What Matters Most When Determining Popularity Across the Web? All Time Stats or Momentum?
Fraser, Alex, Adam, Pat and I are having an awesome debate today on the BlueBlog. Feel free to weigh in.
On context: http://tinyurl.com/6qqbnk and the “Beckett Rule”: http://tinyurl.com
The Mystery Box
J.J. Abrams is just plain awesome. Thanks to Alex for twittering this link.
Getting To Know You In 140 Charaters Or Less
At first glance it might seem counter intuitive that microblogging could allow you to get to know someone more intimately than a regular blog. Closeness and familiarity in 140 characters or less? You might ask yourself: What could I possibly say in a series of text messages that would be meaningful enough for acquaintances to bother to keep reading? People everywhere are discovering that the answer is actually “a lot”.
A fundamental fact about microblogging platforms like Twitter is that the mobile devices we use and the speed we can post changes not only how we blog, but what we blog. Stuff that I’d never blog about makes it to Twitter, and I’m sure that’s true for most Twitter users. Even capping out at 140 characters per post, a stream of small posts about where you are, where you’re going, what you’re doing, eating, enjoying, reading, watching, feeling in near real time is actually far more personal and meaningful than reading a more lengthy article written by someone on the realities of, say, “microblogging.” 
The recent rise and success of microblogging platforms like Twitter has shown us that people crave the personal, even in short snippets. Places you go, meals you enjoy, small comments and opinions on things you like as you’re experiencing them. These snippets of personal data matter in the blogging world. That they matter, coupled with the fact that microblogging allows us the speed and convenience to share this data with others conveniently, means that microblogging will only increase in popularity.
(Here’s my Twitter link for those curious folks interested in following me.)
The Rise Of The Liveblogging Phenomenon
It’s amazing how fast information travels nowadays. With rapid adoption rates of multi-function, browser-ready devices like the iPhone becoming a norm, people are blogging constantly - Liveblogging, a term that I’ve seen used on tech-centric blogs like TechCrunch and Read Write Web, describes the act of blogging an experience as it’s happening. I didn’t notice how common a phenomenon liveblogging was until going to ETech - during keynotes and presentations people would hold up their iPhones take a picture of the slide and then quickly email it to themselves and (presumably) post it to their blogs, even before the next slide was up. Talk about rapid exchanges of information - imagine a TechCrunch blogger posting in real time to 753K RSS readers around the world. Recently, I’ve seen tons of “liveblogged” posts on tech blogs - yesterday’s post on CrunchGear titled Live from the CTIA Wireless 2008 Keynote is a perfect example of the Liveblogging phenomenon - you can even see people’s heads in the photos showing the slides. Of course, along with people photoblogging using their iPhones, they’ve also got their laptops open, Twittering and emailing at the same time. Doesn’t anyone just listen anymore? You can be damn sure that tons of new apps for the iPhone (and similar devices) are going to focus on streamlining these kinds of activities.
Here’s a video I found on YouTube that shows just how easy it is to Blog in real time on an iPhone. For those of you wondering, no I don’t have one, and yes, I do want one. Badly.
Analysing The Results Of The Gmail Custom Time April Fools Post
So yesterday was April fools day, one of my favorite days of the year. Suffice it to say that I was bored at work and feeling a bit mischievous. Although the bullpen I sit in is full of lively and fun-loving IT and forensic accountants, the morning went by without incident, which was pretty lame and disappointing (Everyone’s trying to close out their 3-31 projects, so I can’t blame them really). By noon I was dying to see something go down. And then I saw Gmail’s little “Custom Time” April fools spoof and decided to try and have a little bloggy fun on my own.
