Stritar's chronolog

The Web is becoming just another television

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:06:44 GMT

A few months ago, I managed to bookmark my 20.000th link. I always imagined I would be able to say something really inspiring when it would finally happen, but after years of collecting and tagging content on Delicious like mad, proud of the amount of information I've consumed, I ended up feeling a bit empty. Categorization schemes, mashups, systematic repeating of essays and articles, it seems nothing could help me grow anymore. What else can you expect from a passive observer of a world, overwhelmed with unlimited knowledge?

In February 2011, when I saved my 10.000th link, I felt great, full of power. This means I've made around 10 bookmarks per day on average since then, which translates into a lot of read material. But when I reflect on that, I can't bypass the feeling I haven't actually learned that much. Most online content seems recycled and without added value. The feeds I'm subscribed to are all the same, and I don't know how to break out of them. The amount of information out there is simply astounding, making me read everything diagonally. I feel like everybody is just trying to control my attention.

Then I noticed the (social) Web is becoming like television. We are all just drones, consuming unimportant information we are being fed on a daily basis. Passive readers actively choosing sources that lead us to the facts - but how is that different from choosing which television channels to watch? Not only that, we've become advocates of this situation by passing on "interesting stuff" on our timelines, a part of the infinite loop of content creation, curation and consumption.

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Almost half a year ago, when I wrote these words, I became so depressed I've decided not to publish them. Luckily, I've had enough time to think about the problem and came up with a plan to turn myself around. I decided I need to do everything I can to become a proactive consumer of information (again). Forget social, I'm returning back to search. Web 1.0 FTW!

Together with more in-depth studies of specific topics that I do these days, I managed to achieve something even more important. I started reading books, I've read about five in the past few months. Fiction and scientific. You won't believe the effect this has had on my concentration and habits. I noticed I don't spend that much time on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit anymore, becoming the master of my information intake. By taking time to read / watch more complex work, everyday news finally started to show itself as trivial as it really is.

What we have here now, is just another television, which we passively consume for amusement, without much mental effort. But to evolve personally and professionally (what the Web was invented for!), we'll need to do more. Read books, listen to podcasts, study specific fields, concentrate on individual subjects. Because it's that focus that is crucial for one's evolution. Nobody wants generalists anymore. And believe me, 20.000 "random" articles don't make you that smart anyways.

Can social content curation without negative actions (dislikes, downvotes) even exist?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:04:56 GMT

There are people who create content. Millions of them, producing enormous amounts of data and information every day. On the opposite side, you have the consumers, people who absorb most of this content for various reasons. And there are those in-between, an emerging layer of people who filter this content and pass the one worth consuming forward to others. These people are called content curators, a breed that's becoming more and more important these days, perhaps even more important than the original creators themselves. After all, they're the ones categorizing and cleaning up the chaotic Web.

Together with the dawn of the interest graph and information overload, it's becoming obvious content curation is a major trend in social. Mathematical aggregators and algorithms can only do so much, but they are no match against the collective effort of millions of people. This fact helped services supporting social curation to emerge everywhere, in different shapes. Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Pinterest, even Facebook and Google search are offering you a filtered experience of the Web, an experience that is determined more or less by other people who share your interests. Social curation at its best.

I love these services, but as I've become a heavy user, I also started wondering, if they can work on the long run using only positive actions. Likes, upvotes, diggs, +1s, retweets, reblogs. All used to amplify, not suppress. But what if I want to prevent something from spreading, wouldn't that be curation too? Wouldn't that be a statement that would suggest the creator / curator to try harder? Another problem: how can you prevent an organized group of people (or people with multiple accounts) who are all trying to push something forward, from ruining the experience for others, without the ability to quiet them down?

I remember when Digg and Reddit were in the same league. They both used upvotes and downvotes and had similar traffic and the number of upvotes on the front page. A few years later, Digg was experimenting with becoming more Twitter-like, canceling the downvotes and introducing following. They failed miserably, but also because Digg front page was supposedly controlled by the power users. The ugly side-effect of content curation without proper goals and (crowdsourced) control. But things like that happen, and there's a good reason we probably won't see the Facebook Dislike button anytime soon.

