The Vocal Minority

The new spate of AT&T network bashing that has accompanied the introduction of Apple's iPhone for Verizon has me rereading David Sleight's blog post analyzing the feedback from a major redesign. The entire post is very good, and you should read it in its entirety, but what particularly grabbed my attention was the last paragraph:

During an interesting chat Chris Fahey set me on the right track by pointing out something I’d overlooked: Negatives want to affect [sic] change, Positives are confirming assent. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but he’s absolutely right, and it explains a lot about their respective behavior. Negatives have the motivation to act since they want something done. Positives stay mum because, ultimately, they want nothing done.

The description of "Negatives" as users who want to effect change seems generally applicable to many situations in which it is difficult to get hard data to support an argument. It seems particularly applicable to situations widely reported by technology-oriented media. Sure, there are plenty of "AT&T drops calls, Verizon's network is better" blog posts, and a ton of "me too" comments on those posts, but do the posters and commentors represent any kind of majority of network users, or could they be a very vocal minority? An informal (and statistically insignificant) poll of friends and family who have AT&T feel that their service is entirely satisfactory. Some reported frequent dropped calls and spotty coverage in particular areas. The thing is, conducting the same poll with friends and family on Verizon netted the same results. In the end, physical location was the most important factor in cell phone carrier performance.

As an exercise in curiosity, I did a few quick queries on Google hoping to get an idea of how much of a link there was between the iPhone and AT&T's perceived network deficiencies. It's a decidedly unscientific experiment at best, but it seems to me there is a pretty strong link.

AT&T dropped calls (254,000)
AT&T dropped calls -iphone (82,000)
AT&T dropped calls -verizon (108,000)
at&t dropped calls -iphone -verizon (48,100)

Verizon dropped calls (254,000)
verizon dropped calls -AT&T (97,600)
verizon dropped calls -iphone (85,500)
verizon dropped calls -iphone -at&t (51,300)

sprint dropped calls (170,000)
sprint dropped calls -iphone (78,000)

The number in parentheses is the number of results returned by Google for each query. As I said this little experiment is far from conclusive, but there is clearly a link between

Then, there is the iPhone 4 antenna problem. Shortly after the iPhone 4 was released, reports of a problem with the antenna surfaced, and quickly became huge news. How many people really suffered from the "flaw" in Apple's design? As Engadget's Nilay Patel reports, "...Apple's sold well over two million iPhone 4s, and [Engadget simply hasn't] heard the sort of outcry from users that [they'd] normally hear if a product this high-profile and this popular had a showstopping defect."

In the end, the vocal minority is going to have its say, but don't forget to look at the big picture.