overstated

Goodbye MIT, hello Yahoo!

This message has been a long time in the coming, but thanks to the ubiquity of the internet I’ve been outed. Sometime in late august I turned in a final draft of my thesis which afforded me this wonderful scrap of paper:

Since I won’t technically be graduating until next June, this receipt is the only proof that I have that I have ascended the ranks of PhDdom. And thanks to my new rank I have creative license to make up words like PhDdom.

As for the next step, I looked into a number of different options for employment. Among them I found a gem in the budding research laboratory that is Yahoo! Research Berkeley. After careful consideration, the opportunity to help define the direction of a new research lab along with the social and technical resources provided by the company was an offer I couldn’t refuse. After a couple of weeks as a research scientist here I am genuinely happy and ecstatic at the opportunities I’m facing. Yay me!

I also happened into a ridiculous apartment in Nob Hill which was completely unexpected. My last two apartment-hunting experiences have been so easy that I’m starting to think I might have some serious karmic backpay. I’ve tried to get in touch with my friends who are in the area, but if I haven’t yet, please send me an email.

I’m still getting situated in SF and acclimated at Yahoo!, but I’ll hopefully be more accessible soon. First on my agenda is writing up the results of my thesis in a public form. Look for these results (both the MIT Weblog Survey and otherwise) in the next two weeks. Thanks again to everyone that helped me through my Ph.D. and those who allowed me to find this new life.

Oh, and San Francisco is the new New York City.

comScore weblog report

I am obviously always on the lookout for weblog statistics, as it has become a core part of my thesis. Today a marketing company by the name of comScore has released a report detailing a number of different statements about the weblog community. I’d like to take a moment to remind people that this is a marketing survey, and as such should be carefully scrutinized before drawing any conclusions.

First, comScore’s methodology claims that they have 2 million active subjects, recruited through Random Digit Dial and an “online recruitment program,” for which they provide no details. They do however list the incentives that are provided to those individuals:

Server-based virus protection
Attractive sweepstakes prizes
Opportunity to impact and improve the Internet

Sans the third incentive which is the blanket “feel-good” incentive for all surveys, I challenge you to think of someone who is attracted to the first two. Let’s just say they’re not your average person or internet user. They also note:

All demographic segments of the online population are represented in the comScore Global Network, with large samples of participants in each segment. For example, our network includes hundreds of thousands of high-income Internet users – one of the most desirable and influential groups to measure, yet also one of the most difficult to recruit.

Without diving into what “high-income Internet users” are, having hundreds of thousands subjects from a assumedly small portion of the population leads me to believe that they’re not really interested in representivity, but rather, umm, marketing. Given that they do not justify their sample, nor provide margins of error, the initial sampling frame should be considered bunk.

Second, if their sampling of weblogs seems strange at first, it is. They were interested in how the aforementioned sample visited weblogs, so they decided to look at visits to 400 blog-related domains, which they culled from “top blog lists.” These domains include hosting services (e.g. “*.livejournal.com”) among the other top blogs. Keep in mind that this sample of 400 domains incorperates community sites (freerepublic.com, fark.com, slashdot.org, metafilter.com, etc.), professionally written sites (gawker.com, drudgereport.com, fleshbot.com, etc) and potentially spam (crazyass13.com throws my spam alarm).

I’m assuming, based on their distribution of unique visitors shown below, that all of these sites are included in one sample, with the top sites being blog hosts (although note the missing blogspot, which supposedly saw 19 million unique visitors), and the second group being community sites and professional blogs. As far as many people might be concerned, the “real blogs” start around #30, for which they provide no description. How this is a sample of weblogs at all, I can’t say. But building categories around this strange set of sites seems a little unsound.

What this report, in sum, seems to say to me is that some large number of people have visited either a professional weblog or some weblog on any number of the hosted services in the past year. This should not be surprising. I get a blog site response from Google just about once every five queries. Without any description of how many of these blog visitors saw only one blog in the entire period, I’d say an overwhelming majority could be from search engines (which they admit).