Curation services, constructed around recommendation (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon), recognized the need for negative action and allow (anonymous) dislikes. On the other hand, those services, that are built more around social (Facebook, Twitter, Google+), can't afford to have them without causing a social problem, creating Enemies from Friends.

But there's always an option. An option that is sadly way more drastic than a dislike could ever be. Unfollow. Unfriend. Unsubscribe. Report. Remove yourself from something. An action that not only discontinues the information flow, but also discredits the creator / curator in a way. And it may as well be the ultimate dislike. Like it or unlike it, content curation without the negative action can't exist.

Please help me upgrade my Twitter bot

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:33:12 GMT

Half a year ago I decided to make something out of my Delicious bookmarks. The magazine-style display inspired by Flipboard wasn't enough, I wanted to publish these links somewhere outside my chronolog, somewhere on Twitter. So I made a bot. It's doing quite well, posting like mad, but it's really not where I want it to be. Until now, it made about 3.000 tweets (around 500 per month), but has only 67 followers. I know my taste in content is a bit obscure, but still, only 67 followers?

This calls for an upgrade. And since I won't change my interests and bookmarking habits, something else needs to be done. That's where I need your advice. Crowdsourcing the concept and stuff.

The brand

This is probably one of the greatest fails of the project. At first, I thought of it as an extension of my blog. Hence the account @stritar_net, the name Stritar's chronolog, together with the description it has. Should I rename it and try to make it a standalone "brand"? Should I openly say it's a bot (Stritar's bot or something)?

The selection

The bot currently posts ALL my bookmarks to Twitter (as mentioned, around 15 per day or 500 per month) without any selection. But it could be done. Since my bookmarks are originally tagged, it could leave out those with too few tags (since I use the same method of counting tags to determine the initial weight of content for the magazine). Or specialize in specific segments according to tags. There could even be more of them bots. What do you think?

The frequency

Currently, the bookmarks I make go into a queue. I hate those Twitter accounts that post 10 tweets in 5 minutes and go silent for a day. I wanted to make it more smooth. So the queue always knows how many items it holds and adapts the frequency of posting according to it (less bookmarks in queue mean less frequent tweets). But that produces the situation where most of them are already a few hours or days out of date when they are published. A higher publishing frequency would solve some of it, but it opens a great dilemma: what's the lesser evil, over-spamming or being out of date?

The order

The order of bookmarks posted on Twitter is determined by two factors. The number of tags and the date they were published. More tags equals more importance. Older bookmarks get published sooner, otherwise they would get even more out of date. Should I do it the other way around and post more recent links sooner? This would make some of them more interesting and up-to-date, but other worse. Breaking content or consolidated content?

So many decisions… In this case, the best way probably doesn't exists, but trade-offs can always be decided for the better. Please let me know what you think, your help would be more than appreciated. I could help back if I can.

Adding share buttons to your blog or website - a comprehensive guide

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:05:14 GMT

A lot has happened in the field of share buttons in the past year: Google +1 button for web pages was introduced, Facebook started to migrate the Share and Like buttons, TweetMeme button is slowly getting replaced by the offical Tweet button, etc. Enough to make maintenance of these buttons a pain in the ass. But since social activity is getting more and more important for SEO, this needs to be done, one way or another. To make it easier, I've put together a comprehensive list of different share widgets, together with some explanation, sample code and direct links to full documentation.

Keep it simple: Use basic links

Most social services support direct linking to share forms, which can be populated using a proper request. This means the URL of the target content (and sometimes title) must be passed in the query string (e.g. "?url=http://stritar.net"). In case you require a simple solution that doesn't require a lot of space, or you would like to style your share buttons on your own, this could be what you're looking for.

Facebook: http://facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<%=contentUrl%>
Twitter: http://twitter.com/?status=<%=contentTitle%> <%=contentUrl%>
Reddit: http://reddit.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>
Digg: http://digg.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>
Delicious: http://delicious.com/post?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>
StumbleUpon: http://stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>

Keep it simpler: Use AddThis

If you're not a demanding users and you're OK with a plain solution, the service AddThis may be just what you need. Set the parameters and you're good to go, and the number of supported services is really huge (and you also get the Print button).

