Results tagged “newyorktimes”

Here are some articles that have recently gotten attention amongst media obsessives. They are all fundamentally flawed:

• A list of the Top 25 newspapers on Twitter from Journalistics
• An expanded list of 200 U.S. newspapers, sorted by their Twitter follower counts
• A piece in MediaWeek about Elle UK's popularity on Twitter

The problem with all of these pieces? The data that underlie the assertions are fundamentally flawed.

Each story uses the advanced research technique of looking at a publication's Twitter account, then reading the sidebar of their Twitter profile and copying the number of followers listed there. This methodology is useless for determining how many people have chosen to follow a publication, and instead is indicative primarily of whether or not that publication is one of the suggested Twitter accounts that users encounter when signing up for the service. It's also correlated to how long that publication has been on Twitter accruing those incidental followers.

Big Follower Counts Are Horseshit

I covered much of this topic at the beginning of this year in a post called Nobody Has A Million Twitter Followers. While the literal point of that headline may no longer be true (I'm sure Justin Bieber or Nicki Minaj has actually earned a million organic Twitter followers), the point still stands: Being suggested as an account to follow when users sign up for Twitter so distorts the meaning of follower counts that citing such follower counts without disclaimers is either ignorant or misleading.

In the case of screaming headlines that say "The New York Times has more Twitter followers than subscribers!" we actually veer from misleading to so distorted it's absurd. Subscribers are people who have, in one way or another, indicated intent. They filled out a form, sent in some money, and established a relationship with The New York Times. The majority of followers of the New York Times on Twitter, however, only established a relationship with Twitter itself, and the Times came along for the ride. MediaWeek actually uses the headline "Elle has a hit with Twitter feed" and this cannot be proven — being on the list myself, I gain users at almost the same rate as Elle UK, and I'm no hit among fashionistas. All we're getting a measure of is Twitter's popularity.

If any of these articles included explanation of the fact that the publications with the biggest number of followers were merely those chosen by Twitter to be so, then we could start to have an honest discussion about impact or influence or popularity or whatever the hell it is these writers want to weigh in on. By analogy, if a publisher went and threw its paper on the doorsteps of millions of people without any conscious action on their part, and then crowed about how it had a bigger subscription base than someone else, we'd consider them ridiculous.

So statements like "Maybe The New York Times has such a huge Twitter following because it was the first of the Top 25 to join Twitter, way back in March 2, 2007. " (from the first article linked above, on Journalistics) show a fundamental misunderstanding of the very numbers they're trying to report on. If we're going to make a splash with articles based on numbers, let's at least pretend to know what the numbers represent.

Just a quick roundup of some recent conversations I've been having around the web:

• Fast Company interviewed me about applying the lessons of Web 2.0 to government. I'm always happy when I can mention my love of New York City and pop music while also talking about the importance of using the web for civic purposes. They also published this Rennio Maifredi photo of me, which my Twitter friends agree is very creepy.

• A One-on-One interview for the New York Times' Bits blog, discussing a bit about my work at Expert Labs while working in a reference to LL Cool J.

• Reddit did an "Ask Me Anything" thread where people could ask me whatever they want. I answered a bunch of the questions in text, and a video of me answering the most popular ones will be up shortly.

• The Morning News' interviewed me as well, and I must have been in a mood at the time, because it kind of ends with some uncharacteristic ranting.

• And CNN just published an editorial of mine where I talk about the importance of the decentralized web. What if we had all decided to rely on AOL Keywords for 911 emergency services?

Hopefully you're not all too sick of me after that; I'll try to share some of the recent presentations I've made at events I've been speaking at recently as well — I'm very excited about a lot of the conversations I've gotten to participate in lately.

"Gollywaddles!"

Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre (no seriously, his initials are "GGG"!) aspires to the title of Most Ridiculous Person In The World today with his impressive and absurd display of intellectual dishonesty, as quoted in the New York Times article today on the Supreme Court's reconsideration of profanity on television:

“The world that the networks are asking you to adopt here today, where the networks are free to use expletives,” said Gregory G. Garre, the solicitor general, may include “the extreme example of Big Bird dropping the F-bomb on ‘Sesame Street.’ ”

It's Big Motherfuckin' Bird, people! It's Oscar the Bitch! (No Elmo.)

