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
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.
Feasting With A Foodie
We all eat, but some of us enjoy it more than others. Sometimes a lot more. Eating with someone who truly appreciates not only food, but everything that goes into the experience of eating, can be a total joy.
Last night I went out to dinner with a “foodie” friend of mine, Kevin, a staff writer for LAist.com whose up and coming blog 50meals.com is a must read for food-lovers living in, or around, Los Angeles. I admit that I go out to eat sushi a lot when I’m on projects in L.A., but I had never been to Little Tokyo, so when Kevin, a seasoned pro, excitedly suggested Sushi Gen I was in. From beginning to end, the night was full of lively conversation about food, life and all the small things that make the whole experience of meals so great. 
What I love about Kevin is that his energy and appreciation of all the meal’s details is infectious. He doesn’t just talk about food being “good” - Textures, aromas, colors and flavors all get an uncommon level of attention in the across-the-table banter. And, of course, sometimes no words are necessary - you can see it written all over his face when he takes a bite of something he’s really satisfied with. He totally lights up. (Kevin - how good was that melt-in-your mouth toro, or that black cod!?). All in all, the night reminded me of just how important it is to be around people who appreciate the small, simple things that make an experience joyful. Thanks to Kevin for such a memorable night in L.A.!
Like Moths To A Flame: Why Open Source Draws Entrepreneurs And Why It’s Important For Innovation
Where there’s a social buzz around good open source code, there’s opportunity. And where there’s opportunity, there will be entrepreneurs. In fact, digital entrepreneurship is one of the most natural and predictable bi-products of the open-source movement. Although open source die-hards (myself included) associate the open source movement with “freedom”, we should never delude ourselves into thinking that “freedom” will always produce code that is “free.” I’ve never understood why some open-source advocates are so adamant about defending the concept of a free digital utopia. Drawing entrepreneurs to code is fundamental to innovation, community-building and sustainability of any open source platform. Here’s a few arguments why entrepreneurship around open source platforms should be encouraged:
Innovation Requires Time, Effort and (often) Capital
Let’s be real, there aren’t many people who are willing to take on complex problems for the fun of it. It’s not a question of coding for coding’s sake either, it’s that most people just don’t have the time, energy or resources to justify starting, even if they can see a clear solution to a well-defined problem. The opportunity cost associated with “diving in” is often too great. The opportunity to profit from an idea or solution, however, can create a powerful incentive that shifts priorities enough to turn someone (who may have never started) into an innovating entrepreneur.
Innovators Respond Well To Social Incentives
Sure, entrepreneurs are driven to innovate because of monetary incentives, but that’s not the whole story. Social status, power, connectedness and pride play a large part in the innovating process. Income generation is often just the spark that starts the creative flame, but once a project is in motion, other incentives provide a lot of the fuel that keeps things moving. Successful entrepreneurs know that they’re not going to just release code off into a vacuum. In today’s hyper-connected world, communities form around innovative code, especially if it solves a common problem or need well. The word gets out, traffic increases, communities form and innovators can become celebrities (sometimes overnight). Even at a basic level, the popularity that ensues creates a sense of achievement and recognition that all human beings strive for. The desire for status and connectedness can be a powerful incentive that not only pushes digital entrepreneurs towards great code around platforms and products, but drives community-building and overall sustainability around those platforms and products.
Entrepreneurs Put In Effort To Draw Crowds
Because of the above-stated social incentives, entrepreneurs who innovate around open source platforms have incentives to become agents that build communities. We’re all marketers of our own brand to some extent, but for innovators releasing code into the wild it’s especially true. Making a stable, consistent income “adding” to open source platforms results from a combination of (A) filling a need or solving a problem and (B) making sure A LOT of people who are having that need or problem know about you. The A + B combination results in crowds, which is definitely what you want around open source because a lot of eyes and scrutiny results in better code (that’s the theory at least) and patterns of improvement lead to sustainability.
The point I’m trying to make, of course, is that whether or not profiting from an idea was the spark that got someone to innovate should be irrelevant - the end goal should always be community-building, better code and sustainability of open source platforms. Entrepreneurs are, and will always be, agents of change because they have a unique set of incentives that drive innovation and community-building. Those who are pro-open source should recognize that those incentives can have great affects for everyone and not get so hung up on defending the “free” faith. If we try to squash incentives that drive entrepreneurship by requiring everything that is produced to be free, the end result will just be less innovation.
Our Cell Phones, Ourselves: Jan Chipchase Waxes Intellectual About the the Emotional Bonds We Have With Our Phones and How it Relates to Survival Skills
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase’s investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he’s made some unexpected discoveries: about the novel ways illiterate people interface with their cellphones, or the role the cellphone can sometimes play in commerce, or the deep emotional bonds we all seem to share with our phones. And watch for his surefire trick to keep you from misplacing your keys.
Programming Bias Into Related Content Links: Are Political Blogs Guiding Out-Bound Traffic to the Right Or Left?
I’m no politico, but, with the presidential nominee race in full swing, politics has been on my mind more than usual. My morning info-breakfast of FOX news in my hotel room in Jacksonville this week seems particularly rife with snipes at the current “front-runner” Hillary Clinton. Given that FOX news is constantly attacked for its right-wing “tilt”, I’ve been taking daily ganders into the political realm of the blogosphere to see how (if at all) the most popular political blogs have been spinning this week’s news, if for no other reason than to achieve balance in my info-diet. I was particularly surprised (and fascinated) to find yesterday that some blogging technologies being used by popular blogs and media sites (like the New York Times and GigaOm) can influence the “spin” of the related content of system generated out-bound links automatically based on programmed “left” or “right” preferences. Simply stated, this means that many blog readers are being funneled to left or right leaning sites, completely unknowingly, through auto-generated related content links. Here’s a little view into how programming bias into related content links is accomplished on the back end of a blog using a popular technology provided by a new start-up called Sphere.
Must Have Tool For Developers: The Ardvark Firefox Extension
Web developers and designers, rejoice. Welcome to your new favorite Firefox extension. The Aardvark extension offers, among other things, a new variation of the “View Source” command. It generates Javascript rather than HTML code. The Javascript code will then build the elements using “w3c DOM” techniques…a far, far better way to do things than, say, using inner HTML.
HOW IT WORKS:
After installing the Firefox Extension and restarting, with a quick right click you “Start Ardvark” and you’re off. As you glide the mouse over the page, you will see a red rectangle framing each element under the cursor. You’ll also see a little yellow caption showing the HTML element type and its class or id if they exist - great for figuring out any wordpress CSS style coding.
THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH ARDVARK:
- See (only) what what you want - Clean up unwanted banners and surrounding ads prior to printing a page.
- Learn How Great Design is Done by Reverse Engineering a Page - See how the page is created, block by block. This is by far my favorite feature - especially when I find a really cool piece of java/dhtml that I’ve never seen before and want to know how it’s coded. You can get an exact snap of what the code looks like.
- View the source code of one or more elements
Don’t take my word for it - go and run the demo. If you’re a developer/designer, I promise, it’ll be love at first click.
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