Result:

Possible modifications: too many to mention

More info: http://www.addthis.com/

Facebook

So, you'll rather go for the real thing? Let's begin with Facebook. If you're trying to get the code for the Like button and it says you have to be a registered developer, don't worry, just logout and everything will be great. After that you will be offered with two sets of code, both of them work. I used the second one, which also support "Send to".

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="<%=contentUrl%>" send="false" layout="button_count" width="130" show_faces="false" action="like" font=""></fb:like>

Result:

Possible modifications: layout (standard, button_count, box_count), colorscheme (light, dark), action (like, recommend), show_faces, font, width, send (add send button), etc.

More info: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

Twitter

Since Twitter introduced the new Tweet button, the original TweetMeme button started to behave strangely (sometimes it doesn't count tweets correctly). On the other hand, the official Tweet button doesn't count the tweets for older posts, so all your viral posts from the past will show 0 tweets (and I was so proud one of my posts got more than 100 retweets!). Your choice, I've decided to go for the new one.

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="<%=contentUrl%>" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Result:

TweetMeme:

Possible modifications: data-count (vertical, horizontal, none), which modifies the layout. You can also set the default text and specify @via, etc.

More info: http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton

Reddit is a great community that can get you quite a bit of traffic if your topic is more on the geeky side.

Result:

Possible modifications: tens of different layouts

More info: http://www.reddit.com/buttons/

Digg

Since Digg's last upgrade, I haven't been seeing any traffic from it, but it's nice to dream about the old times. Not working properly on FF2.

Result:

Possible modifications: class (DiggWide, DiggMedium, DiggCompact, DiggIcon), which modifies the layout.

More info: http://about.digg.com/downloads/button/smart

Delicious

We'll probably be seing a new version of Delicious button soon, but for now, you can either put a simple link without the count to your blog or some hacking is required. You practically have to make your own button that retrieves the data from Delicious and puts it into correct HTML tags. For advanced users only.

<span id="deliciouscount" style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;"></span>
<a id="deliciouslink" style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="View details"></a>
<script type='text/javascript'>
function displayURL(data) {
var urlinfo = data[0];
if (urlinfo == null) {
document.getElementById('deliciouscount').innerHTML = "Bookmarks: 0";
return;
}
else {
document.getElementById('deliciouslink').innerHTML = "Bookmarks: " + urlinfo.total_posts;
document.getElementById('deliciouslink').href = 'http://delicious.com/url/' + urlinfo.hash;
}
}
</script>
<script src="http://badges.del.icio.us/feeds/json/url/data?url=<%=contentUrl%>&callback=displayURL" ></script>

Result:

Possible modifications: the world is not enough

More info: contact me

StumbleUpon

I'm not sure if I'm using StumbleUpon properly, but I haven't managed to get a single stumble since I started blogging, so I temporarily removed it from my blog (due to lack of space).

Result:

Possible modifications: many different layouts

More info: http://www.stumbleupon.com/badges/

Google +1

It's too soon to say if +1 button will be a game changer, or it's just too lame, too late, like other Google's social services. We'll see. Not working properly on FF2, FF3.5 and IE7.

Result:

Possible modifications: size (small, standard, medium, tall)

More info: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

LinkedIn (Update 28.11.2011)

LinkedIn may not be your dynamic social platform, but perhaps you may still find use for it.

Result:

Possible modifications: layour (vertical, horizontal, nocount)

More info: https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button

Special: Like Facebook page and follow on Twitter

If you have a Facebook page, all you need to do is point the Like button to the URL of the page, and people will automatically become "fans". Similarly, you can implement the new Twitter Follow button and hopefully get new followers.

<a href="http://twitter.com/gstritar" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" >Follow @gstritar</a>
<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Follow @gstritar

Other platforms

All of these buttons can be modified to some extent, and most of them will work without the specified URL. But you'll probably need to set it anyways so they will also work on your homepage with many posts.

The cases presented were made for asp.net, but they can be modified for other platforms such as WordPress or Blogger by replacing the <%=contentUrl%> with something like <?php the_permalink() ?> or data:post.url (sorry, no experience). But if you managed to get the Facebook Like button to work, you will surely be able to modify others too.

