On digital permanence

Might there be an inverse relationship between the ease of with which we create digital content…and the permanence of the cultural artifacts that we are creating?

More than 10 years ago, when I was in college, a friend and I created a web art project that we (pretentiously) called art(i)facts.  Mostly, it was our excuse to hack around with Photoshop, perl and html and explore this crazy Internet thing that was suddenly all the rage.

So we made a small site based on the premise that some apocalyptic rapture event had occurred, and you (the viewer) had discovered an archeological site (a bunch of photoshoped pictures like the above), and were in charge of interpreting the objects you’d discovered, with a simple web form to add your ideas. For example, one viewer said the that”item 361” (a CD) was a projectile toy, most likely used by children for simple amusement. (The site kinda still works, but this was 1997, so be nice)

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burritos ’round the world: a @bingtmaps joint

One of the projects I’ve been working on at Microsoft FUSE Labs over the past few months is Bing Twitter Maps – showing geolocated tweets as they happen. (It’s one of the applications inside the beta versoin of a new Bing Maps, which you should check out, if you haven’t already). We’ve just released a new version of Twitter Maps that includes the ability to embed a custom Twitter map into your site.

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reflections on starting a mini-meme

I really don’t like the Yankees, mostly because of their team salary is 227% of the league mean which I think gives them an outrageous advantage over other teams. So I’m pulling hard for the Phillies in the Series. And Monday morning, I posted the following Tweet: “Go Phillies. #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike hoping investment bankers get really huge bonuses – at least 8 figures.” Kinda proud of my clever hashtag, I then posted this: “…Hoping someone w/ more Twitter clout than I can help popularize #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike”…which was RT’ed by college buddy Lizzie O’Leary, who called to task some heavy hitters, and off it went.

Over the next day or so, lots and lots of people posted their own tribute to Yankee ludicrousness, including John Berman, Dave Winer, Jake Tapper, Jake Tapper, and Jake Tapper. Not quite a full-fledged meme worthy of being a trending topic. But humor me a mini-meme, yes?

Some of my favorite #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike include a hashtag convert, making fun of the Red Sox, references to Rocky (of course), Hoosiers, dunking on 4th graders (yes, from me. but it’s funny), and asking for more Soylent Green.

Some takeaways from the experience:

• It indeed feels very much like trying to start the wave at the ballpark
  • …except instead of jumping up and down after a few beers and yelling repeatedly……you’re looking for the guy (or gal) who knows the guy (or gal) [repeat] with the keys to the Jumbotron (or really, who is the Jumbotron)
• Very soon after it takes off, nobody knows (or cares?) you started it
  • I amassed all of 2 new followers. Probably a random occurrence
  • Even my friend who sits next to me didn’t believe I started it 3 hours after the first Tweet
• It will quickly spiral in ways that subverts your original intent, you don’t agree with, makes no sense, is funny but maybe inappropriate and might even make you sick
• Once it hits a certain volume, there’s no effective way to distill the data (find the funniest, etc…)
  • …project opportunity here???

p.s. Apologies to the Bing Twitter Maps team for being distracted for most of the day.

Update: check out friend/colleague Gilad Lotan’s vizualization of the spread of #CheeringForTheYankeesIsLike