Mary Meeker's misinformation has influence | Hacker News Reader

Mary Meeker's misinformation has influence

sfgate.com

45 pointstikhon29 comments

Bram Cohen's comment on this story: "The really misleading spin is the claim that mobile is taking over computers. The actual numbers in that report indicated that smart mobile has basically killed off dumb mobile, but only had a modest negative impact on regular computers."

source: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ui7ak5pz6wi8c5o/bram%20cohen%20on%... also hat tip to falon for finding this story -- i don't know her HN username

Well for the one top ten web site that has open web logs, mobile traffic does seem to be taking off at the expense of desktops - http://www.vartmp.com/blog/2013/04/16

Wikipedia might be a weird source to get that data, since people are more likely to "quickly check wikipedia" on their phone instead of a computer, while most sites people just browse may be uneffected.

More data needed.

Conversely some people might be more likely to do in-depth research into a subject on wikipedia on a desktop than ever on a mobile phone.

Agree on the more data needed.

This is a percentage chart, which only shows that mobile traffic is eating into desktops' _share_ of the total traffic.

This chart says nothing about whether mobile is eating into the absolute traffic that desktops are getting. More likely mobile traffic is increasing a lot, and desktop is holding steady.

Correct. A cursory glance at the data used for that graph http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports shows that desktop traffic has actually increased significantly in that time period (+ 25ish% for both windows and mac). For example:

Feb 2012: http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2012-02/Squ...

Feb 2013: http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2013-02/Squ...

FWIW, I have first party analytics data on a top 50 online site and this was the trend we saw too. Can't remember if there were any meaningful trends in time spent though (meaning, if desktop was losing to mobile on a time spent basis).

smart mobile has basically killed off dumb mobile, but only had a modest negative impact on regular computers

I find that fascinating and have not heard it stated so clearly before. Is it true? Has anyone else been making this point?

The Asymco chart that the Mary Meeker report uses shows that smart mobile is in fact tearing it up in terms of market share.

It can also be technically correct that the "negative" impact on desktop is "small" if you take "negative" to mean "shrinking revenue" instead of "shrinking market share" and you factor in doubts about Windows 8 to account for some stagnation in desktop/laptop PCs.

She has some interesting stuff, maybe some factoids were too good to fact check

http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trend...

I always thought she was more of a cheerleader than a tech visionary, but she dug deep and looked at the big picture too, not someone who was lazy or sloppy or full of s*.

Seems a little nitpicky. Not like the mainstream media or SF Gate never has to correct anything.

Fairly certain the general truth holds. It's not like there's some missing yellow cake.

I was looking at her old reports and thinking how she missed many of the real trends (as opposed to fads) at their onset. The October 2007 report only mentions the iPhone as a footnote. The 2005 (iirc) report talks about Joost, but not Facebook.

wait, people are actually paying attention to Mary Meeker?

seems that we have the memory of a goldfish

what's next? listening to Henry Blodget?

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/henry_blodgets_horrible_bitc...;

The issue is more with the median age of a hackernews user, most of them don't really know what happened in the dotcom bust or some of the characters like Meeker and Blodget. I was really surprised to see was hired by a big VC firm. I still remember reading about her in this book (http://www.amazon.com/Hedgehogging-Barton-Biggs/dp/047006773...) where Biggs alludes to her here and there. When a segment is flush with money the standards and ethics are lowered due to the amount of noise. We are seeing this now in the tech industry after the hedgefund bubble burst, although the good thing is that most investments for startups are very small around 300k avg vs the millions and billions when a company with $2mill in revenue went public. I noticed something about snapchat looking to raise $100mill at a $1billion valuation, this is scary and hurts the industry. The VC's that push this valuation will have to answer to their investors when the purge comes.

"The talk she gave was her annual Internet Trends Report at the Wall Street Journal's annual D: All Things Digital conference....perhaps the most important talk in all of tech"

Quick question: Why is that conference regarded in this manner?

They get big names and it is the WSJ. The audience also has quite a few upper level folks.

Oh, okay. Not knocking the characterization, it's just that when I hear big name pubs dictating influence and importance in tech, my bullshit detectors go into overdrive. I recall a "titans of tech" or some conference like that around 2000 featuring Steve Case, Steve Ballmer, and some other people who basically had no influence on the direction of the industry beyond that day. So I look at stuff like that as a lagging indicator.

They had Steve Jobs and Bill Gates doing a joint interview, so it doesn't get anymore serious than that. They get current CEOs (Apple and Google). Microsoft might not be the influence it was but its CEO's words have quite an influence on some big markets.

This whole article is about a single slide? That seems a bit heavy-handed. OK, so the slide in question says:

  Mobile Users Reach to phone ~150x a Day...
  Could be Hands-Free with Wearables

The article misses the key point of that headline: Many of the tasks that people most frequently use their smartphones for could be done with a hands-free, wearable device. Meeker is pointing out industry opportunities. The actual number is almost irrelevant.

We don't need a verified data source to tell us the average person wipes their backside once a day with toilet paper. We know it to be generally true such that some people wipe more, some less, others use baby wipes, but the take away is that the TP market is huge!

Would it help if she said 'the average cell phone user checks their cell phone A LOT every day'?

The whole article about 'misinformation' only focuses on one fact that she supposedly misinformed us about. I bet dollars to donuts we all agree people check their phones very frequently, which is all that slide was driving at.

I'm not sure you are 100% following the point of the article.

I don't think there is a point to this article other than nitpicking. We can all agree she sourced the data from a quote from Danielle Levitas, and that it wasn't scientific or necessarily Danielle's intent. But the point of the slide still stands and this is an obnoxious fluff piece of an article. Mary has her issues but this is silly.

What she did is something we call "bullshitting" or "making it up" because if the data in question really was regarding non-smartphone users then she would have to be either terribly misguided (putting it lightly) or flat out lying.

Whether incompetence or unscrupulousness, it doesn't matter. She shouldn't be uttering such false information promoted so specifically if she promotes her talk or her talk is viewed as a state of the industry report.

So you don't think the average person checks their cell phone 150 times a day?

again, what he or she thinks is not the point

What she thinks IS the point.

She's been in this industry since before most of this site could code.

She is not god or a soothsayer but when she talks about trends people know she has been analyzing the market for a long time and they trust her opinions and facts. She makes one comment on a slide at a private event about people checking their cell phones and all of a sudden you guys are like Chris Hansen busting a pedophile. Relax.

If you want to comment on things tangential to the article as Bram's, that's fine. The point of the article is to harangue Mary for one item which we all KNOW is true.

The downvotes sting Tikhon. Say it ain't so.

ha i never downvoted you. I actually don't have enough karma on this account to downvote. by he or she i meant the commenter above, not Meeker

There's a big difference between "Hey by the way guys I THINK and from what I OBSERVE the average person takes their phone out 150 times a day" and "Hey guys the AVERAGE SMARTPHONE USER TAKES THEIR PHONE OUT 150 TIMES A DAY [in the fine print: source is total BS, it doesn't say anything about average smartphone users]"

Take it from someone who probably is 2.5 times the avg age of the avg yc user and therefore was around when she made a name for herself the first time: Meeker is 99% bullshit and 1% luck

Reply on news.ycombinator.com