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Since my earliest tinkerings with the social web, I have thought the digital trails we write to the internet would make ideal data for anthropologists to study. My instincts regularly ‘give me feelings’ that the things I experience through my online networks are profound and perhaps mirror the inner workings of my brain or maybe even an ant colony. I have often wondered what a scientific study of the digital tracks left by my blog posts, comments, flickr images, video mashups and most recently twitter tweets might do to re-enforce or de-bunk my intuition.
Having had the privilege of hanging out with Microsoft’s chief anthropologist Anne Kirah after a presentation I gave a few years back got me thinking about what people in her field of research would make of this data.
Then, just before the US Election I discovered ‘cursebird‘ through a very *serendipitous tweet exchange with JP (the 5th beatle of the Cluetrain Manifesto and oracle of all things online and social):
RT dsearls (who’s sitting next to me at telco 2.0) Holy shit, it’s Cursebird: http://cursebird.com/2008-11-04 04:23:02
@dnwallace @fang hello back, and looking forward to the fourth and final contest starting this Friday.2008-11-04 05:34:16
Which really showcased (to my warped mind anyway) how an open set of API’s on a bunch of data from people thinking out loud (140 characters at a time) can reveal much to a half-crazed pseudo-scientist. Here are my first quickly jumped to and almost fact free conclusions:
- My hand picked twitter network (following just under 100 people I actually ‘know’) are not as obsessed as the general twitterverse with US elections BUT… I can not recall seeing one pro-republican tweet in the midst of much pro-obama rehetoric. Makes me wonder if I should apply my ’subscribe widely’ ethos to my twitter followers to avoid the echo-chamber.
- The swearing twitterverse was swamped with the meme ‘dont fuck it up america’ in the hours leading up to the US election. It seemed that these messages came from both within and outside the US of A – some of them from my own network. There seemed to be a real push for action intended to spur Americans to get out and vote democrat.
- Just after Obama claimed victory the swearing twitterverse resonated with “<insert random expletive here> we won!” My own network contained several emotional and positive references to Obama’s victory speech and seemed to echo a sentiment of a new era of hope.
- Within hours the hope had evaporated for some when the LA gay marriage vote went down and the odd cynical self proclaimed expert touted ‘Obama voted against gay marriage and is therefore a hypocrite’ – end of hope). Fascinating stuff!
I tried to go back and collect some cursebird screenshots as evidence but alas, I’m too late. At least one punter out there shares some of my enthusiam for cursebird’s window into the global brain.
Watching fucking cursebird instead of dumbass teevee, better election coverage.2008-11-04 18:54:22
This morning I woke up with a bunch of cursebird inspired titles for possible future blog posts:
- Twitter, cursebird and the Anthropologist
- Twitter, cursebird and the US-Centric echo chamber of the social web.
- Twitter, cursebird and ‘instant karma’ by scatterbrain
- Cursebird shits on my clean feed (showing how to subvert pornfilter into a pornfinder)
Please enjoy this post, cursebird, recreational drugs, religion, self loathing and alcohol responsibly.
technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang
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1 response so far ↓
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Richard Henry
// Nov 13, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Glad you liked it! It’s interesting reading all of the responses, I must say. -Richard
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