Category Archives: Internet

Thoughts on Netflix: Where They Lost the Trust

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The subscriber exodus from Netflix following their price hike has been eye opening. The company continues to take a beating on the stock market, and the announced intent to split the company into two separate entities (one focused on mailed disc-media rentals, the other on streaming content) has done little to thwart the rapid decline. If anything, the decision to name the new offshoot Qwikster (the butt of many jokes) combined with the unfortunate @qwikster account on Twitter has provided fodder for the comedic onslaught.

Somewhere along the way the company lost touch, and in turn it compromised the trust built up over the years between countless Netflix subscribers and a company who clearly seemed to “get it” from the onset — or so it seemed from the outside looking in. How did the company that foresaw the demise of disc media come up with the idea to split the company in two and apply a name seemingly rejected from every web 2.0 startup naming pool?

Anyone not paying close enough attention to the events as they’ve unfolded could easily blame the attrition on the price hike, after all this was the tipping point for a large group of people who’d grown accustomed to the virtues of Netflix’s service. Unfortunately the truth is that the poorly handled fee hike was just the result of the company’s detachment from reality, a side effect brought on by distancing themselves from the very things that built the company up as a disruptive service to a growing audience seeking new ways to access their content.

So where did it all go wrong?

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Seriously. @twittersuggests is a White Hot Bucket of Fail. Er, Win. Gah! I Don’t Even Know Anymore

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I first noticed the new experimental @twittersuggests feature a couple months ago when it @mentioned me in a tweet to a newly registered Twitter user. At the time I thought this was a cool way for the company to actively use their own product to help solve a discovery problem for new users to the service. My Twitter account was included in a series of tweets that mentioned other notable accounts (@superamit, @juliebenz, and @sacca), so the secondary reaction was a positive emotional one — I was flattered.

Twitter describes the service on its help pages as:

…an experimental feature that helps you find interesting new accounts to follow by tweeting Who To Follow suggestions, personalized just for you! This feature was created by Twitter, and it looks like a normal Twitter account – it will Tweet recommendations which you can reply to, retweet or mark as favorites.

Pretty cool, right?

Since then not every mention has been as flattering (obviously, the purpose of this service isn’t to dole out flattery to nobodies like myself), but for the most part they have been decent overall. Over time, the quality of the mentions declined. Today tipped the scale. In a tweet posted earlier I was @mentioned alongside what can only be described as a spam account. Nay, a porn spam account. See for yourself:

Twitter Suggests == Fail

So, I may be guilty for tweeting a lot. I may also be guilty for running my mouth off from time to time. But how in the world am I in the same class as a porn spam account? Better yet, how can this possibly be acceptable from an official Twitter account?

How does it work?

@twittersuggests is a feature which looks like a Twitter account – it algorithmically generates suggestions of users to follow and sends them to you.

@twittersuggests will tweet recommendations to you via @mentions, and this Tweet will appear in your @mentions timeline.

Sure, the company describes this with words like “algorithmically” and “experimental,” but it’s really hard to believe that this was launched with any sort of testing whatsoever. If there are any resources applied to this experiment, they certainly don’t appear to be doing any tuning that is having a positive impact. To the contrary, the quality appears to be decreasing over time. The sad thing is, if I were new to Twitter I might find a service like this valuable if the accounts recommended remained of decent quality, but that’s just not the case here. Worse still is that there are so many simple ways this could be avoided.

Before I get pummeled with the argument the “false positives are expensive” argument (Yes, I’ve read @kellan’s excellent write-up, and have firsthand experience with this as well) let me call out that this is an entirely different scenario. The cost of false positives is only applicable when you choose to deny accounts access to basic services. If a company restricts an account from using the basic functionality of a site because of an unsubstantiated suspicion, then sure…that’s expensive.

However, tweeting account recommendations that might otherwise trip overly sensitive spam-detecting algorithms is a choice mistake. Twitter owns this account, they have the right to be overly choosy about the accounts featured in their recommendations, and an account that includes obvious keywords like “sex” and “porn” is a safe one to filter out of that list, just to play it safe. Now, building a recommendations engine is tough. It’s not easy to get these things right, and I’m certainly sympathetic to this. I guess I’m reacting so strongly here because this feels like one of those avoidable mistakes, especially because there is literally no harm in restricting an account like this from being recommended.

