A new piece of research undertaken by academics in the USA has identified the phenomenon of regional accents in the way we Tweet. The study is great, not just because serious measured research of Twitter behaviour is extremely limited but also because it throws up some interesting broader questions about the interaction between communications on and offline. TWR undertook a massive project of twitter monitoring during the World Cup reading hundreds of thousands of Tweets in Portugues. One of the most interesting things about undertaking the project was observing the different language uses amongst different ages and between men and women as well as the different regional accents and use of specific words depending on region. So we firmly believe that the processes identified in the USA have relevance here in Brasil too. How about you and your own tweeting – do you observe differences amongst your friends and followers? Lets us know here or tweet us …

I’ve just been listening to an interview on the BBC with an academic from Amsterdam who has completed an interesting academic study which has just been released as a book – an ethnography of beauty and cosmetic surgery: Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. The author posits plastic surgery as part of a new modern experience of beauty outisde of previous studies which dealt with the subject which reflected broader social phenomenon such as class and race. On a personal level its quite obvious that the Brasilian culture values and promotes an importance of beauty – at times not separable from bigger health based issues. I remember being surprised by the number of consumer magazines reflecting the market for aesthetic surgery

As the book highlights, plastic surgery touches on all levels of brazilian society. The research associates plastic surgery with issues of female empowerment / social mobility / improve marriage hopes / social capital but also a means of potenntialy disrupting existing social hierachies. One of the key features of the discourse of beauty is its significance as a defining feature of the cultural mixing in Brasil. Two of the trends identified in the book have strong links to racial identity - skin lightening and body sculpting are both sought to replicate supposed (european) and (african) elements of beauty. The findings of the ethnography argue that Brazilians don’t want to totally remove their african traits- unlike in other south american cultures which seek to distance themselves from more indigenous body traits. Im not sure if the book deals with male plastic surgery here in Brasil…could be an interesting follow up subject?

Spotted this yesterday in São Paulo. Hells Angels now have websites?
It seems a long way from the bad old days back in Hollister, California.
Is this a Brazilian phenomenon?
Anybody with some evidence from other countries?

What are those products and shopping moments that you just don’t want to share with anyone else – inside or outside of social media????

I keep reading so many articles about Recommender Culture and the role Social Influencer Media is having on consumer behaviour I had to retaliate – lest ye forget – dead fish can only swim with the tide.
It is one of those beautiful sunny Friday mornings in Sao Paulo and i have 2 documents to complete by the end of the day. However if i finish them today the client will have to read them over the weekend. My conscience will not allow me to rob a client of their weekend so i would prefer to sacrifice my own and chose to head off for a Friday morning ZANZAR around the centre of Sao Paulo. The part where there are 24 hour cinemas and real people – not Itaim or Brooklyn, you get the picture. (Just as an aside, and i know i shouldn’t think this – but isnt it refreshing to go past a cinema which isnt showing Pixar kids cartoons or some god awful Hollywood film by McG). Anyway i will not reveal the exact location of where i ended up doing my shopping – and that is the whole point of the post. We have become so accustomed to thinking and reading about how social media means we can and must share our shopping experiences that we forget that some times we just dont want to share with people exactly what it is that we have been purchasing.
Now in my case this morning – no i didn’t go into one of the sex shops and no i didnt buy drugs – though i was close to Cracolandia (by the way does anyone else have a vision of the Prefeitura building a Cracoloandia theme park in 10 years once Santa Cecilia is totally gentrified?).
No i was indulging my number one vice – buying vinyl.
I found the most amazing SEBO with many records for less than R$10 and all in good condition. I was shocked to pick up a copy of The Fall – Bend Sinister and Coldcut, Laurie Andersen and Steve Harley’s Cockney Rebel, David Byrne’s Uh-Oh and The Colourfield (Terry Hall ex-Specials) amongst others.
You have no idea of the joy but also of the complete lack of desire to share with anybody the precise location of the Sebo. No F*in Way.
All of which got me thinking about the anti-social influencer consumer model – and i was wondering what other examples we might be able to share???
In all honesty this practice of cratediggers not wishing to share their treasures has a long history. I think that even pre late 1970s Hip-Hop DJs were sticking white labels over their records so that other DJs could not find out the names of the records and go out and buy them. I know that as a man the thrill of discovery and the desire of sharing our wisdom has strong power over our consumer behaviour – but not always.
So please … feel free to share – what are those guilty pleasures, competitive shopping dynamics that turn you into an unrecommender?????????