Given their sampling frame and blog selection methodology, it seems hard to extrapolate any meaningful statistics about true blog readership. Until they release the data, I would quote these numbers with extreme caution.

Being quiet and cool

happy messagers There are a number of studies that show younger people connecting more via instant messaging and SMS than other forms of communication. The Digital Chosunilbo reports that this transition has covered Korea under a veil of silence:

If in an age of near-ubiquitous communication people have become paradoxically quiet, it is because means of communication that replace the spoken word, like chat programs and text messengers, are cheap, convenient to use and accessible everywhere. There are people who say they could live comfortably without saying a word all day, and who send so many SMS and chat online so much that sometimes they find it awkward to talk.

There are also those who claim that the internet is making us withdraw socially from those around us, with communications that are less emotionally rich than face-to-face contact. This article provides one of the first theories of why messaging might be doing the same thing:

Yonsei University sociologist Kim Ho-gi says young-generation “cool” means a preference for writing over speech. “Speech is loaded with feeling, and because young people prefer communication styles that convey meaning simply and clearly while keeping their own emotions in check, they like communicating through text messages.”

Most of the research in this area suggests that those crazy kids are doing it because they can have multiple conversations simultaneously; if this article is correct, and indeed we message-to-be-cool, I’d have to agree that we’re headed in a socially scary direction. The emotional effects of messaging definitely warrent some more attention (via Smart Mobs).

Thesis: defended

IAMDEFENDER For those wondering whether or not I’ve died in my apartment in a vat of sweet-smelling liquid that masked the smell of my rotting body, the answer is NO! I’m alive and well, just in the wake of one of the more excruciatingly painful periods of work-induced anti-social behavior. And as a consolation, I never have to defend my thesis again.

Unlike most Ph.D. defenses, the Media Lab counterpart is quite public, held in an auditorium-sized room, and can occur before the thesis document is finished. Last Thursday at 9am I went through this process presenting my thesis titled The structural determinants of media contagion, and I came through fairly unscathed. It was fairly well attended once people woke up (around 9:30 I guess), and my committee decided I was ready to enter the cloistered halls of academia… after I finish writing the document.

It’s unfortunate, but true. I can’t put Dr. on my credit card just yet, nor can I pretend like I have any plans after that. In the mean time I’ll be writing in limbo until my April 5th deadline. I’ll hold off on the results until then, lest I contradict myself in two weeks time. But I just wanted to thank everyone that helped me get here, and there are so many. If you’re reading this, I’m sure you know that I mean you, because just about everyone who possibly could have lended a hand did in some way (even if it was just by taking the survey).

So thanks. I’ll be filling in the details in a few weeks, but you can take solace in the mean time that I’m taking showers again and interacting with people other than the three friends I’ve developed in my brain over the past two months.

Survey 2, Electric Boogaloo

some graph For some reason I expected my survey to spread much further and wider than it actually did. At the current moment, the individuals who were emailed about taking the survey (the random sample) outnumber webloggers at large 3 to 1. I really expected things to go in the other direction.

To rectify this situation, I thought I would provide a little incentive. For those individuals who complete the survey, you can see how you compare to the rest of the survey respondents. You can get a taste of the results here:

http://blogsurvey.media.mit.edu/results

Of course anyone who has already taken the survey can see their results as well, just log in with your login key. Don’t worry if you threw it away, you can request it again.

The survey is up for another week, until Monday June 27, so if you get a chance… I’d appreciate it.

Secret Value Meal

Ever since McDonald’s invented the Extra Value Mealâ„¢, I was a spirited supporter of the “two cheeseburger meal,” a.k.a. the “Number two.” Suffice to say, I was distraught when it mysteriously disappeared off their menu a little over a year ago. I think they probably lost a small percentage of their market, but those little cheeseburgers couldn’t be profitable anyway. I started eating Big Macs.

Last night I was determined to relive my childhood and eat the “Classic #2,” ((The new school number two is a Quarter Pounder with Cheeseâ„¢, hardly a replacement for a classic.)) so I order two cheeseburgers, medium fries, medium coke. The manager who was hovering about swooped in and asked, “Would you like the value meal?” Of course I answered yes, of course I want to save money. I scanned my value options, no two cheeseburgers with a number. I asked the manager what number it was. “Oh, there’s no number, just a button. They deleted the meal but kept the button.”

