Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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That, and the fact that it comes in the form of a slidedeck makes it hard to do itemized critiques. I guess it wouldn't be hard, if someone cared enough, to manually go through the slides each year and note them in a spreadsheet. But the other problem with slides is that it is very cumbersome to find the source data used for the charts. Hell, it's hard to even read the footnotes for these charts, even for this relatively simple one:

https://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-re...

edit: Slide 8, "Internet Penetration"

As an example of why the insights seem kind of bland to me, here's where she has a pie chart about "Where Do You Begin Your Product Search?", with Amazon at 49% vs 36% for "Search Engine":

https://youtu.be/HdjcdZqODoE?t=8m22s

However, looking up the source for that data, and it seems like the more interesting insight is that Amazon's lead shrunk from 55% to 49%:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-20/google-na...

But I guess for most people, it's insightful enough to know that Amazon has such a lead in the first place? I'll admit I didn't know that without seeing her slide.

> the fact that it comes in the form of a slidedeck makes it hard to do itemized critiques

The slides usually cite sources, so it's pretty easy to tell if the underlying methodology is weak. (And often it is.)

I usually enjoy reading the annual reports, my biggest criticism is just that it focuses on completely different trends each year. It will go from social to AI to messaging to privacy, etc. If something is only relevant and worth talking about for one year, then pretty much by definition it isn't a trend.

Heh. Trend is a fun word since it both means "a continuing movement" and also "a fad."

"That's a meaningful trend in the data" vs "it's just a trend."

My criticism is that its usually US -centric, sure there is more about China every year, but the healthcare section is all US, lots of media usage habits which are all US, economics, GDP all US.

For example, I've not learned much at all from that deck about whats happening in Africa or India.

Maybe because it's for the US market?

>But I guess for most people, it's insightful enough to know that Amazon has such a lead in the first place? I'll admit I didn't know that without seeing her slide.

I think you nailed it here. It's only intended as a starting point, for drawing your attention to a whole range of data points you may not already been aware of. Getting caught by one slide or data point, wondering what the deeper story is and going off and researching it yourself is exactly what the deck is for.

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