MidAdopter

Netflix heads down the path of suck

Tim D'Avis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:25:22 +0000

Netflix is removing multiple-queue accounts, so my wife and I can no longer keep separate queues and identities through our household accounts. I’m losing all of my ratings, queue movies, friends, suggestions, etc. No export, no nothing. Massive thumbs down.

Any suggestions on alternatives? This is a flagrant kiss off to what I assume is a minority of Netflix’s customers. Just last week I was considering the Roku box, now I’m considering (gulp) blockbuster.

Community Reading List

Tim D'Avis — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:11:22 +0000

I’m putting together a reading list of articles geared towards building online communities - it’s for a co-worker who is going to be taking on more responsibility in this area. Any additions or suggestions would be appreciated.

Tips
Bokardo - Building Community isn’t about Features
Tips from Metafilter’s Creator
Making Light - Virtual Panel Discussion
Encouraging Participation
Disemvowelling
Building a Successful online Community - Creating Passionate Users

General interest
The Nearly Never Ending Market for Niche Social Networks
Boing Boing’s moderation policy
User Comments and the Art of Moderation
Design Observer - What’s in a name?
Howard Owens - the Modern Journalist’s Role in Guiding Conversations
Matthew Ingram - Community is the Hard Part
Pegasus News - Lessons from the Launch (OJR)
Bruce Clay - Panel on Building Community

Studies
http://www.iprospect.com/about/researchstudy_2007_socialnetworkingbehavior.htm
http://www.danah.org/papers/

How do traffic comparison engines compare? And the winner is…

Tim D'Avis — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:16:52 +0000

Alexa has updated it ranking system. Good on them. By their own admission, who fares the best by all three yardsticks - compete, quantcast or alexa? Looks like quantcast is cleaning up.

Odd that alexa doesn’t seem to measure itself…

Time on Site declining - yet another thing we’re supposed to worry about

Tim D'Avis — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:06:48 +0000

Alan Mutter posted Tuesday about declining time-on-site (TOS) numbers for newspapers. Welcome to my least favorite web metric.
A few things are happening here, and they don’t just have to do with Google, Digg and others eating our lunch.

For one, time on site can naturally to decrease as unique visitors increase - new audience should not be expected to devour content at the same pace and volume as core audience. We’ve noticed a shift downward in out TOS as our uniques have shot up significantly this year. I also expect the uniques growth to flatten in a bit, at which point our TOS should start to tick upwards. Expansion and digestion cycles are natural.

Second, time on site is not always a good thing. In the long run, it’s what we want. But given the sorry state of newspaper site design circa 2005, and the vast improvements underway at most major sites these days, a decline in TOS can also be seen as a sign of “people are finding things easier.” That’s not a bad thing, and it frees you up to grow more legitimate traffic with happier users.

Third - Newspapers, and most news sites, are actively engaging in activities that can reduce time on site, and our readers prefer it that way: RSS feeds, e-mail newsletters, facebook applications, embeddable objects, and other atomized technologies create more entry points, and potentially more drive-by eyeballs. The challenge will be to make money off of this atomized distribution, not to always lure people back to your website.

Finally, I would bet that TOS growth (or actual numbers) is declining at virtually every site out there with the exception of aggregators and social networks. This isn’t about the newspaper industry, it’s about content creators and aggregators. There is a growing tension between the index and the index cards.

Just. Stop. Talking.

Tim D'Avis — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:00:39 +0000

I’d like to see a moratorium on empty calls for online innovation from the j-blogosphere… I think Clay Shirky can be forgiven for not being so involved in the journalism blog scene, but I lost a little of my idol worship for Mr Shirky when his recent Britannica Blog post ended up to be little more than that.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be pointing to great new things, or leading discussion on possible solutions, but it’s pretty clear to anyone in the j-blog audience that things are bad and innovation is needed. So let’s focus on what’s interesting.

Here are are the stories you’ve already read:

Can QR codes help? I can’t imagine they can, but I’m willing to be wrong.
I saw this and loved it - not sure all audiences will. Give up the sanctity of articles and start thinking about posts.
The News Leadership blog needs to fix its RSS feed.
I have yet to devote any time to my FireEagle account but this post makes me think I should.
I’m liking the Telluride Watch website. Who’s responsible?
OpenAd tries to do an istockphoto to the Advertising Industry.

Housekeeping: bits.midadopter.com

Tim D'Avis — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:31:07 +0000

I’ve got a small tumbleblog going over at bits.midadopter.com, where I will eventually cross post my del.icio.us bookmarks and shared google reader items, in addition to more personal news and items that don’t quite fit here. The main Midadopter will focus largely on my personal and professional interest in the evolving dissemination of news and information. Not much there yet, as here… I’m trying to segment my posts a bit and keep this space open for what I want it to be.

The Sky: Not Quite Falling

Tim D'Avis — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:58:28 +0000

I’ve had a lot of half-formed thoughts about the newspaper industry lately, and as usual someone else has stated them more eloquently.

Short Video

Tim D'Avis — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:41:11 +0000

This thread at multimedia shooter about disillusion with the video experiment is sort of answered by this post on kottke, which reminded me of an earlier one from Howard Owens. It’s worth repeating: online video journalism doesn’t have to be a mini-documentary or broadcast-quality. And it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Twitter: still not getting it

Tim D'Avis — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:17:26 +0000

This bit from Read/Write/Web gestures at what I still am missing about twitter: what else is there? I disliked getting the text messages when I was “following”. It’s a shortcode with an API and it’s easy to update - I still see twitter as a set of features that could be absorbed by a larger network.

Poll: Will Your Mom & Dad Ever Use Twitter?

Please convince me below - I don’t hate twitter, but I’m having a hard time with why I should care.

On the Midadopter Agenda

Tim D'Avis — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:27:22 +0000

Tonight: Breathe-Rite Nasal Strips. I don’t even think this qualifies as “mid,” but apparently I’m getting very good at snoring.