In other news…

Speaking of mouthing off…I shared my thoughts on the news of the Beyonce-pregnancy-VMA induced milestone Twitter reached in terms of TPS (FYI — that’s, obnoxiously, “tweets per second”) this weekend, and look what happened. Awesomesauce.

Superchunk retweeted lil' ole me?!

Tour de Cure Looms in the Distance

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While professional athletes are busy grinding away on the Tour of California and the Giro d’Italia, I’m prepping for my own ride…the Tour de Cure. The weather has not been cooperative, and I’ve certainly had my moments of weakness, but today was another milestone — a 72 mile ride with multiple climbs.

Overall I think I faired pretty well, although admittedly I needed a few brief breaks along the way. Next weekend I’ll tackle a similar route, although I think I’ll try to space out the climbs a bit more in an effort to mimic something more akin to the route that awaits me in June.

Here’s a look at today’s route and performance:

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Which is the App Flickr Should’ve Built?

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Neither. That is to say, yet.

After playing with Instagram for a few days I was absolutely hooked. I even went so far to declare at the time that, “Instagram is the iPhone app Flickr should’ve built.” This was back when the app first launched. I was close, but I was wrong.

Recently I gave Picplz a go after reading a bit more about their product, and my initial assessment was…well, let’s let the tweets speak for themselves:

Convo with Picplz

By the way, massive kudos to @picplz for the quick responses. Well done.

“really s-l-o-w.” What does that mean? You can only do so much in 140 characters, but I tried to sum it up as best I could. The gist was this, Picplz acted like a nice utility app for uploading and sharing photos, but it wasn’t very sticky. Was I being unfair? After all, I only tried out posting one photo, and the social graph on Picplz is still very small.

At any rate, I stood by this assessment until a few follow notifications began trickling in. One morning while on the train I received three follows and decided it was time to give Picplz another look.

I snapped another photo, uploaded and shared, and still felt like the app was slow. But the conclusion I reached that morning on the train was, “Sure, Picplz isn’t quite there yet, but neither is Instagram.”

That’s right. I said it. I’ve been a staunch supporter of Instagram, but things change.

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The Hazards of Execution, or the Lack Thereof…

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Yesterday Twitter began deploying the new cool to its userbase, #newtwitter. It’s something we’ve heard about in bits and pieces, and once news broke the subject of whether or not you had access to #newtwitter was a topic du jour in some circles.

I didn’t get immediate access to #newtwitter. Thankfully, I’m easily distracted. In this case, buy this tweet:

Kevin teases...

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Edgar Wright Sent Me a DM

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.@edgarwright sent me a DM

We went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World again today, and before the film began I tweeted about it, cc’ing Edgar Wright (the director) alongside a mention that the theater was nearly full.

Upon emerging from the theater I found this DM notification on my phone.

Yes, I’m geeking out a little bit…I mean, c’mon?! The director of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz messaged me!

The whole day sort of came together on a whim. Over a bowl of pho at lunch I mentioned to Dee that I’ve been wanting to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World a second time — in part because I really loved the film, but also as a show of support for something I wish would’ve gotten a fairer shake at the box office.

So we decided to do it.

While waiting for the film to start, I thought it would be fun to let Edgar know that I was watching the film again. Sort of a geeky attempt at showing solidarity via Twitter. I never expected a response, but it sure was cool to see that my tweet registered with him. If you haven’t watched the film yet, or even if you have, why not check it out (again)?

And speaking of films to check out, you may have noticed H.P. Mendoza‘s Twitter handle and a mention of Fruit Fly in that exchange of tweets. If you haven’t checked out Fruit Fly or Colma, do yourself a favor. And Edgar Wright, if you happen to be reading this make sure to add Fruit Fly to your DVD/Blu-Ray queue when it comes out…I’d love to hear what you think of it.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Google Instant Says No to Sex Porn…and Violet Blue?

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Google Instant Censors Violet Blue

So, Google Instant launched today, and already folks have noticed that some searches fail to yield the “instant” treatment. Yep, naughty searches get the big “no no” from Google, but then again so do searches for Violet Blue and Tiny Nibbles. So far it doesn’t appear to be a total slight against Violet, as Techyum still triggers Instant. “Violet Blue” produces mostly stuff about the sex educator, and not the porn star who formerly used the same name. Perhaps the SERPs for that and “Tiny Nibbles” both have a few too many mentions of “sex” for teh Google’s liking?

