fabric of folly

Mark Kermode BBC video blog

2008-05-14T22:47:00.002Z

Every so often you get to be involved with a project which is not only professionally satisfying, it also resonates with your own personal obsessions. Kermode Uncut - the newly launched BBC video blog - has been one such project, marrying my passion for blogging with my fan-boy enthusiasm for the film criticism of Mark Kermode. Long-standing readers of this blog will know that I listen religiously to his weekly Radio 5 Live film review podcast with Simon Mayo (see My media consumption diet) and that his wife was my one of my tutors at University (see 8 random facts about me). Suffice to say, I didn't have to think for long before taking Nick Cohen (Multiplatform Executive for BBC Knowledge) up on his offer to help shepherd the project through its initial development phase.

So, why a video blog (or, if we must, vlog)? Well, anyone's who seen or heard Mark's review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End will understand how much of his reviewing is in the delivery and what a missed opportunity simply sitting him down at a keyboard would have been (excellent though his writing for Sight & Sound and The Observer is). It also felt like an opportunity to innovate with the BBC's blogging platform. With the possible exception of the Blue Peter blog (which Wikipedia credits as the BBC's first video blog), the BBC's blogs have been predominantly text-led to date, which was also starting to feel like a bit of a missed opportunity for an organisation which knows a thing or two about creating compelling video content.

Video blogging first started genrating buzz back in 2005 (aided and abetted by the launch of YouTube), but is still to go mainstream in the way that text blogging has, despite a few high-profile successes (e.g. Rocketboom, lonelygirl15). My hunch is that this may change in the coming 12 months as mobile video cameras continue to improve and sites like Seesmic, Qik and Kyte get users more comfortable with talking direct to camera (interestingly it was the Beeb that did much to pave the way for video blogging with Video Nation).

Certainly the typically more intimate, authored tone of a video blog is a good fit for Mark as this wonderful post on his past experience of the Cannes Film Festival demonstrates.

Props to: Nicholas Jones, Stevan Keane, Hedda Archbold, Nick Cohen, Claire Cook, Neil Bramah, Al Boley, Aaron Scullion and anyone else I've forgotten (as I invariably do).

Apple TV + iPhone = games console?

2008-05-11T05:31:00.001Z

As Wired's recent article on the fierce rivalry between leading gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo illustrates, no-one likes to be pipped to the (blog) post. So, it was with some frustration that I fired up my feed-reader this morning to discover that Daniel Langendorf from ReadWriteWeb spin-off last100 had posted an op-ed piece entitled 'What if Apple re-enters the console gaming market through the iPhone?' covering much of the same ground as a post that has been kicking around in my drafts folder for the past couple of months entitled 'Will Apple's next play be gaming?'.

However, whilst Langendorf joins the dots on Apple's likely play for mobile gaming with the iPhone / iPod Touch (check out the video of SEGA demoing Super Monkey Ball for iPhone if you've not already seen it) and speculates that they might follow it up with an "integrated game console for the living room - either a new product or the next iteration of the AppleTV", he doesn't connect the two, which in my mind is where the really interesting play is.

What the iPhone lacks as a domestic gaming platform is a big screen and what Apple TV lacks is an appropriate controller. Put the two together, connected via WiFi, and you've potentially got a Rolls Royce Wii (admittedly, with a price tag to match and you probably wouldn't want to throw your iPhone around the living room the way you do your Wiimote). That said, the potential of the iPhone as a controller for a secondary console is pretty interesting to my mind, combining the accelerometer of the Wiimote with the touch-screen of the Nintendo DS to theoretically provide a motion-sensing two-screen experience (e.g. tilt device to steer plane, stroke screen to target missile). Multiplayer would just be a matter of your mates whipping out their iPhones, selecting your WiFi network and joining the game, with information relating to the status of their on-screen avatar displayed privately on their iPhone.

So, do I think this is likely to happen? Er, probably not. Despite his well-earned reputation as an innovator, Steve Jobs is a 'softly softly catchee monkey' man at heart, as his initially cautious approach to introducing video to the iPod demonstrated. That said, he's due another bite at the gaming cherry after the Apple Pippin... In the unlikely event that it does come to pass, you heard it heard first ;-)

The word on the web: 7 keyword trending tools

2008-05-03T12:47:00.000Z

Unquestionably one of the most powerful ways in which products and services get promoted, word-of-mouth is not only notoriously difficult to generate; it's also very hard to measure. Pre-digital, finding out how 'talked about' your brand was meant arming yourself (or, more likely, a costly market research agency) with a pencil and clip-board and trying to find a representative sample to quiz, either by phone, mail or face-to-face. The arrival of email made contacting a large number of potential respondents much cheaper, quicker and easier but still relies on self-selecting individuals and only captures claimed, rather than actual, behaviours.

And then Google happened. For the first time, a small but significant slice of the world's interactions were being indexed and made searchable. The first tools to mine this data were somewhat limited in scope; Google Zeitgeist (launched in 2001) presented a small selection of top ten lists and charts of popular search queries, which tantalised the stats geeks amongst us with what could be discerned if open access to the database was granted. We had to wait five years, but in May 2006, Google did exactly that when it took the wraps off Google Trends, which enables users to chart trends for the search terms of their choosing.

Whilst knowing what keywords people are searching for is useful (and an important success measure in its own right), it doesn't necessarily directly correlate to how much your brand is being talked about. Fortunately, a new breed of products is emerging which focus on tracking keyword usage on blogs and in other community spaces. Icerocket's Trend Tool, Trendpedia, Technorati charts and Nielsen's BlogPulse Trend Search all attempt to trend word usage in the blogosphere, whilst the recently launched Facebook Lexicon collates keyword data from people's Facebook Walls and Twist charts keyword recurrence on Twitter.

