Dorothy Gambrell has produced a telling missed connections graph that covers all of the United States. Gambrell was working on behalf of Psychology Today which commissioned the piece.
Gambrell's infographic reveals where it is that the most missed connections occur. While some of the recorded data is predictable, seen in the wealth of romantic posts that come of New York's subway trains and Hawaii's beaches, other findings are more comedic.
According to Gambrell, the most frequent site of Craigslist missed connections within the states of Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Montana, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee is at Wal-Mart stores. The study also examined the prevalence of posts tied to bars, strip clubs, supermarkets, ice cream vendors and erotic book stores.
What's Driving This Trend
- Missed Connections Mapping
- Opportunity to develop tools and platforms that use mapping to analyze missed connections data and identify potential partnerships or matchmaking.
- Behavioral Analytics for Romance
- Opportunity to use behavioral analytics to understand the needs, interests, and preferences of individuals to create effective matchmaking systems.
- Humorous Infographics for Social Media Engagement
- Opportunity to create humorous infographics that can be shared on social media platforms to drive engagement and increase brand visibility.
Who This Affects Most
- Online Dating
- The missed connections mapping trend presents opportunities for online dating platforms to use data analytics to enhance their matching algorithms.
- Retail
- The findings that Wal-Mart stores are a frequent location of missed connections presents opportunities for retailers to create in-store experiences that encourage socializing and interact with customers in a more personal way.
- Advertising
- Infographics that highlight interesting data trends like missed connections can be used by advertisers to create campaigns that drive engagement and user-generated content through social media channels.