There you go, time to share.

Is Delicious aiming to become the next Twitter?

Thu, 26 May 2011 17:03:41 GMT

The bookmarking service Delicious has had an interesting life. It was one of the first social services available, later bought by Yahoo and almost canceled, then being sold to Avos about a month ago. Avos was founded by the same people who've created YouTube (Chad Hurley and Steve Chen), and these guys obviously know what they're doing. A few days after acquiring Delicious, Avos also bought a social media analytics startup Tap11, and here's what they had to say about it:

"Our vision is to create the world's best platform for users to save, share, and discover new content. With the acquisition of Tap11, we will be able to provide consumer and enterprise users with powerful tools to publish and analyze their links’ impact in real-time."

While some bloggers think Avos will start competing against Google and Salesforce.com by analyzing social data, I can imagine a different strategy may be plotting. Let me explain.

Delicious was always ahead of its time, but did not really make it to broad mainstream. It allows online bookmarks, which you can tag, bundle and keep in a library for later use. It knows asymmetric relationships, so you can check out bookmarks by the people you follow. The bookmarking engine is really powerful, but something was missing. Delicious' biggest problem is its social layer - too weak and of secondary importance. In the mean time, other services such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon took their place on the web and added communities and different types of recommendation to link sharing. And of course, there's Twitter, the current ruler of content and real-time.

Actually, Twitter is slowly becoming a content sharing platform rather than a microblogging platform (I guess microblogging should involve content creation, not sharing). But while your links may bring you audience, they are not categorized and useful to you. Still, most people use Twitter that way, and even authority-measuring services such as PeerIndex and Klout encourage you to share links, because that's what Twitter is all about and that's what will make you influential.

I'm not saying Twitter is not useful, it is very much useful. But imagine having a solid bookmarking platform, very useful for the person who uses it (save). Add a generic social layer of friends and followers, a few comments, perhaps something similar to what YouTube has (share). Now add a hard core mathematical layer which is able to calculate what you'll like based on what you already liked (discover). What you get is something that could be very special, something that could compete even with Twitter. And it could be happening right now in Avos' laboratories.

One guy said that the age social sharing is coming to an end. I think not, there's loads of information thirsty people surfing the web. What's really missing is a new innovative and powerful platform, something useful in many different ways, for keeping, dispatching and receiving new, personalized content. Delicious 2.0?

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A few thoughts on content categorization. No surprises there, less is more.

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:26:00 GMT

Since I've started collecting bookmarks using Delicious, I've put a lot of effort into their categorization, organizing them in such a way their browsing would be as simple as possible. The service supports two level categorization (tag – bundle) which helps to control massive amounts of links people have gathered. But it's the experimentation with different structures that gives real insight into content categorization, and because this topic was already mentioned and discussed a few times on this blog, it deserves a special mention. Let's begin.

Categories vs. Tags

Observing other blogs, I've noticed a lot of them use both Categories and Tags. While I can understand the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefit in having as many different entry points (landing pages) as possible, I don't see any other added value in using both. From the logical point of view, they do the same (categorize content), but on a different level. Here's where tag bundles come handy. With my bookmarks, I use tag bundles such as Wibe, Science, Brands, Work, etc., to combine different tags into groups according to their qualities. And aren't Categories and Tags just another form of the same thing, just two different tag bundles? Perhaps not, but that doesn't change the fact one is probably redundant.

I still see cases when Categories are used as single items (one post is filed under one category), while Tags are always used as multiple items (one post can have many tags). This corresponds with the technical 1:N and M:N database relationship, and even though the second is a bit more complex to create and maintain, it provides much more flexibility. Hierarchy vs. matrix.