The potential applications of these keyword trending tools are already myriad and my suspicion is that they are just the tip of the iceberg. Obvious next steps include mashing up the existing data sources to provide both aggregate and comparative trends across the various forums/services (e.g. Facebook users talk more about X than Y, whereas Twitterers talk more about Y then X) and beginning to contextualise the mentions to make more qualitative assessments (e.g. X % of keyword mentions were in a positive context, Y % were negative).

Below is a sample chart for each of the services I've mentioned, illustrating some of the interesting possibilities for this data in different market sectors.

Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends

BlogPulse Trend Search
http://www.blogpulse.com/trend

Technorati charts
http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/01/77.html

Icerocket Trend Tool
http://trend.icerocket.com

Trendpedia
http://www.trendpedia.com

Facebook Lexicon
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon

Twist
http://twist.flaptor.com

TV character blogs

2008-04-27T12:05:00.000Z

Interesting discussion at work the other day about fictional TV characters blogging which prompted me to do a quick trawl of the web for existing TV character blogs, the results of which are below, ordered by launch date. Whilst UK broadcasters are only just starting to dip their toe in this particular pool, a couple of the US networks have really embraced the concept. NBC was first out the gate in February 2005 with Nigel Blog but it's ABC which has been the most prolific to date, launching ten character blogs since October 2005.

So, the $64,000 question: do they work? Well, that depends on your success criteria. For the commercial TV networks, the bottom line is ad revenue and that means getting eyeballs to your blogs (or their RSS feeds) either to generate direct revenue from online ad sales or to increase engagement with the associated show and shore up its on-air audience. Hard numbers for these blogs aren't easy to come by as most of them are hosted on sub-directories of their parent network's site (of which more later). For those with their own domains, monthly uniques range from the low thousands to a peak of 25,000 for Robin's Daily Dose (see below chart from Compete).

As to whether these blogs pass muster on editorial merit, opinion seems very much divided. Steve Rubel describes character blogs as "a complete waste of time because a character is not and never will be human", although his comments seem mainly directed at marketeers, prompting a intelligent response from Rok Hrastnik on the marketingstudies.net blog, arguing that blogs are now reaching a more mainstream audience who don't care about "the rules" as defined by the early blogging adopters and just want to be entertained.

Assuming that your persuaded that there's either financial or brand building merit in creating a TV character blog, what are the other decisions you need to make before launching your blog? Here's a quick run down:

1.) Which character to choose

The most common approach is to pick a relatively minor character who is able to proffer observations on the key players without threatening the main thrust of the narrative (e.g. Joe the barman in Grey's Anatomy). Probably the most notable exception to this is Hiro from Heroes who has emerged from a large ensemble cast as one of the most popular characters in the series. Another thing to bear in mind is how plausible is it that this character would keep a blog? Whilst blogging is undoubtedly becoming a more mainstream pursuit, there are still some characters who feel a more logical fit for the medium.

2.) Who's going to write it

Pretty fundamental this one, the most obvious choice being the writers of the show's broadcast scripts who are used to writing dialogue for the chosen character. Potential pitfalls include a lack of enthusiasm/engagement from the writers who are used to writing teleplays for sizeable primetime audiences; agreeing a remuneration rate agreeable to all parties (lack of precedent) and how to handle comments (see point 4). Alternatives include a writer more comfortable with blogging but unconnected with the on-air writing process; the actor who plays the character on-screen (Judah Friendlander writes Frank Talk, Masi Oka contributes to Hiro's Blog and Rainn Wilson regularly scribes for Schrute-Space); or, if you really want to go out on a limb, a bunch of superfans (not sure anyone's gone down this route yet, although I think it would be fascinating to try).

3.) Frequency of posting

The frequency of posting differs wildly on the blogs surveyed below, ranging from the regular-as-clockwork weekly posters to the extremely sporadic. The issue here is managing users expectations and encouraging repeat visits (especially important when that most basic of blog features, the RSS feed, has been omitted). A related question is whether to continue blogging whilst the show is off air, increasing costs but potentially maintaining audience engagement between seasons. The recent WGA writers' strike forced many of the below blogs to cease updates for the duration, resulting in some creative explanations for the bloggers' absence: "Joe and I have been on a hunger strike for several weeks so I haven’t had the strength to blog" (from Grey's Anatomy's The Nurse's Station).

4.) Whether to enable comments

Often cited as one of the fundamental ingredients of what makes a blog a blog (along with reverse chronological entries, permalinks and subscribeable feeds), comments present an interesting dilemma for the authors of character blogs. On the one hand, you have comments which threaten to shatter the carefully constructed narrative universe by alluding to its artifice. On the other, you have comments which seek to engage directly with the character. Dealing with either is fraught with difficulties (do you pay the author to respond to comments in character?) which is why so many character blogs either ignore comments or switch them off altogether.

5.) Where to host the blog

There appear to be three main options when it comes to deciding where to host your TV character blog. One is as part of your TV network site which has the advantage of piggy-backing on existing infrastructure and Googlejuice but demands a greater suspension of disbelief amongst users as the artifice of the blog is made all the more apparent by the surrounding network livery. Another option is a dedicated domain name (e.g. http://www.jessandtess.com/) which can help to maintain the artifice that this is a genuine blog and feels pretty essential if you are going to show the URL as part of the on-screen drama (see point 6). That said, most of the below sites with a dedicated domain name have heavy network branding which arguably counters the main benefit of an off-portal URL. A third option is to use a third-party intermediary such as MySpace, which worked pretty well for FX with The Carver (http://www.myspace.com/thecarver) - 68,000 friends and counting.