To be completely honest, I didn’t really know what to think of the Custom Time page that Google put up. It was definitely creative, but it seemed so obvious, and not that funny…would people even notice? Would they really believe it? Was it worth it to Google to actually pay a team of employees to brain storm the idea, make a creative, and go through the process of getting engineers to add a little red link in the top right hand corner of Gmail for just a day? I asked a couple of guys at work what they thought and I got some quick validation - Creative, but also obvious, pointless and ignorable. A couple of guys even said they were really irritated at first. Interesting. Still, I wasn’t convinced that my IT audit buddies were a true representative sample of “all Gmail users.” I needed some hard data. After all, these guys spend all day analyzing data for potential fraud. So after I got back from lunch I decided it was worth a half-hour to see if I could push the lie and get a rise out of a few people. In retrospect it was a feeble attempt to have some fun, but I half expected some people to be legitimately pissed. Maybe non-Gmail users hadn’t heard about it or didn’t notice? Maybe people knew about the spoof, but thought it was lame….but maybe some people were infuriated? I was legit curious. All things considered, I started to wonder how April-fools-aware the average stumble-upon user really was, and, given that it was April 1st, I posted a quick-and-dirty rant about Google being evil.
After hitting “publish” and asking a couple of friends to stumble the post, I waited. I half expected a bunch of comments that just called me out — Hey idiot, it’s April Fools! — Fraser gets 50 points for his reaction time and wit in that regard. But I was secretly dying to spark some heated debate about the sanctity of time with at least a few unsuspecting idiots, who, unaware that it was 04/01 might have felt threatened/outraged by Google’s little white lie. Despite a small spike in traffic to 113 unique visitors yesterday, I had no such luck in that regard. In fact, I only got one comment from a stumbler “hahahah. That’s funny“. But the data I did get from Google analytics was interesting enough, and confirmed that either (A) I am a bad liar, or (B) most stumblers agree with the IT Auditors. The truth is probably a mix of both ;-). As you can see, the high bounce rate and low average time spent on the post shows pretty definitively that people didn’t care at all, and the lack of comments on the post confirms it, which, I think, begs a few questions. Did people even notice or care about the spoof yesterday? Did people think it was funny? The title of this morning’s TechCrunch’s post “Gmail April Fools Not Very Funny. On The Upside They Started A Wikipedia War” kind of says it all. And 753,000 RSS readers were delivered that slag post this morning. So why did Google devote any resources to the spoof at all if they ran the risk of pissing people off, and provoking bad PR on big blogs TechCrunch? Thoughts anyone?
Gmail’s New “Custom Time” Feature Opens The Floodgates to Time Stamp Manipulation
You’ve probably seen novelty programs like TimeMachiner that allow you to send emails into the future. But what about being able to send emails into the past? Better yet, what about being able to send emails to a recipient marked as read into the past? Gmail’s new beta “custom time” , which was released yesterday, lets you do just that. Kiss your trust in time stamps goodbye.
At some point, we’ve all had or witnessed (some form of) the following argument:
Person A: Why didn’t you do X? Dude, I sent you an email about that a week ago….
Person B: No you didn’t. I check my email 40 times a day. I would never miss something like that.
Person A: Check your email. Trust me. It’s there…
From now on, if you’re “Person A” in this argument, it’s entirely possible that you’ll rush to your inbox expecting validation and instead be surprised and embarrassed to find a “read” message from “Person B”. Of course, you’ve never actually read the message before, but there’s no way to prove that you didn’t. What do you do then?
I’ve always found comfort in the sanctity of time stamps. I trust and count on them, so just reading about this beta set me on fire. In regular Google fashion, they’ve made the functionality super easy to use, which makes it all the more terrifying.
The only saving grace, really, is that Gmail says it’ll limit users to just 10 pre-dated emails per year, siting that Google researchers have concluded that “allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time.” Maybe it’s just me, but it would only take ONE pre-dated email showing up in my inbox to render me faithless.
If you haven’t seen the testimonials on the Custom Time Beta description page, I wholeheartedly encourage you to take a quick gander over there. I’ve captured my favorites in a screenshot. Dude, I thought Google’s motto was “Don’t Be Evil“?
What do you think? Please comment freely.
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