Contudo… o que achamos mais interessante de ser notado, foram as reações de alguns dos twitter e twitteretes:

pablosnr: RT @baunilha: @governosp no twitter!- interessante.. vejamos oq eles estão aprontando. acho que deveria ter twits especiais sobre corrupção

Pangos: @governosp Sejam bem vindos representantes.

about 1 hour ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

gustavoramos: @governosp Vocês deveriam promover mais a interação com o cidadão aqui e deixar de lado as propagandas. Isso eu vejo no site.

edumg: José Serra andou lendo a Época @governosp

As Twitter goes increasingly mainstream in the UK, as witnessed in its increasing use in radio phone-ins on the BBC it looks like its about to do the same here in Brazil. Or is it? This weeks Epoca magazine devoted it’s cover to the rise of the phenomenon here in Brazil. However, we’re asking a few of Brazil’s most prolific Twitter addicts what this means for the application here…. more to come shortly

…oh and as if you don’t yet know what Twitter is…

1. Social network and blogging sites are now the 4th most popular activity on the Internet

Social network and blogging sites are now the 4th most popular
activity on the Internet (overcoming personal email) with 67% global reach as to December 2008. That is 5% more of what they attracted a year ago.

The strongest growth comes from Germany (much due to Facebook launching a German language interface in March 2008) now reaching 51% of Germans online compared to 39% a year ago (12% increase). Large growth has also occurred in the UK, Spain, Italy and Switzerland (about 10% growth in each country).
The US growth at this time was minor (2.6% growth) suggesting a saturation of the online social activity of the US population.

2. Due to Facebook’s success – time spent on ‘member community’ sites grow three times the rate of overall Internet growth

The overall time spent online globally increased by 18% between December 2007 and December 2008. In the same period, however, the amount of time spent on ‘Member Community’ sites rose by 63% to 45 billion minutes; and on Facebook by a massive 566% – from 3.1 billion minutes to 20.5 billion. Facebook’s time is so high due to having the highest average time per person (three hours 10 minutes).

In most of the countries monitored the share of time accounted for by ‘Member Communities’ has more than doubled. In Switzerland, share of time has tripled from 3% to 9.3%.
A year ago ‘Member Communities’ accounted for one in every 15 online minutes globally – now it accounts for one in every 11. In Brazil alone, ‘Member Communities’ accounts for almost one in every 4 minutes. In the UK they now account for one in every 6 minutes (up from every 13 minutes a year ago) and in Italy one in every 7 (up from one in 14 a year ago).

3. Facebook has driven older people to be socially involved online:

While social networks started amongst the younger audience, today’s audiences are becoming broader and older. This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook, successfully opened opportunities of social networking to a much wider audience.

The results come from research conducted in 2008 with 2,600 people of both sexes, over 14 years, of different ages, education, social classes and occupations in the city of São Paulo and 13 other regions of the state.

International Women’s Day yesterday saw the annual collection of articles across the Americas about the role of women in society. In Brazil, Folha de Sao Paulo reported the findings of a number of different studies which emphasise the implications  the changing position of women in society, the workplace and within families and the household.  Increasingly women are becoming the dominant breadwinner within homes. Cases where the income of women exceeds that of men in the home are still in the minority, but in the last 25 years, they more than doubled, as shown by figures released by IPEA (Institute of Applied Economic Research)

From 1982 to 2007, the proportion of households where the income of women exceeded that of their partner grew from 3% to 11%. When one adds to this homes where the woman lives without a spouse, the percentage of houses where they were the main or only providers more than doubled, going from 13% to 30% in the last 25 years.

Another fact that demonstrates the advances made by women is the finding that women’s contribution to the total income of households in Brazil has already reached 40%. In 1982, this proportion was 23%. The changes have been explained mainly because of improved female education and the reduction in fertility rates. Today, the IBGE has shown that education of women between 20 and 59 years exceeds that of
men. In 1982, the situation was the reverse.

If women’s participation in the labor market has changed considerably in recent years, the same can not be said of the division of household chores. Even in households where both work, most of the responsibilities in the home are still left to women. In 2007, 90% of women were busy taking care of household chores. Among men, the percentage was only 50%. They also spent on average more than twice the number of
weekly hours to these activities than their partners: 22.2 hours, compared with 9.6 for men. The unequal division of domestic tasks is really common even in cases where women have higher income than the man.

Meanwhile in Lima, the headlines in El Comercio related to a survey conducted in Peru found that 78% of women believe that they have the same opportunities as men. The report from the International Labor Organization (ILO), states that women show almost the same level of labor force participation as men (except in construction, transportation, manufacturing and domestic service) and almost the same unemployment rates.
In terms of payment, 53% of women answered that there is no wage gap between women and men. However, this is more a wish than a reality, as according to surveys, the gap between the incomes of men and women for the execution of the same work stands at 30 %.
At another level, an overwhelming 97% of Peruvian women stated a desire to work. Of this, half prefer to work part time (predominant sector being married women in social class E), while 49% want to work like men (single women predominantly in the classes A and B). Furthermore, 91% believed that women should be independent entrepreneurs.