Of some 850+ users that answered this poll earlier in the week, 93% don’t even know what twitter is.

This is one of the reasons I really enjoy Quibblo. We can throw polls up there on anything we want, and get some interesting quick data from our users. Now bear in mind that the users are heavily tween to teen, but it still is cause for pause the next time that you think “everyone uses twitter”.

the real genius is Capital One. Their Card Lab might looks silly, but they understand that perhaps the best way to gain not just an active user but a truly active user is to have them develop an emotional attachment to their card and want to use it instead of another card sitting adjacent to it in their wallet.

Never really thought about the Capital One card customizations as having that effect, but it is in fact brilliant.

The party is coming to an end for Grey Goose-swilling big shots as the city’s licensing czar says he’s banning “bottle service,” an expensive perk that draws high-rollers to Hub hotspots.

The service - a staple in exclusive nightclubs from Miami to Manhattan to Las Vegas - allows big spenders to have private VIP tables in exchange for purchasing a bottle of high-end booze, usually for $300 or more. Servers bring buckets of ice, tumblers and non-alcoholic mixers to make cocktails.

Although, I did get a kick out of this quote.

“We’re not New York and we’re not South Beach,” he said. “The city of Boston has a lot more to offer than just getting people inebriated. If all they can offer their clientele is just swilling down alcohol, then perhaps they shouldn’t be in the business.”

The full article is here.

Check it out here.

What is Patriots’ Day?

However, Twitter has a lot of passionate and addicted users.

And of course MySpace and Facebook are battling it out for users and for social network supremacy.

And lastly, both MySpace and Facebook have “status” features that are essentially little Twitters within their respective networks.

Am I missing something here, or is this just too logical an acquisition to make sense? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The particular story that caught my attention was about the coming economic stimulus package, and more specifically how the way the money is presented to Americans will greatly affect how it is spent (or not spent). The segment featured behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who, among other things, had this to say:

For instance, I suspect that giving people a prepaid debit card will do more to rejuvenate the economy than mailing out checks, but direct deposits wouldn’t be nearly as effective. I also suspect that if we added a line on the debit card that reads “spend the government’s money” this would work even better.

The piece was short, but its points were incredibly fascinating to me. I have always been interested in economics, but I find myself getting bored when reading about traditional economic theories and looking at piles and piles of numbers and data for too long. Behavioral economics however, really takes a different and more interesting approach, using psychology and real world information to study how real people actually make their financial choices.

This is the sort of angle that captivates me and keeps me interested and thinking….not always the “whats”, but always the “whys” are what I find most thought provoking.

ANYWAYS, below are some links to some things I have been digesting, and reading, and watching, as well as some things that I intend to digest, read, and watch on the topic.

• Frontline “Secret History Of The Credit Card” -This episode of Frontline (available to watch in full on the site) was riveting. What I found most interesting of all, were the marketing tactics and how they do and don’t affect consumer behavior. The interviews with Andrew Kahr, who created things like the 0% APR and the 2% minimum payment are worth reading/watching in and of themselves.
• The Marketplace story referenced above, regarding the economic stimulus package can be listened to online for free, at marketplace.org.
• MIT has several courses online for free download, including Economics and Psychology, as well as Behavioral Economics and Finance.
• Did you know there was a behavioral economics research center here in Boston? I didn’t.

Full story here.