Google Instant Censors Tiny Nibbles

UPDATE: Thanks for the comments so far…I love hearing everyones take on this. A couple points came up in the comments that are worth noting here.

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We Used to Wait

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The short version of this story goes something like this: Once upon a time, I imagined something like this would happen within the frame of a different video player, and with a different person interviewing Sol about his latest awesome app. It was right there…if only…Ah well, it’s really funny how everything works out.

Regardless, I’m super thrilled about the latest news from Sol, Jakey, and the whole team behind Rally Up and 12Seconds. I’ve always been a huge fan, and it’s great to see their hard work paying off. Kudos, gents.

Thoughts on Jessi Slaughter and Online Bullying

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I’m not sure what to make of this meme, in part because the entire thing confounds me. For those of you scratching your heads, Know Your Meme has a pretty decent blow-by-blow.

Tweens posting tell all video diaries on YouTube is nothing new. It’s unfortunate that Jessi has been exposed to some of the things she discusses at such a young age (she’s 11), but that has little to do with the meme itself. However, it does relate to her ability to behave in this manner without full awareness of what she was exposing herself to. Specifically, her parents had absolutely no idea what she was up to online, and regardless of their individual Internet prowess (or ignorance), they seemingly ignored some red flags that should’ve alerted them to dig a little deeper.

First, the fact that she was spending so much time on a web cam that’s connected to the Internet. Now, I don’t expect them to fully understand the culture and inner workings of the Internet, it’s not their thing and I get that. But, if your 11 year old daughter is spending time on a camera attached to something you don’t fully understand, isn’t that a clue that you might want to engage with her? Yes, it can be difficult as someone approaches the teenage years, but still…Some of this could have gone a long way.

Let’s face it, her parents aren’t solely to blame. Everyone involved carries some of that weight. /b/ is certainly responsible for a good portion of the outcome here.

But none of this is what confounds me. What confounds me is that we are all somehow involved in the perpetual meme play that drives this sort of thing in one way or another. I’m not saying this directly drove the bullying and harassment of Jessi Slaughter, but the need for “watercooler” conversations in the forms of links to memes that can be shared to friends does help push this sort of thing along.

My initial reaction to /b/’s involvement here was, “Well, what do you expect from /b/?” But that’s not right. In fact, it’s dismissive in a way that allows this type of behavior to persist. Granted, not all memes are harmful. But an anonymized crowd’s decision to punish an 11 year old girl, regardless of what she’s said or done online, is a frightening concept, and it’s something that we as a culture need to recognize and address.

“Shakedowns” and Tech Solutions

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Shame

Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward this morning smacks of concessions, and moreover, was a total embarrassment.

Quite frankly, Barton’s actions align with something that has troubled me throughout the first year and a half of the Obama administration — Republicans do not want to let go. I can’t blame them. But at some point they need to stop acting like someone will eventually step in and say, “Oh, you were right. Obama, you’re out.” It’s not going to happen.

Yes, I’m aware that he placed a caveat by prefacing his statement with a claim that he speaks for himself, and not for the Republican Party. However, he also inserts agenda into his “opinion” by claiming that the same “shakedown” could occur to citizens as well as corporations. The truth is, Obama and Hayward came to an agreement, and despite criminal investigations, BP is still on the hook for damages that have been done to the gulf coast, it’s inhabitants, etc. They needed to be held accountable, and the decision to put $20 billion towards recovery was an attempt at good will, not a shakedown. It’s called accountability, folks.

I know this is completely unrelated, but it astounds me that we are capable of rallying together to find solutions to annoyances like the Vuvuzela bzzzz during the World Cup, yet we are unable to collectively sort through the damage occurring daily to the gulf coast eco-system. Don’t even get me started on the people complaining about their ability to afford the iPhone 4 despite such horrors as AT&T server failures or delayed shipping.

Update: Barton made another statement this afternoon, clarifying his remarks from this morning. He insists that he holds BP responsible, and does not want his apology to cloud that. Whatever, the damage is done. Let’s not ignore that Oil & Gas industries were the #2 contributors to your campaign funds.