I don’t really talk about it that much, but The Internet fascinates me. Not the nuts, bolts and packets side of things - although I’ve learnt enough about that this year to be amazed by that, too. What fascinates me more is how people flow through the internet, rather than information. I go to Digg.com and I get the urge to do Statistics coursework, and that’s pretty impressive given that I’d do anything to stay away from maths. It’s just the idea of people power is amazing.
So I did a little experimentation. I Dugg a few things myself, submitting stuff here and there and seeing what was more popular. Answer? None of it was popular. The most successive Diggs a piece I’d submitted received was just two. Two Diggs! Man.
Today I found the quite excellent You Have To Burn The Rope thanks to PC blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Since I’ve been playing with Inform7 recently, I thought I’d join in with the light-heartedness and cook up a text version. It took twenty minutes to perfect it (thanks to some helpful critique from John Walker) but the response from the game’s creator was great. He added it to his site, and today I received a hundred and seventy seven hits more than the average. The average is three.
One day, I’ll crack it. There’s some beautiful algorithm lying beneath BoingBoing, Digg and Slashdot. And by god, I’ll find it.
1 response so far ↓
1 Kian // Apr 5, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I also had about three hits a day before this craziness started. I actually started spreading the game a few days ago and by yesterday it looked as if had peaked. How wrong I was! I’m not sure either how it all works, but it has been so much fun following the game’s journey across the internet.
Oh, and people wouldn’t follow my link to your site if it wasn’t for the fact that a text edition in itself is a funny, innovative idea.
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