Consuming the same media as your peers is what social scientists call homophily, better known as ‘birds of a feather flock together’. Ethan Zuckerman, blogger and internet theorist, has been trying to fight this instinct online. He offers techniques for surprising and challenging readers with news that they didn't know they wanted.
I have thought about this idea for a long time. I have listened to people talk about communities on the internet. The problem is that communities on the internet are self selected and that leads to homophily. This is not an idea that is new in my life. When I was young all of my friends were close to my house. All you needed to be my friend was to be close to my house and us not want to punch each other. Until 6th grade this seemed to be the same for all the kids in my neighborhood.
In Junior High School people grouped together by interests. Since I could get around on my bike, I could be much more selective about the people who I hung out with. In high school I had a car and could be very selective about my friends. I think that homophily is happening all the time. The question is about how much can we filter out the views of other people? Can we get in a world that we never have any outside opinions? I think we can, but it is up to us not to do that. We the people have to drive ourselves to find views that are different than our own. Too many people do want to do that right now.
It seems that no one is willing to sign Barry Bonds and the Union is pissed. Well at least Jeff Borris is pissed. According to the new reports Barry Bonds has not received a signal offer. I am not sure if this is because Jeff Borris answers the phone, "if you not offering $10 million dollars a year, don't bother talking." Honestly, I think it is because Barry Bonds is indited without a court date yet. If general mangers knew that he was not going to have court dates during the September stretch run they might be willing to sign him.
The other problem is that only 14 teams might be willing to sign him. I would not play him in left field any more. that only leads American League teams. He could be a DH, but I am not sure a DH would be worth the risk that he might get hurt. I doubt he is willing to play for a discount. In the end, I do not think there is any collusion. Everyone has come to the conclusion that Barry Bonds is not worth signing.
I heard a story today about Rushmore Drive from On The Media. Rushmore Drive is a search engine that is focused on Black people. Not only African Americans, but Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and Black people anywhere else in the world. The idea is that Google is currently a one side fits all solution. Minority have different ideas of what should show up on search results.
I am interested in the idea that different things are important to different people. Right now Google is the king of search. I am not sure if Google gives the same search results depending on who is searching. Do people with the same ethnic background want the same search results. I am not sure the best way to figure this one out.
There are two possible outcomes if this kind of search is important. Large search engines will let people tweeks the results that come to them. Letting people actively and passively edit the results that are served up to them. Smaller search engines will pop up that try to cater to people. I think that these search engines will not stop an ethnic ideas, but other lifestyle groupings. I think that gamers will get their own search engine, photographers will get there own search engine, and movie fans will get there own search engine.
I searched for Rich Thomas on Rushmore Drive. I come up second on this search, which is better than Google where I show up 4th. My photo comes up on the search, but my blog does not come up on the blog search. It is good to know everyone can find me if they are looking for me.
Search might not be the same in the future. There is an idea that we are getting to the end of Keyword search. Tagging has already had an impact on the way searches work. Who knows what search will be about in another five or ten years. It is possible that Google is something that is no longer important in 10 year.
This photo has been viewed so many times because it was blogged so many times. During comic con it turned up on six different blogs. People loved the idea of a Steampunk Ghostbuster. I have to admit that this is one of my favorite costumes of all time.
I am not sure how blog views are counted. I know that most of my flickr views come from inside of flickr. Site referrals only account for 2% of my views. 2% of 1.2 million is still 24000 views. Maybe a big chunk of that is part of this photo.
There is an article in today's New York Times about how the rise in gas prices are causing more people to ride mass transit. A few weeks ago I tried to figure this out for myself. The break even point for me is for gas to be $5.25 or 5.75 a for it to be worth me taking the light rail to work.
The big problem is that I would not give up my car if I started to take the light rail. I would still have pay for auto insurance for my car. If I got rid of my car, it would be easy to switch to taking mass transit to work, but it would be harder to do everything else in my life.
Gas has to be very high before it is cause effective. This might be because I live close to work, I drive a car with good gas mileage, or that the price of mass transit is rather high. Right now cost is the number one reason for me to switch.
I like the idea of mass transit. I think it would be great for me to take the light rail to work. The biggest problem is time. The light rail or the bus takes much longer to get to work. Driving takes me 15 to 30 minutes while the light rail takes me 45 minutes to an hour to get to work. Time is important to me. I guess if the price gets high enough price will get less important.
Views on Flickr: One Thousand Fourty Eight view photo
I average between 1900 and 1100 views a day. This is the range my views stay between. Some days I see a big bump, but it never falls below 1100 views. Everyday my photostream gets as many views as this photo has totally. That is a strange idea. At the high end of views, photos get 100 to 70 views. On the low end hundreds of photos get 1 to 2 views. I think this is very interesting.
Look at all the elements of this photo. It is easy to see why this photo has so many views. It is a great costume group. I think that is one of the reasons it has so many views.
My nephew noticed that I took lots of photos of signs. Yes it is something I do all the time. Some of my most viewed photos are of signs. If it was not for Comic Con they would dominate the top of my popular lists.
One of my photos is on Youtube. I know this is not that big of a deal. It is just aideo of a whole bunch of tattoo photos. I am happy that someone likes it enough to put it in their video.
I was surprised to find out that Wolverine is one of my biggest search terms for my photosteam. I am not sure why over 5000 people in the past year have searched for Wolverine. I know it is my Comic Con that keeps people coming back.
