Test number 5. WTF

Test entry. http://www.amidnightproject.com

@allblog

Another test, if it fails get over it.

The Good

The most likely way my project will go viral will be by individuals on campus spreading my web address to other students. This will create a human to human network which will then (in theory) create a sprawl effect on the internet as people pass or post the link in various ways (via facebook, twitter, email). I think the most likely candidate for patient zero would be the Campus Newspaper possibly doing an article on the website, causing awareness and spreading the name. The best outcome would be a lot of awareness and traffic to the site.

The Bad

I feel as though the worst possible outcome is receiving emails from aggravated Umaine employees. I’m not really worried about that though. There is nothing they can do in regards to me pulling the website down since all the information is public to begin with. The only thing they can do is ask me to remove a logo if I choose to put one online.

The Ugly

I think the most likely reason it will fail before being noticed will be my inability to push the website name out there and get it known amongst the students. I think if I market it well, I could receive a lot of view form the student body. The other reason for failure I think would be a lack of interest from the students.

Yahoo! Common Tag

http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-announces-common-tag-like-the-meta-keywords-tag-but-even-better-21021

Yahoo! wants to implement a new form of meta data, “common tags”. They say the use of common tags would be a way to make websites more discoverable by using a more structured data schema. The downside to this scheme is it would make it easier “link bomb” and fake keywords to make your website number one on the list instead of it becoming more relevant to the information that’s on it. There is really no upside to this compared to traditional meta data that does the same damn thing with a keyword and content tag in the meta. This could be useful for me to gain more relevance with the University of Main website.

Goggle Bomb!

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/%27Google_Bomb%27_an_Enemy

The article talks how you can force a page to be more relevant then the actual website by link bombing. Essentially getting tons of people to link to the same thing to force different search results. Like when people all linked to the Church of Scientology with the phrase “dangerous cult”. This could be useful to make my website more relevant the Umaine by creating links all over the place to my website using the phrase “umaine” or something relative.

Twitter as a collective mood ring

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/using-twitter-as-a-collective-mood-ring/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Pretty interesting actually. Peter Sheridan Dodds and Christopher M. Danforth, both statisticians from the university of vermont developed a program that would scan about 1000 tweet per minute, gathering data on keywords and trying to relate peoples tweets to their mood. The two developed this to try and get a realtime update on peoples reactions to whatever may be happening to them or reactions to a certain event by keying up on specific words. The information is specifically useful to business because it can determine peoples acceptance of particular events, which you can than use to gear your marketing campaign and the hit the right demographics. Interesting eh?

Wordpress plugins

http://www.binaryturf.com/my-top-25-wordpress-plugins/

More specifically some random dudes top 25 plugins, but one stood out to me that I would mention since this is a contagious media class and were all about being in peoples face with information in every possible location. A plug in called PingPressFM (http://www.soldoutactivist.com/pingpressfm) will take all your all your posts and submit it to Ping.FM, which is then capable of updating about 30 network sites like facebook and twitter. I am going to experiment with this. Pretty interesting eh?

Sound Cloud

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/soundcloud-threatens-myspace-as-music-destination-for-twitter-era/

Sound cloud is essentially a twitter for musicians. It allows them to post audio tracks to the website of any length or size and allows other to comment on specific parts of the track. It also provides unique links for each track and can allow private links as well so things aren’t public.

The Guy Behind Flash Mobs

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/pl_print

A quick article on Bill Wasik and his new book And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture. His book discusses how memes die just as quickly as they came. Wasik is the father of the Flash Mob which is now a common thing amongst bloggers and internet folks around the world. Large groups of people that descend on a certain point for 10 minutes or less, do something, then leave just as fast as they got there. He talks about how the internet allows us to be our own media outlet and provides its own metrics to gauge popularity.

Iphone App Finds Disease Outbreaks

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/outbreaksnearme/

HealthMap, as its being called, will allow everyday people to track and document disease outbreaks in their area. I can see this as being both good and bad. Say your traveling somewhere and want to know whats going on, you can just look it up. But at the same time, say you got 100 “Mr. I know it alls and they deffinately have swine” putting false information into the system then you could potentially have a huge snowballing problem leading to panic.

Big labels are f*cked

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/peter_jenner/

An interview done with Peter Jenner (Pink Floyds first manager for you non-music folks out there) about how the 4 big labels of the music industry are fucked because the consumer still pays for all the same fees they would for a cd only the majority of those steps are bypassed for a digital copy. Jenner also said he believes the industry should outsource just about everything except financing and licensing. However, he did say Its now much easier for independent artists to get out aand be known since they can upload right to the internet and let people download their music for free or a small charge in itunes/amazon/paypal.

Payload

“Behind the curtain” so to speak is my idea to get students and other members of the university community to realize the effectiveness of various professors on campus in relation to their pay rate. Since the amount professors on campus make is public information, I plan to make this information easy for the public to find, without the hassle of going through stacks or unorganized paperwork.

I want students to bring their opinions forward and question the amount of money professors make compared to what the students learn from the professors and question whether or not the money they pay for schooling is really worth that amount. Students would be able to compare departments and teacher pay rates visually as well as in a list and coomment on/discuss that information.

Circulation/Direction

The majority of the circulation for my meme will be from person to person by word of mouth, email, and hopefully passing links. Mass emails on firstclass and Facebook will help get my meme out and I also hope to do some sort of guerrilla advert type stuff. Like posting links all over the union, class rooms and the like. The direction for my meme will effeminately be a horizontal, grassroots movement.

My meme vectors will most likely be from email>>facebook>>twitter>>spoken word

Recognition

The way I will measure recognition will most likely be the amount of traffic I get to the website. I will track statistics with both Awstats and Webalizer which are both server side applications. I will also use Google analytics and will try and see if I can get it to come up in a Google search for the University of Maine within the first few pages.

click to enlarge*

Behind The Curtain (atleast for now) is an idea I have to expose Facutly Pay Rates and make it easy for students and the public to find this already “public” information. I put public in quotes because the information can be looked up at any time and the University can’t deny you access to the records because its a state funded institution and is not privatized. I think people should know what professors are making and decide for themselves whether the increase in professor salary is worth the increase in tuition and the quality of the education they are receiving. I’m proposing this be a website  where people can find the information however more geurilla tactics like posting the information around campus may pose more usefull or dropping the information off at news stands/coffe shops.