Last week, The Economist ran a story about how companies are scouring online discussions and other postings to find out what customers are
saying about them outsides the biased halls of focus group rooms.

(a) 90% of users are lurkers, not posters, so you are only hearing from a small vocal minority

(b) The posters follow a Zipf distribution for posting frequency, so unless you are careful, your conclusions will furthermore be biased by the heated postings of the super-vocal micro-minority (micrority?).

(c) Because all these biases are self-selected, the posters are likely to be people with a special axe to grind or people who are otherwise not representative of the silent majority.

Last week, The Economist ran a story about how companies are scouring online discussions and other postings to find out what customers are
saying about them outsides the biased halls of focus group rooms.

(a) 90% of users are lurkers, not posters, so you are only hearing from a small vocal minority

(b) The posters follow a Zipf distribution for posting frequency, so unless you are careful, your conclusions will furthermore be biased by the heated postings of the super-vocal micro-minority (micrority?).

(c) Because all these biases are self-selected, the posters are likely to be people with a special axe to grind or people who are otherwise not representative of the silent majority.