The Ayman and Naaman Show

Hey, Ayman, you tell good ol’ Naaman whether a McCain ad next to a YouTube video of Red State Update is a success or a failure of YouTube’s ad-matching algorithm.

On one hand, the mocking/hipster crowd that enjoys RSU (I kinda do) may be exactly those McCain would like to target.

On the other hand, the display ad, as one can see on the right, is a call-for-action and seems to be meant for people already convinced (“join our team”!).

I wonder if YouTube can do better and allow McCain to publish ads on videos that mention his name but do so in a favorable fashion. Or even better: be able to select which display ads from the McCain campaign to show for favorable versus negative videos. Should be that hard – I mean, even Ayman had built an opinion classifier in his research, as far as I remember (I know Ayman will correct me if I’m wrong, he’s a bit of a literalist if you know what I mean).

Besides, Naaman is for Obama.

Two seemingly-unrelated articles were published this last week. One in the New York Times (Ayman’s favorite liberal media outlet) and another in TechCrunch (Ayman’s favorite geeky media outlet).

In the Times, Emily Gould talks about the personal exposure she subjected herself to as editor for Gawker (Gawker’s take here, no need to follow though, my argument here is completely unrelated).

In TechCrunch, Paul Bragiel of Meetro, RIP, talks about the failure of a location-based social network.

And connecting the dots is our own Ayman, talking about sharing his life via various feeds and sites. Which I guess I do as well. I think, for example, that my homepage and Flickr account alone are enough to disclose my current location, as well as the locations I lived in or visited for the last 4+ years.

Unlike Emily, it’s not clear that anyone cares about me. And I also don’t go as personal in my dislosures as she did. But we’re on a continuum, aren’t we? And Meetro was hoping that they can get enough people disclosing their location information to create a critical mass of users in every geographic area. An army of mini-Emilies strong enough to find kindred-spirits everywhere they go. Ahem. Maybe not. Plazes seem more successful, as they do not require users to simultaneously share a location in order for the system to be useful. Plazes were not building a location-based social network, but a location-based application that is used to disclosure.

More about why Meetro fails, and how this is all connected to Fire Eagle, will appear on this blog someday when I am not too lazy to write about my grand theory, The Other Mor’s Law (tentative name) .

I was recently asked once to describe what exactly is Twitter and why is it such the in thing. I must admit: when it came out, I did fire a few notes and got some noise sent to my cell phone. About a year later, it made sense.

Some people (present company included sometimes) hate writing. It’s a pain. In a non-stop slew of conference papers, journal articles, and book chapters, I don’t want to come home to blog about it all. However, in that short moment before lunch, I could easily shout out 140 characters about my dismay, how I’m going to lunch, or if I’m in need of coffee. The hard limit ensures a low barrier to entry.

The question is content. I’ve watched my friends Twitter information (like they are going out of town for the weekend), jokes about not wanting to clean their apartment, and even commentary as they watch episodes of Dr. Who. I personally like to shout to my friends how I’m headed to Berkeley but I’m parked on I-880 without AC in 104 degree weather or how I managed to get my car towed.

Over the next few days, I realized how I couldn’t tell my friends about my day. I’d see someone, they’d ask how I’d been. I start my tale of traffic and heat…then I get cut short. Yah – how about you tell me something I didn’t read on Twitter.

I started thinking about my feeds:

(low bandwidth)
Twitter – shouts
Del.icio.us – information urls
This Blog – longer ramblings
Facebook – the sum of the previous three
Flickr – things i’ve seen
(high bandwidth)

Something about the low bandwidth seems to make it easier for people to ‘follow’. Currently, things like FriendFeed seem to aim to make it all in one…but I think i like the individual channels at this moment; it reminds me of surfing on TV.

…you should be able to tell the difference.

I am David Shamma‡.

I am not as tall.

I am Egyptian-American.

I am on the West Coast.

I am an InfoLab-trained computer scientist who’s into art—a media researcher+artist, if you like.

I don’t disagree with Mor.

‡ Most of you call me Ayman and pronounce it incorrectly as “Aie-man”, but for the purpose of this blog, that’s just fine.

…but you better be able to tell the difference.

I am Naaman†.

I am tall.

I am Israeli.

I am on the East Coast.

I am an InfoLab-trained computer scientist – an info scientist, if you like.

I disagree with Ayman.

† Most of you call me Mor and pronounce my last name correctly, but for the purpose of this blog, let’s pronounce the last name “Nay-man”. Say it.