Less is more, and intersections rock

Another thing I've noticed is that people use a lot of different tags. Too many to handle. I try to keep the number of tags as low as possible, working rather with intersections of tags (e.g. marketing + twitter) than looking for specific tags, used only a few times. I made a quick calculation on how this works, estimating a model with 10.000 contents and 200 tags, which corresponds with my situation on Delicious:

10.000 contents, 200 unique tags, average 5 tags per content
10.000 contents * 5 tags = 50.000 total tags
50.000 total tags / 200 unique tags = 250 occurrences of each tag (contents per tag)
5/200 probability of first tag * 4/199 probability of second tag = 1/1.990 (0,0005) probability of two specific tags on a single content
or (200! / (2!*(200-2)!) = 19.900 unique combinations of two tags; one bookmark with 5 tags allows 10 pairs of bookmarks, making a combination's probability 1/1.990
1/1.990 * 3/198 = 1/131.340 (0,0000076) probability of three specific tags on a content
Result: on average, 5 contents out of 10.000 will contain two desired tags and 0,07 three tags

The model is built on the assumption that all tags are spread evenly, which is far from reality, but you get the picture, the number of contents with multiple tags is pretty low. But if you lower the number of unique tags (e.g. 150 tags instead of 200 would raise the number of contents with a pair of tags from 5 to 8,9) or use the same tags more often (e.g. 6 instead of 5 tags per content would raise the number from 5 to 7,5), the results get even better. Basic mathematics is a powerful tool, and intersections with two, three or more tags are definitely the way to go.

Applications

I've made a few applications using the techniques mentioned. For general Categories of this blog, I used a combination both, having Categories behave like Tags, using a few of them as possible (but attaching many on a single post), displaying them as a tag cloud (bottom of the page). I used a similar approach on my iTunes library, abusing song Comments to act as Tags for advanced smart playlists. And some time ago, I developed a simple engine for related content, based on occurences of different Categories / Tags on my blog posts, acting both as an additional feature for readers, as a tool for internal hyperlinking, used for SEO.

These are a few cases which display the power of simplicity, using as little data as possible to create a lot of information. And while I know this is hard to do, I must continue to pursue this philosophy, may it be in software development or blogging (I ironically failed with this one). Things that are similar on an abstract, logical level, should be the same on the technical level. Try it, you'll be amazed by the results which will present themselves.

I've developed a magazine based on my Delicious bookmarks. And a Twitter bot.

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 07:34:38 GMT

Last week was marked a great social achievement of mine – I managed to bookmark my 10.000th bookmark on Delicious. A lot of people have 10.000 tweets, but not many own 10.000 bookmarks, fully tagged and classified. I've been collecting these since December 2006 (probably one od my first 2.0 addictions), and they are becoming one of my greatest possessions – knowledge is the ultimate collection. Hopefully Delicious won't get shut down or left behind, so I will be able to continue with this obsession.

I've made a few interesting mashups with them already; as my most frequent actions online, my bookmarks represent the core of the chronolog. But things are changing fast and the desire for presenting information is moving into a new dimension. In case you didn't notice, tablets are mainstream, and the media industry already hopes they are the solution they've been waiting for. The Daily, which was released a few weeks ago, is the first no-print, tablet only magazine available (for iPad, Android version is coming), and other applications, based on social curation, such as Flipboard (which is amazing and inspired all of this) and OnSwipe are revolutionizing the way we (create and) consume content.

I find this evolution of displaying information fascinating and a bit ironic - going from newspaper form to blog form and back - but I've decided to play along, developing a magazine based on my bookmarks. Using the Html Agility Pack library for asp.net I managed to extract an image and a few paragraphs from each URL I bookmarked, using them to form a magazine. The number of tags I put on each link determines the initial weight, which is additionally modified with your views and likes, allowing it to constantly adapt its shape. Those links which are stronger, are displayed higher, have a bigger picture and more text which makes them more visible.

While contemplating about the potential of different APIs and all the pages I bookmarked these years, it occurred to me I could also make a Twitter bot. All the bookmarks I save are now getting automatically shortened with bit.ly and posted to Twitter, with a bit of artificial intelligence. The speed of posting is determined by the number of items waiting in the queue, adjusting to the frequency of my actions. It still has a few problems, but they are only appropriate for a prototype, whose posting algorithm still needs to be technically and mathematically improved.

The life cycle of my links I like has become quite a ride, as you can see in the diagram below, similar as the evolution of the Web, transformed by social, mobile and the upcoming domination of the tablets. And while the major players are able to spend millions on the development of new and creative solutions, small players such as myself can only play along. Luckily, I like to play.

The path each one of my bookmarks makes in its lifetime.