6.) Whether to reference the blog in the on-screen drama

Not easy to do in a way that doesn't feel forced, weaving a TV character's blog into the on-screen narrative is another interesting call. Finding a way of rewarding users who are reading the blog with extra insights, without penalising those who aren't is a difficult balance, although somewhat easier in the wake of shows like Lost and Heroes which achieved this masterfully (see earlier post on Why Heroes raises the bar for multiplatform media).

Anyway, enough rambling, here's my round-up of existing TV character blogs. Let me know in the comments or on your own blog if you've come across any others or have a strong opinion about the merits (or otherwise) of TV character blogs.

Nigel Blog
http://blog.nbc.com/nigelblog/

Show: Crossing Jordon
Network: NBC
Active: February 2005 - March 2007
Comments: Yes

Schrute-Space
http://blog.nbc.com/DwightsBlog/

Show: The Office
Network: NBC
Active: September 2005 - present
Comments: Yes

Dave's Diatribe
http://www.didyouseethelights.com/

Show: Invasion
Network: ABC
Active: October 2005 - May 2006
Comments: Yes

Natalie's Blog
http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/webexclusives/blogs/teeger34.html

Show: Monk
Network: USA
Active: January 2006 - September 2007
Comments: No

Margene's Blog
http://boards.hbo.com/blog/Margenes-Blog/700000143

Show: Big Love
Network: HBO
Active: March 2006 - present
Comments: Yes

The Nurse's Station
http://www.seattlegracegossip.com/
og/Margenes-Blog/700000143

Show: Grey's Anatomy
Network: ABC
Active: April 2006 - present
Comments: Yes

From the Desk of Detective Sergeant David Gabriel
http://alt.tnt.tv/closer/blog/

Show: The Closer
Network: TNT
Active: June - July 2006
Comments: No

Hiro's Blog
http://blog.nbc.com/hiro_blog/

Show: Heroes
Network: NBC
Active: September 2006 - June 2007
Comments: Yes

The Emerald City Bar
http://www.emeraldcitybar.com/

Show: Grey's Anatomy
Network: ABC
Active: October 2006 - present
Comments: Yes

Barney's Blog
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/community/barney_blog/

Show: How I Met Your Mother
Network: CBS
Active: March 2007 - present
Comments: No

Frank Talk
http://blog.nbc.com/frank/

Show: 30 Rock
Network: NBC
Active: March 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

Creed Thoughts
http://blog.nbc.com/CreedThoughts/

Show: The Office
Network: NBC
Active: May 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

Jessica's Reflections
http://www.jessandtess.com/

Show: One Life To Live
Network: ABC
Active: July 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

Robin's Daily Dose
http://www.drrobinscorpio.com/

Show: General Hospital
Network: ABC
Active: July 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

Kendall's Hart to Heart
http://www.kendallhart.com/

Show: All My Children
Network: ABC
Active: July 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

McCallister & Me
http://blogs.abc.com/mccallisterandme/

Show: Brothers & Sisters
Network: ABC
Active: September - October 2007
Comments: No

"Hmmmm" by Randy
http://blog.nbc.com/randy/

Show: My Name Is Earl
Network: NBC
Active: September 2007 - present
Comments: Yes

Toxic Shark
http://www.toxicshark.co.uk/
Show: Casualty
Network: BBC
Active: October - November 2007
Comments: No

Cam's Blog
http://blogs.abc.com/camsblog/

Show: Big Shots
Network: ABC
Active: October 2007
Comments: Yes

Marmaland
http://blogs.abc.com/theclog/

Show: Carpoolers
Network: ABC
Active: October - November 2007
Comments: Yes

Confessions From The Front Desk
http://blogs.abc.com/dellsblog/

Show: Private Practice
Network: ABC
Active: October 2007 - November 2007
Comments: Yes

Beta invite giveaway

2008-04-20T10:48:00.008Z

Thought I'd share some beta invite love. If any tickle your fancy, contact me with your email address via either Gmail or Twitter (fabricoffolly on both). And if you're interested in returning the favour, I'm still after a FFFFOUND! invite :)

UPDATE: FFFFOUND! invite now received (thanks Matt!) Will try and keep the below updated as the number of invites ticks down.

Fire Eagle
http://fireeagle.yahoo.net
Geo-location sharing service
Remaining invites: 0

Grooveshark
http://www.grooveshark.com
Music-sharing community
Remaining invites: 4

Iminta
http://www.iminta.com
Social aggregator / lifestreaming service
Remaining invites: 9

Livestation
http://www.livestation.com
Live TV & radio desktop player (PC only)
Remaining invites: 7

PMOG
http://pmog.com
Browser-based multi-player online game
Remaining invites: 2

Socialthing!
http://socialthing.com
Social aggregator / lifestreaming service
Remaining invites: 41

Encyclopedia Britannica offered free to "web publishers"

2008-04-20T09:54:00.001Z

Neat idea from the Encyclopedia Britannica who must have finally got bored of only ever being cited as an example of how established business models have been undermined by the internet and the cost of failing to respond to that change quickly enough (see below chart for headline traffic comparison with Wikipedia).

The scheme is called Britannica WebShare and is described as "A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way to give your readers background of the topics you write about with links to complete Britannica articles".

I signed up (here) yesterday afternoon giving this blog's URL as my "Web Content Site" and by 10pm had received an email confirming I had been granted access. It's not 100% clear what their definition of a web publisher constitutes although the registration form has a disclaimer at the bottom stating "This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify" and the FAQ advises that "If you go online and start a blog with one post just to get a free subscription to Britannica, we may say no".

