor intentioned to replace standard media outlets for news coverage. Instead, it helps the social community around the site find articles, websites, and features that would interest the community. Finding popular stories increases your clout among the community. But like any social community, sociability is only as good as the community.

Digg, Reddit, and Delicious are still catering to early adopters, often tech-savvy individuals, much like how Wikipedia features more articles about Star Wars characters than world religions. There’s nothing wrong with this, even though this study seems to portray these bookmarked articles as trivial. They are not trivial to the people who take the time to post them or the people who make them popular. There is a difference between what people need to know and they want to know. The question should be who is responsible for each.

Mature video games sell great. Good reviews help to. A new study from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) revealed several factors in video game sales. First, mature rated games sell better and get better reviews. And games that get very good reviews, Metacritic scores above 90, sell 531 percent above the average game.

So maybe this means means we’ll see more mature, quality games.

Okay, maybe not. But this study does present some ideas game publishers should consider. First, gamers like good games. Let’s not try to bash the video game critics (like Sony pushing Lair critics to reconsider their scores) and instead make games they like. Because it seems, gamers and game critics agree on what makes a good game.

The second, and more important point, is mature games not only sell better even with fewer retail outlets, but get better reviews. Maybe gamers and critics alike just want gross violence, hence, but I believe this reveals gamers like more grown-up games. Clean, wholesome games like Mario and Zelda offer excellent gameplay but lack rich storylines. While violent video games get all the press, subject matter in games is severely censored for sexual and graphic subject matter.

As the recent Manhunt 2 controversy showed, there is no market for Adults only rated video games. Sony and Nintendo won’t allow AO games on their consoles and major retailers won’t sell the games. Whatever your preference, censoring the creative minds behinds the games will not promote video games as art, but instead inspires more Grand Theft Auto knock-offs.

Recently we’ve seen what mature games can produce: Bioshock. This critical darling has a gallery of ESRB no-nos (they don’t seem to like eating little girls). But Bioshock real brilliance is less in gameplay and more in storytelling (while still having awesome gameplay). You inject yourself with power-ups like a drug; a drug that turned everyone in the games’ world insane, for example.

As movies have shown, grown-up subject matter often allows for more developed stories because you don’t have to avoid references, language, or imagery that makes the experience more immersive and believable. Mature games get better reviews and more sales because they are better games. The creators don’t have to censor their stories, visuals, or ideas. Imagine what might happen if video games could actually deal with complex emotional issues (which always have to do with sex). Your character could choose to cheat on his wife. How many evil points should that get you? Dealing with more complex and yes, mature issues, will lead to more complex games. The world isn’t black and white and neither should our games.

Take pride in your video game console. It’s only human.

MyArcadePlanet’s David Keating writes an interesting article trying to explain the psychology behind gamers and their (our) fanatic pride for one console or another. He says, simply, owners of Xbox 360s will love the 360 but trash the PS3 and vice versa simply because he or she owns one. Not owning one makes the other bad.

“Psychologist Kurt Lewin theorized that when people are faced with a choice between two equally positive items, (for example, the choice between a PS3 and a 360) they experience stress. Lewin went on to posit that after making their decision people alleviate this stress by immediately viewing their choice as being vastly superior. So all of the sudden, the two previously similar things now appear very different in the consumer’s mind. This suggests that when a gamer is in the store trying to figure out which console is for him, he is secretly afraid of making the wrong choice. So much so that once the decision is made and the credit card has been scanned, his mind goes into overdrive as he rapidly accentuates that console’s positives while mentally eliminating the negatives. In a matter of seconds, the other console under consideration just moments ago becomes, ‘a piece of crap that only a loser would buy.’ “

Source: Anatomy of a Fanboy: A Psychological Analysis of Console Gaming’s Super Fans

Keating’s theory has wider affect. Console fanboy fanatism is probably not limited expensive purchases but also comic companies (Marvel vs. DC), franchises (Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings) and gadgets (iPod vs. everything else). So just remember the next time you make fun of your friend for buying that Dreamcast or Gamecube. They love them for the same reason you still think the Jaguar was the bees knees: because you bought one.