Additional delights in this story abound, with the image of the supreme justices throwing around all kinds of euphemisms for common expletives, and even culminating in what I sincerely hope becomes the law of the land: Any joke is okay, as long as it's sufficiently funny.

Justice John Paul Stevens suggested a novel standard for judging indecency. Is it ever appropriate to consider, he asked, “whether the particular remark was really hilarious — very, very funny?” Mr. Garre said funniness could play a part in the commission’s analysis of whether a remark was shocking, titillating or pandering. Justice Scalia jokingly summarized the new standard: “Bawdy jokes are O.K. if they are really good.”

It is a new day, people. A new day.

I think one of the biggest reasons many great writers go into journalism is for the chance to sneak little wisecracks in, with the hope their editors will indulge. I took the opportunity to read a printed copy of the New York Times the other day, and spotted a gem in this local story on Michael Bloomberg striving for a third term as mayor of New York City:

Mr. Bloomberg, a former Wall Street trader who founded Bloomberg L.P., a financial information firm, was sought out by the press as a financial guru. He appeared on “Meet the Press” and was not shy about commenting during public events about his interactions with the central players in the financial drama, whether it was Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. (Mr. Bloomberg calls him Hank) or Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s chairman and chief executive (Dick, of course).

Hank! Dick!

The New York Times is removing the payment barrier from its TimesSelect content. Hooray!

I pundified* incorrectly about this two years ago when they launched TimesSelect -- go look and marvel at my foolishness! Update: Andre points out that this is just a Hail Mary play to win a bet. The Long Bet is broken anyway, because it presumes a blogs-vs-Times model, which of course isn't accurate.

* "Pundify" is to pontificate without the burden of facts and in full embrace of intellectual dishonesty.

Pentagram, the designers of the website, signage, marketing materials, and stationery for the new New York Times building, have a fascinating blog post about the intricacies of the sign that they’ve created for the new Times Square skyscraper. The photo here is my cameraphone shot of the backside of the tower, taken when passing by yesterday.

And you thought this post was going to be about Prince.

A little over a year ago, I wore a funny t-shirt while posing for a photo that was published in an article in the New York Times. The shirt's a reference to a popular (and rather offensive) internet meme, and the reaction was immediate and passionate:

• "I can't believe you slipped one over The Man." - Grant Barrett, author The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English
• "Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we're reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests." - Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail.
• "@$!%!" - Mena Trott, President and Co-Founder of Six Apart.

I'm 30 years old, and this is now the single thing I'm best-known for in the world. Now, I'm not worried about being a one-hit wonder, but I do see this as a perversely entertaining example of getting what I deserve. I've always said my sense of humor thrives on the absurd, and it doesn't get any more absurd than having this stunt as one of the first things listed on my wikipedia profile. At this rate, my epitaph is likely to be something like "He told great fart jokes."

I'm reminded of this absurdity because I'd been reading The Long Tail. It was inevitable that I'd like the book -- I'm (briefly) in it. Page 182 has a nice nod to my Goatse t-shirt escapades, providing support for my hope that the in-joke worked on multiple levels. (Note to aspiring media hackers: You can't go wrong with a nominally subversive t-shirt if you're looking to gain a small degree of notoriety amongst your peers.)

As of today, 13 months later, there's approximately twelve thousand mentions of the gag. To all those people, and to those whom I've had approach me at various events and conferences, asking me about the picture, I have one request. Can we please make sure to say I'm "the goatse t-shirt guy" and not "the goatse guy"? There's a big difference.

These days, I think people in traditional media outlets are writing stories just so they'll get linked on particular blogs.

John Cook trumping up a fuss in Slate about Sasha and Jessica's analysis of Merritt-ocracy seems like it was written just so Jay would maybe write a post about it.

The Times' A.O. Scott seems to have written his lengthy, amusing slam of The Da Vinci Code just so Matthew could cover it in the Bad Review Revue.

And three thousand eight hundred words about Michael Jackson's finances? In the Times Business section? Clearly that's written just so I would link to it.