In addition to unlimited personal access to the Encyclopedia, the WebShare initiative also encourages publishers to share the love by linking to individual articles which readers can access without being able to then move laterally through the site. So I can point you at this recently added article about Beck, which you can access, but to browse further you'd need to register for your own account.

They've also hopped on the widget bandwagon, offering embeddable 'clusters' of thematically grouped articles - below is their US Presidents widget (full list of available widgets here).

Whilst it may ultimately turn out to be too little too late for the EB, it's encouraging to see an 240 year old publishing company implement a fairly major rethink of its strategy and open up its content to the very people whose Wikipedia contributions have contributed to its decline.

My only criticism would be how poorly (if at all) the pages render in Firefox and Opera on a Mac. Sort it out guys.

Social media as popularity contest

2008-04-19T12:47:00.001Z

The results of Mike Butcher's 'who will be BBC FM&T king' poll on TechCrunch UK got me thinking about the extent to which popularity dominates behaviours around social media online, for, as Jemima Kiss intimates on the Guardian's digital content blog, the final list is more of a reflection of the relative online profile/popularity of people publicly associated with BBC Future Media, than an assessment of their suitability for the job in question. Which is fine and probably what you'd expect from a poll on a tech blog such as TechCrunch.

What's interesting to me though is how this overt popularity contest is an example of a much wider trend within online social media. Let's start with Facebook, where the number of 'friends' you have is not without consequence. As Robert Scoble pointed out at the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, this is partially due to the fact that the quality of your experience on social media sites is, up to a point, determined by how many 'friends' you have (i.e. no friends and it's not a whole lot of fun).

However, at least for some users, the number of 'friends' they have has acquired a far greater importance as a signifier of their status or popularity. When Facebook was first taking off in the UK, I remember seeing a number of status updates (perhaps a telling phrase?) trumpeting the passing of a major friend milestone or bemoaning their inadequate friend count (although researchers were predictably swift to ascertain that "while people perceive someone who has a high number of friends as popular, attractive and self-confident, people who accumulate 'too many' friends (about 800 or more) are seen as insecure" (see Guardian article).

Of course, it's not just about raw numbers. The roll out of Facebook's developer platform enabled third-party developers to tap into the long-tail of people's popularity neuroses. It's no accident that amongst the most popular Facebook apps are Top Friends, Compare Me, Circle of Friends, Friends for Sale, Hotness and Best Friends. Compare Me is a particularly fine example, sending you regular email updates to inform you that you've just jumped two places in the sexiness rankings but dropped one against funniness or appending a list of your four most kissable friends...

Whilst the drive for popularity might be most obviously manifest in thoroughbred social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, it is also present, albeit less conspicuously, in sites where social objects (e.g. videos, photos, bookmarks) are nominally the focus. Similarly, the prominence given to 'number of followers' (interesting terminology again) in Twitter is instructive, as is the existence of services such as TwitDir and Andrew Baron's recent (abortive) attempt to auction his Twitter account (with followers, naturally).

Whilst on one level, social media's obsession with popularity is just a mirroring of the basic human dynamics at work in any playground or office, there's something about the measurability of online popularity which is particularly seductive. Whilst the social pecking order of a real-world group may be well understood, it is rarely made explicit, unlike online communities where public rankings are a stock in trade. The same harsh assessments of people's desirability have been silently taking place in bars and nightclubs for years but without the results then being posted up on the wall, as they are with online stalwart Hot or Not and its legion of imitators.

The trend certainly looks set to continue, not only because it taps into a very basic but powerful element of human psychology (ego!) but also because it adds a competitive and potentially addictive element to sites which consequently increases their stickiness and grows advertising revenue. Everyone's a winner! (except, that is, for the losers...) (Ok, I'm just bitter I didn't appear on the TechCrunch list ;-)

Photo: Shahid Sarker. Used under licence

The mixtape reborn

2008-04-10T09:41:00.000Z

A couple of weeks back, whilst visiting my parents, I ventured into the loft above their extension (basically a repository for all the crap I didn't want to bring with me to London after university but wasn't yet ready to throw out). In amongst the old computers, Whizzer and Chips annuals and back issues of PC Format I found a shoebox of cassette tapes, a good proportion of which were mixtapes, some from friends, some from ex-girlfriends, some of my own composition. Whilst I now lack the means to play them (having bid farewell to my hi-fi separates in a concession to the protocols of cohabitation), I couldn't quite bring myself to part with them just yet because of the instrumental role (no pun intended) that they played not only in my musical education but also in my emotional development during those formative years.

So, what's the modern analogue - sorry, equivalent - of the C60 mixtape? Well, if a couple of new startups get their way then it'll be the, er, mixtape...

Muxtape
http://muxtape.com

Only two weeks old, Muxtape is the brainchild of New York-based web designer Justin Ouellette and has been generating a fair amount of heat on Twitter and in the wider blogosphere. It's Flickr-esque both in its pared down design and ease-of-use, although it lacks some fairly basic functionality such as embedding and you can only upload a single 12-track mix against each username. Unfortunately it's real USP (allowing you to upload MP3s from your own collection) is also likely to prove its Achilles' heel once the copyright lawyers catch up with it. Here's my mix of 10 awesome tracks you probably don't own but should: http://fabricoffolly.muxtape.com - get it while it's ~~hot~~ there.

