***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Folks: It is often amazing how much marketing firms and industry analysts know about such things. A quick look around the net turned up at least four firms that would be happy to supply such data in available reports for as little as $4000. The only free thing I came across (and it was a cursory look) was at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_1999_Nov/ai_58293774 and a brief writeup said that 2.6 billion Christmas cards are sold annually, about 38 per sender, and that about 80% of cards are purchased by "middle aged" women... Anyway, there is a boatload of information about numbers out there. Rich Barry Wellman wrote: >***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** > >Rebecca Adams has pointed me to a story in the New Scientist that claims >the average person sends out 68 Xmas cards which reach 154 family members. >URL is: >http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/christmas/mg18024265.900 > >Warning: Data from a very biased, small sample, and a self-interested >scholar . But it would be nice for some INSNA person to organize data >gathering on this for next year -- taking some care to collect such data >-- even the hoary university student samples would be an improvement. > >I am NOT offering to organize, but would participate, especially if >Chanukkah and New Year cards were included, and care were taken to >separate out traditional greeting cards, e-cards (only got 1 this year -- >from Japan) and Xmas/New Year's letters, both e-mail and print. > > Barry > _____________________________________________________________________ > > Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director > wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman > > Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto > 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 > To network is to live; to live is to network > _____________________________________________________________________ > >_____________________________________________________________________ >SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social >network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send >an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line >UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. > > > -- Richard Rothenberg, MD Professor, Department of Medicine Division of Infectious Disease Emory University School of Medicine Editor, Annals of Epidemiology 64 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive Atlanta, GA 30303 T: 404-616-5606 F: 404-616-6847 E: [log in to unmask] _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.