Tuesday, March 24, 2009

288-hour news cycle

Further on persistence of interest: 12 days later people are still passing around links to the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer encounter.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Twitter search is a great tool for gauging persistence of interest

I do occasional maintenance on this widget because it has a couple hundred installs, so I should. Its value decreases when it doesn’t include enough timely searches.

(Click on “Search this” to refresh the widget and try another search.)

The rotating content leans heavily to Twitter Search because I think it’s such a fascinating way to get something of a handle on the pulse of opinion. To update it I add searches, and I also check the current searches to see if the results still show recent activity. (See the archive of currently rotating searches as well as retired searches. Note to Expression Engine heads: that archive page shows open entries for the active searches and closed entries for the retired ones—so easy.)

I’m getting to it now; thank you for your patience, just had to set it up. I’ve been surprised that interest in certain search terms has not waned as much as I would have expected. For example, “auto industry” and “iphone+storm” are not in the news as much as they were a few weeks ago when I added them, but they persist in racking up a lot of current results.

A slightly different sort of custom tool that tracks persistence of interest could be useful for research conducted by media outlets, and maybe other types of businesses, but I’m more tuned in to media and think of it first. Examples:

- Mainstream media, like monthly print magazines, having longer lead times, to see what people are still interested in.

- Even for more instant media, like TV or blogs, it could be handy for planning more-produced, better-researched features. If there’s no longevity to public interest in a given topic, it might not be worth the investment.

Of course this assumes there is a spot of value in the idea of enduring interest, and not just in the latest thing. Sometimes I despair of our “newest is all there is” way of looking at news and everything else.

If you wanted to go all radical, you might even say that sustained public interest in a topic maps to its importance and consequence. Nah…

Monday, December 15, 2008

Twitter search spam is getting to be a problem

It’s nothing Twitter is not aware of, I’m sure, but here’s a further anecdote.

I’ve been doodling around with a widget that rotates a number of what I think are interesting timely searches, mostly on Twitter search, but including some others.

Early last week the web was abuzz with rumors about a $99 iPhone offered by Wal-Mart, so I make it one of the widget’s searches. Each day there was more spam in the stream. I tried my best to filter it with minus switches, and finally had to give up.

I expect I’ll have to abandon the gas+price search soon for the same reason. I added another three switches today, but I have a feeling it’s just a matter of time before I won’t be able to manage it that way.

Craftier developers will know better ways to filter out certain users based on their tweet patterns and put them in 3rd party apps or in Twitter search itself. On the other hand, not putting the controls in Twitter’s public search might be a way to create value for a corporate product. But that would be scarcity thinking.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Furor over Motrin and babywearing: a lifestyle war?

If you need to catch up on the Motrin storm that spread via Twitter over the weekend, first look at the video and see what you think.

Then, check out:

- Blog posts on the topic.

- Twitter search on Motrin.

Mommy bloggers, who tend to hang out on Twitter, were offended by the video’s copy, and the tone of the narration, which implies that wearing a baby in a sling or other carrying apparatus amounts to an affectation. It offended me, too, even though I wasn’t a baby wearer as a young mom. (I tried it, and it didn’t suit me, but not for any lifestyle reason—I just never felt I had the proper purchase on my baby; I liked belonging to the constant contact species, and carried my kids around a lot.)

Telling the folks you’re trying to persuade that their preferences are an affectation is the dumbest aspect. Think about it. It’s like trying to sell Visine to iPhone users by helpfully informing them they only bought their phone to look cool, but there’s help for you dumbasses. Visine can save you from yourselves, save you from the eyestrain you were dimwitted, vain and phony enough to inflict on yourselves.

A few commenters—looks like mostly guys and controversy trolls—are eyerolling or belittling the outrage. In which camp are the people at Johnson & Johnson’s agency who cooked this thing up? I do think there are culture camps here, and it’s because babywearing is still seen as a ”hippie thing”—not so much now as it was 20-30 years ago, but the perception lingers.

So, when the voiceover talent seems to curl her lip in derision at women who want to look like good moms, I gotta tell you, coming off the culture wars fought during the election campaign, it feels to me like Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter is talking to me in that video. And she’s saying “I’m so sick of your hippie shit—your latte-drinking, hybrid-driving, baby-slinging ways. Why don’t you go live on a commune and stop influencing normal heartland moms to adopt your godless ways.”

Sound like a stretch? Maybe, but you really can’t argue with perceptions, and that’s how the read struck me. Which is why, as so many bloggers have pointed out, J&J should have tested the tone with the target audience. Who approved that voiceover anyway? That’s who I’d blame, and send the agency’s creative staff to tonedeaf school.