Mixwit
http://www.mixwit.com

Just one day older than Muxtape, Mixwit is hoping to sidestep the legal issues by pulling in its music from the wider web via SeeqPod and SkreemR (you can choose which to search via a dropdown). Whilst the catalogue of these search engines is potentially limitless, tracking down the exact version you're after can be a time-consuming and frustrating business and listed tracks are frequently 'no longer available' when you come to add them to your mix. On the plus side, your mixes (represented as a cassette tape, 'natch) can be visually styled and easily embedded. If Muxtape appeals to the geek elite then this one's more for the kids.

Other options include Mixaloo (which I reviewed in my latest round-up of new (to me) music apps) and the Fuzz Mixtape Creator (a.k.a. the Deck-O-Rator - no, really). Alternatively, if you're too lazy to pick the tracks yourself, why not make a request to the 'robots' powering the Tiny Mix Tapes Automatic Mix Tapes Generator or enlist the help of your friends using the Project Opus Mixx Maker Facebook app.

5 lessons I've learnt from blog stats

2008-04-08T22:16:00.001Z

Prompted by recent stats-related posts from Nick, James, Robin and Jemima and the imminent arrival of my 70,000th unique visitor (it could be you :), I thought I'd publish this blog's traffic stats for the first time and share five things I've learnt from them since I signed up for the rather marvelous StatCounter back in April 2006.

1.) In space, no one can hear you blog (it takes time to grow an audience)

As the above chart illustrates, my first year of blogging was essentially just me shouting down a well. Admittedly I wasn't posting very often and when I did, it was in a rather scattershot fashion, without any real unifying theme beyond the strange meanderings of my mind. Well the latter hasn't really changed any, but I did start posting more often and towards the end of 2006 traffic started rising and has continued trending in that direction ever since (recent weirdness excepted - see points 4 and 5). The moral of the tale: keep writing (regularly) about what you find interesting and eventually some like-minded souls will find your blog.

2.) Small can be beautiful (think quality not quantity)

Whilst there is unquestionably the potential for addictive/compulsive behaviour around anything which can be charted, be wary of actively chasing extra visitors in order to keep the graph heading upwards. Small can most definitely be beautiful when it comes to blog readerships (or any other online community for that matter) and a huge influx of new visitors can easily cause you to question if not the wisdom, then certainly the desirability, of crowds. Last summer's round-up of DIY live video streaming services earned me not only lots of new visitors but also what remains my all-time favourite comment on this blog: "You are on serious crack. You run a Mickey Mouse blog and your biased rating system proves it." (Thanks for the feedback, do come again...)

3.) A subscriber in the hand is worth two in the bush (check your FeedBurner stats)

Just like the print magazine business, a key measure of success for any blog is its subscriber base. Whilst there will be a proportion of regular readers who like to keep it old school and check back for new posts by visiting the blog, the vast majority will subscribe to the RSS feed instead. As a result, your feed stats can be more meaningful than your site stats in tracking the growth (or otherwise) in your regular readership. The below chart shows how subscribers to this blog's FeedBurner feed have recently overtaken daily unique visitors to the site (although this does coincide with a change in domain name which has reduced traffic to the site - see point 4, below).

4.) Changing domains can lose you traffic (but is worth it in the end. probably)

Despite reassurances from Google that all traffic to my old blogspot address would be seamlessly forwarded onto my .com domain, the stats tell a different story, with unique visitors dropping from 1,500 to 680 in the week following the move. Unfortunately the longer-term impact of the move is being masked by a comparison piece I wrote on lifestreaming services which caused traffic to spike to a record 2,000 visitors a couple of weeks later.

5.) Being Dugg isn't all that (beware the locust effect)

I take a perverse pleasure in reporting that my most dugg post to date (the aforementioned post on lifestreaming services) received a measly 35 diggs. Whilst Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, et al. can be a boon for introducing new readers to your blog, they can also herald something of a false dawn, more akin to a swarm of locusts, who arrive on masse, eat all your bandwidth and then piss off, never to be seen again.

Right, that's me done. Anyone else care to share their learnings from blog stats...?

Related fabric of folly posts:
Towards a more meaningful conception of online performance

22books

2008-03-30T16:15:00.002Z

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my request for reading recommendations - I've just made my 185th Amazon purchase (!) and now have far more than a week's worth of holiday reading winging it's way to me from their Marston Gate warehouse.

A couple of comments referenced the pile of books I'd used to illustrate the post - whilst it does contain a few of my favourites, it was more of a reflection of the volumes that were nearest to hand (I have an annoying habit of evangelically forcing my most cherished books onto my friends who are then forced to use them as door stops / paperweights and smile politely whenever I inquire as to how they are enjoying them).

A while back I came across 22books - a modest little site "dedicated to the creating, sharing, and viewing of book lists". Created by James Avery, initially to detail all 22 of the late Kurt Vonnegut's published books (hence the name), the site is a little light on functionality at present, offering commenting and embedding and not a whole lot else. That said, I'm increasingly favouring single-function sites (e.g. Flickr for photos, Twitter for status updates) over the everything-but-the-kitchen sink, all-your-base-are-belong-to-us behemoth that is Facebook.

Anyway, rather than construct my list of favourite novels using the more obvious choice of Amazon's Listmania, I thought I'd give 22books a whirl. Unfortunately I can't get their embed code to work with Blogger so I've cut-and-pasted the list below (don't worry James - I've left your Amazon affiliate code in tact :) You can view the list in situ here.

