Dec. 15 2011

Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.
Paul Graham, in 2008 via Trolls.

Jun. 01 2010

How Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Is Crowdsourcing Done Right

peer deep into the eyes of NPR, they know all.  actually, they might - they’re tasked with creating programming that engages people and works well on budgets much smaller than most in today’s media world.

there is also a small argument for crappy programming on major networks.  there is no skin in the game anymore.

Dec. 12 2009

wearethedigitalkids:

keeptheballrolling:

People are not demographics, and talking about them as if they are makes communicating with them seem much simpler and different than it is. Slapping on an algorithm online does not make your advertising work. It might incrementally increase the effectiveness of it, but still: The ability of a display advert to communicate with an inherently complex human being at any given time is impossible for an algorithm improve. It comes down to this:Demographics hides the real value and effect of the communication – and our measuring models continues to support this model for the worst for companies and customers

from 180360720

humans and numbers are completely different for a reason.  we use numbers to symbolize our universe but, to point, so much is lost when the reverse is done (numbers trying to symbolize humans).  great communication and understanding takes time, effort and dedication.  there isn’t much more to that.

“validation” and “value” start at the same place for a reason.  so much is lost and overlooked when we try to assign singular planes.  from may of this year:

we can cry from the rooftops about metrics, pageviews, uniques, visitors, share of voice, whatever. think about it though - as a number, that is the extent of our definition and, unfortunately, the extent of our perception.

Sep. 18 2009

“comprende star-burns?”

May. 08 2009

zachklein (via dpstyles):

It’s not the infographics on the page that interest me, rather it’s the trend of emphasizing a user’s popularity on the network. Lamentably, I think this metric will come to define the experience for the next generation of social networks. I fear that the internet’s utility will equate to constant awareness of one’s value, and the play of meaningless games to increase the sum. This in turn will render many networks impersonal and irrelevant. Like a candidate’s bid speech for high school class presidency, I fear my Tumblr dashboard will become padded with ‘popular stuff’ sure to garner votes rather than the intimate, vulnerable and quirky bits that I’ve enjoyed, and define Tumblr’s personality.

I’m disappointed by Tumblarity, and Ashton’s follower count for the same reasons. I liked the Internet better when it was nebulous, and now I’m depressed that it shaping up to be a social pyramid.

i really didn’t want to bring this discussion into my blog but i feel like it’s important. not because i’m on tumblr but because i care about the social evolution of community on the web. this morning, i mustered up enough to echo zach’s sentiment and call-out this new change:

i think i might call bull on this at first pass. not that i really care what a pretty arbitrary # means to an insular community but because it’s self-serving. i doubt i’ll ever care what my tumblrwhatever is because i use tumblr to run my blog.

the number crunching is taking into account supposed “influence” within a community as a way to leverage content. rightfully so, tumblr has the right to do this but i doubt this will help GROW community the right way. is it calculating WHOM the people are that make up these numbers? especially outside the world of tumblr? i don’t think so and that’s the biggest thing about the web. we can cry from the rooftops about metrics, pageviews, uniques, visitors, share of voice, whatever. think about it though - as a number, that is the extent of our definition and, unfortunately, the extent of our perception.

Originally posted as a comment by john ratcliffe-lee on Tumblr Staff using Disqus.

a good visual representation of this argument can be found here.

Feb. 19 2009

News as a hook for context

I’m not arguing that news organizations should create repositories of useless topics in the hope that one day some calamity will make those topics relevant. I’m saying journalists should ask themselves what’s most important for their communities to know, and cover it diligently. Not with the expectation that the coverage will draw an instant wave of traffic, but with the understanding that if it’s truly important, it will spark enough relevant news to draw a significant audience over time. And the more of that context we lay out, the more relevant we can be at any given moment. This is how we’ll begin to build relationships that matter with our communities.

preach it, brother.

Feb. 18 2009

Macroanonymous Is The New Microfamous

One of the most interesting things about 4chan is that nothing gets archived. Threads disappear within an hour. It’s a contradiction — 4chan is known for creating memes, yet it’s designed for them to die so quickly.

The lack of retention lends itself to having fresh content. The joke is that 4chan post is a repost of a repost of a repost. There was a guy who was downloading every image from /b/. He calculated that 80 percent of what’s posted has been posted before. So it’s survival of the fittest. Ideas that are carried over to the next day are worth repeating. The things that are genuinely funny get carried over.

The reason we’re seen as a meme generation factory is because of the unique qualities of the image board and the lack of retention. On other bulletin boards, threads are archived indefinitely. All the big threads have been around for months or years. But with 4chan, something has to be really good to keep getting posted.

Feb. 05 2009

Understanding the number of adjectives being used by a community, or associated with a topic, for example, is fundamental to understanding how opinion is expressed. Adjectives are an important sub-area that any opinion mining technology needs to master (along with all the other forms of opinion expression).

Understanding the growth of nouns in a community, and the appearance of new ones, is an important signal when tracking conversations and social trends at all levels.

A simple experiment to explore this space is to scan a collection of documents and graph the appearance of hitherto unseen terms. The graph below shows this for a sample of blog data. The x-axis shows the number of documents inspected, the y-axis shows the number of types of a certain part of speech (NN = nouns, JJ = adjectives, VB = verbs, RB = adverbs).
(via Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media: Lexical Growth in the Blogosphere)

Oct. 22 2008

Derek Powazek - Pixish Closing October 31

In community-generated media, trust is everything. When you ask for submissions, contributors go through an instant internal calculation: “Do I trust these people with my work?” When your site is brand new, you’ve got no record to rely on. And with more shady “user-generated content” schemes popping up every day, people have their defenses up (as well they should).

Our proposition was made even more complicated because we were trying to create a maketplace. When a magazine opens for submissions, you’re submitting to that magazine. But Pixish was one step removed - anyone could make an assignment. So even if you trusted Pixish, you didn’t necessarily trust the person who posted the assignment.

We should have done more to earn that trust, and help members trust each other.

important lessons.