More Than Just Data: Drawing a Blank, Skies of Blue, and Of Course They Did.
There are a lot of significant things going on in the country and the world these days, and while I hate to add to the pile of very important discussions we all need to have, this really can’t wait. So I ask… when is it too early for Christmas decorations and music?
I know there are strong feelings about this topic. I happen to fall into the definitely after Thanksgiving and ideally not before December 1st camp, but clearly, there is disagreement on this matter. There is an expectation that stores will start too early, and right after Halloween the Christmas decorations will go up, and early sales will start. However, this morning I was a little thrown off when I saw a house in our neighborhood with a tree that was fully decorated and lit up in the living room.
This was jarring enough, but it was piled on top of the fact that in my Netflix feed under “Suspense/Action Shows you might like” were three cheesy Christmas movies. First of all, not suspense or action, but secondly… too soon, Netflix, too soon. The Christmas Prince will be watched in good time, but it feels that even in Aldovia the decorations wouldn’t be up this early.
Granted, it feels like this is one step away from yelling about kids being on my lawn, but the great Christmas Decoration Debate feels like it could be a needed distraction and I would love to hear your thoughts. But, whether you are on team deck the halls in November or too soon for tinsel, I think we can all agree that the Princess Switch 3 was one too many.
?As always, here are some of the data points that caught our eye this week.
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1)??? 2%
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We are 10 days past the election and there generally has been a relatively quiet period when it comes to hot takes and finger pointing. The honest answer is that there needs to be a lot more time to figure out what happened and so far the numbers seem to be pointing to the bigger story being about who didn’t vote versus why people voted the way they did. This won’t be a universal truth, but the typical voting patterns (at least nationally) do not match past patterns.
One number that has jumped out in our look-back analysis is that 2% of our panelists nationwide who report that they voted, also told us that they left the presidential vote blank. This was for people who voted early in person, early by mail, or on Election Day. Don’t have the answer as to why yet, but the consistency is remarkable.
We’ll be continuously updating our information on our site at the link below.
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2)??? 1 million
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Wednesday was apparently a good day for BlueSky who announced that 1 million new users had signed up on the platform and it was the most downloaded app in the US. With Twitter/X losing users and revenue since Elon Musk bought the platform, the election results (and Musk’s involvement in said election) seem to have accelerated the departures. There is also the fact that the terms of use on X are changing in some very “interesting” ways.
BlueSky was founded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and currently claims that they will not have advertising, but instead are considering a subscription plan as the funding mechanism. It will be interesting to see if they can handle the growth, and have reportedly increased users by 15 million this month. If you do join, give us a follow @trendency.bsky.social
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3)??? 400+
It has been a while (thankfully) since I have thought about Alex Jones and his Infowars media group, but Infowars was back in the news this week. Jones was ordered to pay $1.4 billion in a defamation lawsuit and, since he didn’t have that level of money available, the judge said his assets could be auctioned off. The lucky winner of more than 400 domain names, social media accounts, subscriber lists, etc.? The Onion.
While the Onion reporting that they bought out Infowars would be very Onion-esque, this seems to be an actual true story, with an agreement with Everytown (a gun violence prevention group) as an exclusive advertising partner in place.
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We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition and, as always, we look forward to your thoughts and hearing what stories caught your eye this week.