22 of my favourite novels:

1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

2. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

3. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

4. Air & Fire by Rupert Thomson

5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

6. The Insult by Rupert Thomson

7. Atonement by Ian McEwan

8. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

9. The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson

10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

11. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

13. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

14. Number9Dream by David Mitchell

15. Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

16. Life of Pi by Yann Martel

17. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

18. Saturday by Ian McEwan

19. Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

20. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

21. The Five Gates of Hell by Rupert Thomson

22. Black Out by John Lawton

Bow Street Runner & We Tell Stories

2008-03-24T20:33:00.001Z

I've been giving quite a bit a thought to games and the whole concept of play since returning from this year's SXSW Interactive, where Jane McGonigal delivered a barnstorming keynote on gaming and happiness (lovely slides, sadly mangled by SlideShare) and World Without Oil picked up the Activism gong in the 11th Annual Web Awards.

Whilst a more considered post on gaming and play gestates, below are a couple of established media companies making innovative use of game mechanics which have caught my attention over the past few weeks.

Bow Street Runner
http://www.channel4.com/bowstreetrunner

Produced by Brighton-based Littleloud, Bow Street Runner is an episodic Flash-based point-and-click graphic adventure commissioned by Channel 4 to accompany the five part TV series City of Vice. Set in Eighteenth-century London, the game seamlessly weaves together video capture with lovingly rendered backdrops and game objects to create a surprisingly immersive in-browser experience. Whilst a little too linear in structure (your progress through locations is predetermined and one-way), the concept of accruing esteem works well, as does the evidence gathering, which requires manual dexterity with the mouse/trackpad (most memorably to stitch up a stabbing victim). A new episode is unlocked every Thursday and a password is provided on completion of each episode so you don't need to replay them when returning to the game.

We Tell Stories
http://wetellstories.co.uk

A Six to Start production for Penguin UK, We Tell Stories is a six week project in which half a dozen established authors fashion narratives which aim to take advantage of the unique properties of the internet. Week 1 is 'The 21 Steps' by Charles Cumming, a homage to The 39 Steps which overlays a twenty one chapter short story onto embedded Google Maps, visually plotting the narrator's progress and unfolding the story one data-point at a time (including optional images). The next story (from one of my favourite authors, Toby Litt) is due tomorrow with the remaining four narratives appearing over the following four weeks. Of course, this being the brothers Hon, there's also a secret seventh story "somewhere on the internet" with the incentive of £13k worth of literary booty to be won.

Game on!

Reading recommendations - the people vs. Amazon

2008-03-23T18:21:00.000Z

I'm off on holiday in a couple of weeks (praise the Lord) and have started turning my attention to my holiday reading list. Whilst it's true that I have a whole bookcase of unread tomes (silently reprimanding me for how little time I manage to carve out for dead-tree format reading these days), I'm always on the look out for new recommendations, especially in the run up to an away break.

Whilst you might expect any self-respecting geek to turn to Amazon for literary pointers, I have to confess to being somewhat underwhelmed by their feted recommendations functionality. Sure, it's useful for directing you to other books by authors you've previously purchased or books in a similar genre, but it fails to deliver much in the way of genuine serendipity (I don't need a computer to tell me that if I liked Atomised by Michel Houellebecq then I might also like Platform by Michel Houellebecq).

Which is where you, dear reader, come in. Following on from the successful vote to determine which mobile phone handset I should upgrade to, I'm once again asking for your help - this time in broadening my literary horizons with answers to the following three questions:

1.) What's the best fiction book you've read in the last 12 months?
2.) What's the best non-fiction book you've read in the last 12 months?
2.) What's your favourite book of all time (fiction or non-fiction)?

Feel free to respond to some of all of the above questions either via the comments section below or on your own blog. I look forward to reading your recommendations.

Related fabric of folly posts:
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson
The Tortilla Curtain

It started with a tweet - my Twitter epiphany

2008-03-15T22:06:00.001Z

It's not something one readily admits to in the company of the geek elite, but prior to last week's South by Southwest I was something of a closet Twitter refusenik. Sure, I'd signed up along with everyone else back in 2006 and sent a few tentative tweets but I couldn't quite work out what all the fuss was about. Turning on mobile alerts didn't help and if anything, just cemented my view that it was an intrusive waste of time ('beep beep - X is having a sandwich' 'beep beep - Y is clipping their toenails'). Meh.

That all changed last week when Twitter played a major role in shaping my experience of SXSW. It started in Chicago airport when, waiting for a connecting flight, I exchanged Twitter handles with a bunch of fellow geeks, also on their way to Austin. Suddenly I was part of a mini community with a shared purpose and the tweets coming through felt super relevant and interesting ('X is talking in Room 8 right now and she's awesome' 'I'm grabbing some lunch at the Halcyon - anyone want to join me?').

Where previously I thought of Twitter as being like SMS or IM but more spammy, I started to see the benefits of its one-to-many format. It was possible to throw a thought out there, with people able to respond or not, without obligation - something which definitely isn't true of SMS or IM, where an unreplied to message usually goes down like a cup of cold sick. The beauty of apps such as Twitterific is that your friends' twittering becomes an almost ambient side-channel with you free to dip in a out as your time and interest allows.

Another interesting use of Twitter at SXSW was as a back-channel during the sessions, enabling attendees both within and without of a session to have a near real-time conversation about it (with well documented consequences in the case of the Zuckerberg keynote). Of course, the smarter session chairs pulled the back-channel up on screen so they could gauge the mood of the audience and respond accordingly.

Of course, Twitter isn't all joyous. Like any medium, it can be used for both good and not-so-good (someone should tell Doris Lessing, who somehow managed to get a Nobel prize without seemingly giving any serious thought to the medium/message blame equation). At the moment, however, the good far outweighs the bad and Twitter is shaping up to be a fascinating and complimentary new medium.

Tweet me @fabricoffolly.