So all this time I’ve been settling for a Big Mac, my server has been staring at a button that says TWO CHEESEBURGER VALUE MEAL? What other kinds of discontinued products do they buttons for? Can I get a McDLT just by asking for it? How about some New Coke with that?

We’ve all heard of In-N-Out’s “secret menu,” which offers crazy items like “burger wrapped in lettuce,” or a suicide milk shake. But I never pegged McDonald’s as an easter egg kind of company. Or maybe they’re just trying to minimize their losses from us disenfranchised number 2 people. I’m ready for some answers.

Help me graduate

mit logo As many of you know, I’m in the process of finishing my Ph.D. which happens to be about (you guessed it), weblogs. A large part of the analysis is dependent on gathering information about how people use their weblogs and their general communication behavior. For the next two weeks I’ll be gathering this data in the form of a survey:

http://blogsurvey.media.mit.edu

If you are a weblog author and have 15 minutes to spare, I can’t say how much it will help me if you fill out the survey. The larger my sample is, the bigger the impact, and the easier it will be for me to railroad my committee into signing the document.

So please, spread the word and help me graduate.

Cognitive dissonance

someone's brain ripped open I haven’t been dumped in quite a while. Usually my relationships just fade away until a decision is made. Besides putting Gloria Gaynor and malt liquor into higher rotation, I’ve been doing a little bit of introspection about the topic.

Getting dumped is a classic case of cognitive dissonance, a theory first proposed by Leon Festinger in the 50s. He observed that people make decisions and actions to minimize the amount of contradictory beliefs they have in their head. When a person is forced to believe two things that don’t match up, they experience extreme emotional discomfort until they can fix their belief system.

So basically I have this thought in my head that’s tied to all kinds of memories and beliefs: she is my girlfriend. Then I introduce this new idea, she is not my girlfriend and the sum of these two obviously contradictory beliefs turns me into a raving lunatic. The more embedded the first belief is, the harder it is to accept the latter, and the longer you pour Old English on your corn flakes instead of milk. F. Scott Fitzgerald put it nicely:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Obviously I’m not operating at first-rate levels currently. But writing dry, bland weblog posts about something that is obviously extremely emotional certainly helps to bring it back.

Ableton Live and the death of the DJ

ableton Live electronic music used to be a rarity. Before the prevalence of laptops, USB audio devices and performance software, there were really only three choices for a live electronic musician: hardware, samplers, or some combination of the two.

The landscape today is entirely different. In fact, live performances are becoming the norm, even for dance music producers who used to DJ. Take a look at the DEMF/Fuse-in schedule for this year and compare it with the one from 2001. While a good number of people performed live in 2001, only one was billed as live, while in 2005 almost 1/5 of the acts are billed as such. Have audiences grown more receptive to live dance music? Are DJs becoming producers? Probably a little of both, but by and large the biggest change is Ableton Live.
Continue reading “Ableton Live and the death of the DJ”

DEMF 2005 Schedule

The Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF), a.k.a. electronicmusicfest.org, a.k.a. The Movement Festival has once again changed its name under new ownership: with Kevin Saunderson at the helm, it’s now called Fuse-IN. They’ve just released the lineup for this year, and if you can find it amidst all of the horrible flash interface and tiny fonts, it appears pretty good. I’ve reproduced it below for those who can’t stand the website, or want to be able to link to it.

Fuse-Indetroit / DEMF 2005 Schedule

I think this might be the best lineup they’ve ever put together, with highlights for me being the Hague electro crew (Orgue Electronique, Bangkok Impact, and Legowelt), Surgeon, Fabrice Lig, Aril Brikha, Green Velvet, Slum Village, Aux88, Stacey Pullen, Juan Atkins as Model 500, Alexander Robotnik and the Shitkatapult guys (Phon.O, Apparat, and Peter Grummich). If I can afford the time, I’ll try to make it out there.