Is the problem really table-hogging, or something else?
The video seems to be saying that it is customers staying a long time (and using the internet) that is causing independent coffee shops to lose money. How about the cost of bandwidth and electricity? Is that a factor? And if not…

What about people who are reading books, writing novels without a laptop or talking endlessly to their friends?
Table-hogging causes lost business. I know this from experience working in a coffee shop – people see the place is full, turn around and leave. They want a sit-down more than they want your particular style of coffee. But…

You don’t need to have a laptop to be a table-hog. What about those people with broadsheet newspapers who spread them across a table meant for three or four people? Or the noisy groups of kids who order one drink between them and sit around for hours, screaming and taking photos (with the bloody flash on)?

My local Starbucks kicks them out after a couple of hours, thankfully, but that side of table-hogging is not explored in the video. Instead, it is those Naughty Internet Users who are causing all of the problems.

Doing the (sort-of) maths, the people mentioned in the video are actually courteous customers who should be loved.
On average, they seem to stay for three hours and have three drinks each – that’s more than most people will buy in a conversation with their friends. And really, if they’re buying a drink, shouldn’t that reset their table useage as if they were a new customer? Or do you want them to walk around the block and come in again?

Starbucks is mentioned specifically as a problem due to its free wi-fi program pilfering all the customers.** Why hasn’t Starbucks lost money if it is just a case of table-hogging?
Like you, Mr Coffee Shop Owner, Starbucks has a limited number of seats. It has to pay its electricity and internet bills, food and drink costs, rent, etc. This cost may be spread out among its stores (I don’t know how they do that sort of thing), but a simple law of physics states that two customers cannot sit in the same chair at the same time (at least not without being told off for causing a hazard).

And finally… if all the laptop users are moving to Starbucks, aren’t you glad to get rid of them? Isn’t that what you were trying to do? Geez, make your mind up!

I am beginning to think this is simply a case of “We can’t pay our enormous bandwidth bill” dressed up as yet another story filed under OMG: The Internet is DESTROYING SOCIETY!!!11!!

[image credit: Working late by ljleavell via stock.xchng]

♦ ♦ ♦ The Footnotes ♦ ♦ ♦

* And another thing: The BBC had to send someone to New York to cover this story? Are there no coffee shops in the UK with this problem? Apparently not. Mr Coffee Shop Owner, your prayers have been answered. Move to the UK, and set up business here.

**Shhh… I’ve recently spotted promotional materials in Starbucks that hint at a similar free wi-fi program rolling out in the UK soon, following its switch to BT Openzone.*** Apparently, it’s been in the works for a while. Yay!

*** In partnership with iPhone carrier 02, who used to be called BT Cellnet, so it isn’t suprising that the two companies are still slightly attracted to each other.

Technorati Tags: bbc, culture, nyc, starbucks, usa, wi-fi

Over at Pear Analytics, they’ve been analysing Twitter traffic to categorise exactly what it is people are tweeting about.

….We took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets:

News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value.

Pointless Babble won with a 40% share. “Pointless babble”; i.e. something that wasn’t talking to anyone specific, wasn’t a retweet, didn’t contain a news item and wasn’t spam. Things like “I’m chilling out, watching TV”, for example.

Which makes me wonder. These tweets are about our basic, everyday lives, and those lives are being branded pointless. Lately it seems like unless you are a cog in the machine 24/7, you are… well… pointless. Twitter about your job (as long as it is positive and vaguely schmoozy), network with potential clients or talk about lofty current events, you lazy schlub!

Those tweets tend to be the funny ones. And they seem to be the only things tweeted by celebs… or is it self-promotion for them? The boundaries are a little blurrier than that, I think.

And what about those tweets that cross the categorisation boundaries? Amanda Bonnen made a “Pointless Babble” tweet that later became News. There’s probably a lot more of that on the horizon (so beware if you have a complaint about something!).

I must admit, I was rather surprised – and pleased – at the lack of spam reported by the study! Guess they’ve not had to deal with those darn pr0n ‘stars’.

[via Mashable and various other internet sources.]
[image credit - A Little Bird Told Me by mattknow via HongKiat.com]

Technorati Tags: statistics, study, twitter

This site fell into my browser window while I was looking for one-bag travel tips – I wanted to see how to get the most wear out of as few items as possible.

“OK,” I thought. “There’s an idea here. But…”

She’s pledged to wear one dress for a year for sustainability reasons. Except she’s not wearing one dress. She’s wearing seven copies of the same dress. Why not just buy seven different dresses at the same price point?

The proper way to do it would have been to buy just one of the dress. Let us know how it holds up to all that washing. What to wear on laundry day?

Have I missed the point?

Technorati Tags: sustainability