SXSWi 2008 in review

2008-03-12T05:48:00.001Z

Having opted not to blog on any individual sessions from this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival (thanks to Dan, Roo, Jo and countless others for doing a far better job than I would have done), I thought I'd afford myself a brief summary post, picking out some personal high (and low) lights.

Getting the negative out of the way first, my overall lowlight would have to be fighting off a cold for most of the five days I've been out here, forcing me home to bed early and depriving me of the full Austin after-hours experience.

My overall highlight would have to be the people I've met, not only familiar faces (great to catch up with Tom, Matt, Paul, Matt, Ben, Yasser, Chris and Chris) but also putting faces to familiar names (Jemima, Roo, Dan, Gavin) and getting to know some brand new names and faces (Jeff from Apple, Deirdre from Chinwag, Rachel from b5media, Jeremy from Penguin, Heitor from the University of Porto and Abi from HeatEatReview, to name but six).

In terms of conference highlights, my votes would be as follows:

Best keynote: Jane McGonigal
Best interview: Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson
Best panel session: Gaming and User's Geolocation in Web 2.0
Best party: People Powered Party

A full list of the sessions and parties I attended can be viewed on the awesome sched.org.

And finally, if I had to sum up the whole festival in just nine words they would be: Wi-Fi, Queue, MacBook, Shiner Bock, Twitter, Walking, Ribs, Lacygate.

See you next year!

Review of social aggregators / lifestreaming services

2008-03-11T16:28:00.001Z

The difficulty in keeping track of one's activity on an increasing number of social media sites (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) has, somewhat ironically, spawned a whole new breed of site - the social aggregator (a.k.a. lifestreaming services). Below is a review of 15 products currently in this space. I've tried to keep the focus on aggregators, rather than services which have more of an emphasis on inputting new content (e.g. microblogging platforms such as Tumblr or Jaiku) although the lines are clearly blurred.

Key to success in this area is minimising the work the user has to do to setup their aggregation. Scanning services against specified usernames (rather than adding each service individually) or automatically pulling in friend lists from the services added are both massive timesavers which lower the chances that you'll decide it's not worth the hassle and give up.

Another important factor in determining which aggregator is the best fit for you, beyond which services they supports (see comparison table at the foot of this post), is whether you want to keep track of your own activity, your friends' activity or a combination of the two. The below services all handle this in slightly different ways, both technically and presentationally.

1.) Profilactic
http://www.profilactic.com

Launched way back in 2006, Profilactic is the daddy of social aggregators, not least because it's notched up support for an astonishing 144 services. It also has a decent UI and some nice bits of functionality, including search and filtering of your 'mashup' (poor choice of label imo - too many other connotations). I also like the fact that it pulls in decent sized Flickr images rather than thumbnails, although I guess that's just personal preference and others may feel they take up too much space. Perhaps Profilactic's most compelling feature (now shared by newcomer socialthing!) is that it automatically draws on your friend lists from the services you add rather than forcing you to add them manually, which removes a massive barrier to take up.

Pros: number of services supported, search & filtering, large Flickr photos, automatically pulls in friends from other services
Cons: Lacks the design elegance of socialthing!

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

2.) socialthing!
https://socialthing.com

Still in private beta, socialthing! is a masterclass in the less-is-more school of interface design. The main page is filled with your 'Lifestream' with everything else tucked away behind a 'Settings' tab. Adding feeds is super easy and you can choose on a per-service basis who to share updates with (everyone, only friends or only friends on that particular service). There is also a checkbox to determine whether your friends' updates appear in your Lifestream or not (although they seem to appear regardless of whether I have this box checked, which I'm guessing is just a beta bug). The major drawback of socialthing! at this stage is the small number of services currently being supported, although that's likely to change as the beta progresses. I have 10 socialthing! beta invites to give away - leave a comment if you'd like one.

Pros: Sweet interface, iPhone-optimised version, draws on your friend lists from the services you add
Cons: Limited number of services supported, bug whereby friends' updates always appear

Features:
Ease of use:
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3.) FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com

Founded by a handful of ex-Google employees, FriendFeed is as spare and functional as you'd expect. It accepts feeds from 28 of the most popular social media sites and boasts a simple user interface with three main tabs (friends, me, everyone). Throw in a a decent Facebook app (which saves time by keeping your Mini Feed updated) and some nice extras (stats, recommended friends and, best of all, add an 'imaginary friend' to keep track on feeds from friends who don't yet have a FriendFeed account) and you're looking at a decent alternative to Profilactic.

Pros: good range of services supported, clean interface, decent Facebook app
Cons: feeds have to be added individually

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
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4.) iminta
http://www.iminta.com

iminta (strap line: what are you inta?) matches FriendFeed for number of supported services but doesn't quite match its simplicity of interface. It does however, offer some neat bits of additional functionality including the option to limit visibility of different feeds to different friends (via groups) and the ability to filter the stream by type (e.g. stories, events, videos) and/or by site.

Pros: groups, filter stream by site/type
Cons: busy interface

Features:
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5.) Plaxo Pulse
http://pulse.plaxo.com

After an inauspicious start, Plaxo seems to be back on the straight and narrow and rapidly gainly in popularity. It's Pulse component can accept feeds from an impressive 34 sites (second only to Profilactic) and you can choose whether to share updates with friends, family, business contacts or a custom group on a per-service basis. There's also a nice option to sync your Plaxo Pulse status with Twitter and a drop-down enabling you to filter the stream by type. The interface is more cluttered than socialthing! or FriendFeed, although it is trying to support a fully-featured social network.

