The path dependence of life leads to some pretty suboptimal outcomes sometimes. I used to have a practice of writing every day. It was rewarding! I met some cool people and learned a few things along the way. Then along came social media. What a great idea! All of my friends were in one place,Continue reading “Is this thing on?”
Category Archives: Social Media
Youtube Epidemiology Interface
Youtube launched the most amazing statistics recently, hidden under their collapsed “Statistics & Data” header. Instead of a random list of awards, it now shows a timeline of the growth of the video’s popularity along with references to each source. Take for instance the video “Chap-hop History” by Mr. B the Gentleman Player: In additionContinue reading “Youtube Epidemiology Interface”
Cyborgs and offliners
On the train to work today I had the opportunity to read Aaron Swartz’s My Life Offline and danah boyd’s I want my cyborg back-to-back. The dichotomy between these two pieces, both from respected internet thinkers, is great. They aren’t necessarily contradictory, but they definitely show the range of emotions people have about being connected.
Brijit closes
The long-form article summarization service Brijit decided to close its doors today. It would appear that their business model (paying people to summarize long-form news articles) was not viable. I may be in the minority, but I used the tool as a clipping service, subscribing to feeds of articles about the industry (Facebook, Social Networks,Continue reading “Brijit closes”
theinfo.org
theinfo.org is a community “for people with large data sets,” founded by Aaron Swartz. It’s essentially a wiki and a few Google Groups centered around three topics: Get: acquiring data through scraping, crawling, or otherwise Process: conversions, queries, algorithms and the like View: visualization in any number of forms I’m excited by the definition ofContinue reading “theinfo.org”
Orkut to take over MySpace?
Alexa has recently been improving the global coverage of their traffic statistics. Their Global 500 now shows a number of sites that have almost zero attention in the US market (e.g. Baidu, QQ, and Yahoo Japan). Many on this list had a negligible presence on Alexa a year ago, most likely due to their marketingContinue reading “Orkut to take over MySpace?”
Flickr Social 101
A certain friend of mine (who shall go unnamed) is living in Kenya. I met him today for lunch and was super psyched to hear about his life, but a little vexed to discover that he has 5000 photos he’s sitting on, a Flickr pro account, and a substantial internet connection. I asked him whyContinue reading “Flickr Social 101”
LinkedIn to launch answers product
In a marketwatch story and online video interview, Keith Rabois of LinkedIn revealed that the business network is planning to launch a question/answer service similar to Yahoo! Answers, but directed at business intelligence. The service will take advantage of the identities LinkedIn users have taken time to construct, and utilize the existing social relationships asContinue reading “LinkedIn to launch answers product”
Explanatory algorithms
There is a trend in recommender systems that I think is extremely interesting: systems are starting to explain themselves. The first place I noticed this was at Amazon in their personal recommendations section, at the bottom of a given suggestion: In this case, Amazon recommended Moon Palace because I had rated another book by PaulContinue reading “Explanatory algorithms”
Amazon launches answers site
Today I received an invite to join a new community at Amazon called Askville: You’re Invited! As a valued Amazon customer, you’ve been specially picked to get an early look at a new website called Askville where you can ask any question on any topic and get real answers from real people. It’s new, andContinue reading “Amazon launches answers site”
overstated 