Social Media Research Blog

An XKCD Inspired Sketch

You're No One If You're Not On Twitter

too cool! ROTFL! :-)

Social Media is a Tasty Taco

via Dr. David Pennock

I have been a bit swamped after coming back from KDD, but should be back to posting regularly this week. stay tuned!

FriendFeed Vintage Posts

So last month I had run a bunch of FriendFeed crawls. Due to various other higher priority tasks, I haven't yet worked on having the crawl run 24X7. Still the data I have continues to bring forth interesting nuggets. In this post I would like to share the distribution of the friendfeed posts per year.

Year    Number of Posts
2008    439949
2007    35920
2006    7996
2005    1782
2004    147
2003    3
2002    2
2001    1

I had fetched the most recent updated entries for each user. Upon examining the entry dates, I found that some posts dated back to even before friendfeed existed! This was basically due to the fact that FriendFeed is just an aggregator and when a user adds her del.icio.us feed old posts from del.icio.us, amazon and other sources are integrated into FriendFeed. Ofcourse, pretty much all of the recent entries for more prolific users are dated 2008. In case you are wondering, here are the links to the oldest 5 entries. (There were a few entries dated 1989 -- but I think maybe those might be date errors).

1. March 26, 2001 del.icio.us entry by Wilfred 
2. May 10, 2002 Amazon wishlist by Amber
3. Nov 3, 2002 Amazon wishlist by Jumagun
4. Dec 8, 2003 Stumbleupon entry by Michael
5. Dec 12, 2003 del.icio.us entry by Mihir

This is but a snapshot of FriendFeed data and is perhaps only representative of a few days worth of crawls. But what it shows is that at any point in time there are still some "vintage posts" in the FriendFeed cellar for us to enjoy and share.

Maybe there is some joy in reminiscing over old entries with your friends. Perhaps it is sort of the same feeling that one has when sitting down with an old shoebox full of pictures and sharing it with your family. Or... maybe those posts reminds us of a time few years back when we were all excited about del.icio.us, blogs and wikis -- or whatever else was the latest, coolest next big thing at that time!

So my question for you is -- when was the last time you looked for the oldest piece of post/entry you (or your friend) shared online and what do you think about it now? Is it funny now? perhaps even embarassing? :-)

Bloggers are the Root of all Evil?

Lewis black just pronounced bloggers to be the root of all evil on his comedy show tonite. The judgment was swift and Ultimate Fighting didnt stand a chance against blogging in this amazingly funny episode! I plead Guilty your honor!

Moreover Patton Oswalt claims that the world will not end with a bang but with a .... Twitter!

You know that Twitter and blogging have turned into a cultural icon when comedians take a riff on it.

Rest my case!

Cartoonist 2.0 and "Dancin Dubya"!

When returning a book at the library this week, I noticed an interesting talk titled "The Art of Political Satire". The speaker was none other than Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) who is the cartoonist with "The Economist "magazine, London. But more significantly, he is also the artist-in-residence and cartoonist at the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. Kal talks about his life experiences as a cartoonist both in the United States and U.K. His sense of humor is world-class and through a montage of his work over the years, Kal touches upon some delicate issues (911, war, world politics and the struggle to end of apartheid in SA) all while engaging his audience and making them smile.

I think Kal is what I would describe as a Cartoonist 2.0. He really gets the new media and realizes its potential. He talks about the decline in newspaper readership and the print advertising. How the new generation is more about flickr and YouTube and less about buying a newspaper or a magazine. So along with UMBC's IRC, Kal has set out on a journey to explore what it means like to be a cartoonist/journalist/political satirist in a Web 2.0 world. He is planning to take the essential elements of a cartoon strip and blend it with 3D animation and video. Starting from a clay caricature model of our very own Dubya and using motion capture technology, Kal can actually hold real-time conferences with the audience members asking Pres. Dubya Bush some serious questions! Well rest assured, you will atleast be get answers that make some sense! You can read more about it here and also check out the really cool video of "dubya press briefing"!  Oh! and here is Kal's fantastic version of "dancin dubya" ... quite close to the real version!
 

Well he is a real puppet arite!

Kal also plans to take dubya to live audiences and host a show soon. Soon we should expect to have syndicated, interactive 3D cartoon strips on many online newspapers! Good luck Kal, the maverick cartoonist 2.0!