Pros: Twitter-sync option, filter by type
Cons: Slightly cluttered interface

Features:
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Design/UX:
Overall:

6.) Readr
http://readr.com

Readr falls very much in the middle of the spectrum of social aggregators. Aesthetically, it borrows very heavily from Twitter, right down to the customisable wallpaper backgrounds, which is no a bad thing - the Twitter design works very well. Functionality-wise, it covers all the basics, including the ability to make individual feeds public or friends-only. However, it fails to make it into the top tier by not automatically pulling in friend lists from added services.

Pros: live update of your lifestream as you add services, range of embeddable widgets
Cons: Friends have to be added manually

Features:
Ease of use:
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7.) Second Brain
http://secondbrain.com

Second Brain provides a clear and simple layout with some nice interface touches including speech bubbles for tweets and preview thumbnails for URLs bookmarked using del.icio.us. Unfortunately the finessed design isn't matched by the usability - adding feeds is a laborious process, involving lots of authentication and watching a spinning progress indicator, which other services seem to avoid.

Pros: Clean interface, search functionality, tags
Cons: Adding feeds is laborious, erratic feed updates

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

8.) Soup.io
http://www.soup.io

Soup.io is visually very appealing, offering customisable 'skins' and pulling in large Flickr photos, Digg icons and full blog posts. It doesn't offer much in the way of additional functionality though and lacks much integration with your friends activity (beyond a link on the homepage).

Pros: Large Flickr photos and full blog posts
Cons: Limited functionality

Features:
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Design/UX:
Overall:

9.) Onaswarm
http://www.onaswarm.com

Visually very clean and simple, Onaswarm is another site whose functionality doesn't live up to the polish of its visual design. 'Calendar' sounds intriguing but turns out to be a blank page, whilst clicking on 'with friends' doesn't appear to present anything different to the individual view. It does however offer one very cool piece of functionality which is the ability to scan available services for specified usernames. I was thus able to turn up fabricoffolly accounts on multiple services by just typing in one word.

Pros: Good looking, scan services for username feature
Cons: Broken or opaque functionality

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

10.) where is me?
http://www.whereisme.com

where is me? supports a relatively modest 13 sites but manages to cover off most of the big hitters. Adding feeds is a relatively straightforward process, although both Flickr & Twitter require you to look up and enter your ID number, which is a bit of a pain. Another minor frustration is that updates can only be ordered by service type not chronologically, so you don't get a true picture of your updates over time. One cool feature, which the other services would do well to emulate, is the ability to specify a tag so as to only show posts which match that tag.

Pros: per-service tag-filtering
Cons: can't order stream chronologically

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

11.) liveZuu
http://www.livezuu.com

Matching FriendFeed and iminta for number of available services (28), liveZuu is let down by an esoteric interface which squeezes most of the interaction into a tiny portion of the screen and forces the user to adopt a trial and error approach to finding what they're looking for (it took me ages before I realised how to get to the fullscreen lifestream). It's a shame because the actual functionality is pretty good (although I couldn't get it to play with my Flickr feed).

Pros: Good range of services, Facebook app
Cons: Confusing UI

Features:
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Design/UX:
Overall:

12.) Superglu
http://www.suprglu.com

Superglu offers a blog-style presentation of your lifestream with main content updates down the left and a column on the right with recently listened to tracks, tags and month-by-month archives. Unfortunately the pulling in of the feeds seems a little erratic (no update on mine between the 12th Feb and 1oth Mar). There's also an issue with the image crashing into the right-hand column (see above grab). The good news is that Superglu does enable advanced users to manually edit the stylesheet (so I could go in and sort if out were I so inclined).

Pros: Manual CSS editing
Cons: Erratic updates, lack of friend integration

Features:
Ease of use:
Features:
Design/UX:
Overall:

13.) iStalkr
http://www.istalkr.com

The functionality of iStalkr is really not too bad but it's let down by poor design and UX, not least the fact that there is so much furniture at the top of the page (Google Ads, logo which isn't clickable, Digg icon) that the main event (the stream) is invariably pushed down beneath the fold. The user is just made to work too hard (why do I have to type in the name of the service? Why can't you do it and I'll overwrite it if it's wrong?). There are some redeeming features, including search functionality and an activities timeline (although the labels are often too truncated too be meaningful and the full description doesn't appear on hover), although they're not enough to counter the UX shortcomings.

Pros: Activities timeline, search stream feature
Cons: Sub-optimal design/UX,

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

14.) correlate.us
http://correlate.us

correlate.us is the most lo-fi of the services reviewed here, employing a del.icio.us-esque design aesthetic and linking to photos and videos rather than pulling them into the data stream (or 'river', as correlate.us calls it). Only six services are currently supported (although they are some of the biggest hitters) and adding feeds can be a bit of a pain (to add last.fm you have to log in the last.fm site and temporarily change your country to Timor-Lest). On the plus side, there's an aggregated tag cloud and some basic stats on what number of posts are coming from which services.

Pros: tag cloud, basic stats
Cons: limited number of services supported, convoluted feed additions, doesn't pull media assets into stream

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

15.) OneSwirl
http://www.oneswirl.com

OneSwirl didn't fair too well in my testing, returning MySQL database errors on the homepage (doh!). The only feed which I could get to appear in my stream (Twitter) wasn't very effectively presented (too spread out, necessitating a lot of scrolling) and the design looks very dated to me. In fairness to the developers, it's only been live for two weeks and they're clearly aware they've got some way to go with it. Casting around for a redeeming feature, I did quite like the inclusion of a calendar, enabling you to easily jump back to specific dates (although, of course, it doesn't work).

Pros: Er...
Cons: Database errors, not all feeds successfully updating lifestream

Features:
Ease of use:
Design/UX:
Overall:

Comparison of services supported by social aggregators