Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published current data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results don’t seem to shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends. Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.
Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published recent data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results may not shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends.
Hitwise has ranked each say by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the say will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.
Unsurprisingly, California represents the most traffic share for both candidates, record-keeping for 13% of Obama’s total traffic and 12% of McCain’s. But both candidates have also seen a similar Representation Index from the state, which means that a similar number of Californians have visited each site. Given the state’s Democratic history, this is surprising - apparently Californians are interested in learning about the opposition. Conversely, in left-leaning New York, McCain’s site has only seen about half as much traffic as Obama’s.
Hitwise also notes that the highest Representation Index for Obama came from Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia, and DC, while McCain’s come from Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, and Louisiana. More of McCain’s states are “battlegrounds”, but there’s no way of knowing if people are visiting these sites because they like him or hate him - perhaps the traffic stats from McCainSpace would be a superior indicator.
By Andrew Liszewski If Antiques Roadshow has taught me anything, it’s that people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the smallest bit of nostalgia, which is probably why something as big as this Classic Storefront Rocket Ride available from Hammacher Schlemmer comes with a $10,000 price tag. (Instead of the nickel it would have cost […]
By Andrew Liszewski
If Antiques Roadshow has taught me anything, it’s that people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the smallest bit of nostalgia, which is probably why something as large as this Classic Storefront Rocket Ride available from Hammacher Schlemmer comes with a $10,000 price tag. (Instead of the nickel it would have cost you to ride it back in the 1960’s.) In its defense though, the Rocket Ride is an authentic unit that has been totally refurbished to its original say including the tapered nose cone and retro space travel graphics. And thanks to a new electric motor, the ride still works like it used to, providing the passenger with a thrilling minute of rising, diving and banking motions. The working handlebars can be used to control the speed of the ride, and the unit also includes ‘realistic’ rocket and countdown-to-launch sound effects.
Things have been quiet over at Jaiku since its acquisition by Google last Fall. People worried that Google might have ruined Twitter’s most formidable competitor by requiring the Finnish startup to labor away for months integrating its service into Google’s technology stack instead of rolling out new features. All the while, new signups have been disabled and invitations limited, which has cut the service off from a healthy stream of new users. But now we’re seeing some signs of life. Jaiku has moved its software over to a Google data center and has given its existing users an unlimited number of invites to send their friends.
Things have been quiet over at Jaiku since its acquisition by Google last Fall. People worried that Google may have ruined Twitter’s most formidable competitor by requiring the Finnish startup to labor away for months integrating its service into Google’s technology stack instead of rolling out new features. All the while, new signups have been disabled and invitations limited, which has cut the service off from a healthy stream of new users.
But now we’re seeing some signs of life. Jaiku has moved its software over to a Google data center and has given its existing users an unlimited number of invites to send their friends.
The new data center isn’t Jaiku’s final relaxing place, merely a step towards running things on Google App Engine. However, it’s an important one for a company that appears to be preparing itself first and foremost for scalability (a problem that notoriously has plagued Twitter).
As VentureBeat points out, Jaiku has also introduced a new terms of service and privacy policy, so it’s getting its legal home in order as well.
Are you a Jaiku member? Share some of your unlimited invitations with outsiders over at InviteShare.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
TechCrunch50 is just a week and a half away. The list of presenting companies is kept strictly confidential until the day of the event to ensure maximum audience attention. But we’re making one exception this year. Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Katalyst Media will be launching Blah Girls, one of his new interactive online video products, at TechCrunch50. Ashton recorded an intro video for Blah Girls letting us know how excited he is about all of the confidentiality and rehearsal requirements around the event.
TechCrunch50 is just a week and a half away. The list of presenting companies is kept strictly confidential until the day of the event to ensure maximum audience attention. But we’re making one exception this year. Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Katalyst Media will be launching Blah Girls, one of his new interactive on the web video products, at TechCrunch50.
Like all products launching at the event, TechCrunch50 will be the first time the public or press has seen it. We got a look at it a couple of months ago and think it’s going to be a hit. Look for a lot more activity from Katalyst Media over the coming months.
I asked Ashton to do a quick intro video saying how excited he’s about TechCrunch50. He sent the video below. You’ve to read between the lines, but I think he’s pretty jazzed about all of the strict confidentiality stipulations and the need to meet with us twice before the event to rehearse his presentation. Warning: There’s some strong language.
Next up: A Scoble video where he promises not to embarrass himself by chasing down Ashton for an autograph and a 45 minute exclusive video interview.
There’s no shortage of social news aggregators looking to help users cut through the noise on the web. Digg is by far the most popular, with similar offerings from Reddit, Newsvine, and a host of others. Today, Socialmedian (not to be confused with SocialMedia, the ad network) is launching its own take […]
There is no shortage of social news aggregators looking to help users cut through the noise on the web. Digg is by far the most popular, with similar offerings from Reddit, Newsvine, and a host of others. This day, Socialmedian (not to be confused with SocialMedia, the ad network) is launching its own take on social news. The site has just launched in public beta, and can ideal be compared to Digg, with some elements of Twitter and FriendFeed thrown in.
At first glance, Socialmedian bears more than a slight resemblance to Digg. Each story is ranked according to the number of votes (called Clips) that it has received, with an expanding tab for comments and sharing. Even the color scheme is very Digg-like.
Founder Jason Goldberg acknowledges that Socialmedian does share some features in common with Digg, but says that its focus is on helping you find stories that you’ll be interested in, rather than finding stories that are popular and appeal to the masses. To do this, the site allows users to create their own personalized networks, or selected from over 1000 existing networks. Each network monitors certain keywords for stories submitted across the entire site, and generates a list of related stories. Users can also specify RSS feeds they’d like to automatically pull stories from, and they can use a sliding “Noise” meter to limit the number of stories displayed.
Socialmedian also uses a Twitter-like follow system to help generate relevant results. Whenever you encounter a story submitter than you particularly like, you can flag them as a “Newsmaker”. From then on, their stories will receive a higher ranking, and are more prone to appear on your main news feed.
Because the site is so young, it’s hard to get a feel for how well these filters work (the vast majority of the stories on my front page have fewer than 10 votes). The site has far more customization than Digg, but its ultimate success will lie in its ability to cut out the noise - something we won’t know until it has to deal with thousands of stories at once. The site will also see competition from other social news sites like Reddit, which mimics Socialmedian’s network function by allowing you to “roll” your own customized feeds.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
In an email to users this day, Yahoo announced that its year old social network Yahoo Mash will be shutting down on September 29. This was Yahoo’s fourth serious attempt at getting a foothold in social networking after Yahoo 360 and failed acquisition attempts of Facebook and Bebo.
By Luke Anderson As a child, many of us spent countless hours as young construction workers. No, we weren’t hundreds of feet in the air balancing on steel girders, but merely snapping together plastic bricks. We created everything from castles to space ships. Now someone has given us the option of making our own lighting fixture […]
By Luke Anderson
As a child, many of us spent countless hours as young construction workers. No, we weren’t hundreds of feet in the air balancing on steel girders, but merely snapping together plastic bricks. We created everything from castles to space ships. Now someone has given us the option of making our own lighting fixture in a similar fashion.
While using actual LEGOs would be very awesome, such a design would be doomed. Those tiny bricks just don’t stand up to heat well enough to surround a light bulb. These Block Light bricks are made from a more durable plastic that still allows for the same sort of customization. The $45 kit comes with 219 small, 16 medium and 4 massive blocks for your building pleasure. The only downside is that it’s currently only wired for use in the UK.
By Luke Anderson I fully admit that I’m a Star Wars geek, and not only have a cardboard cut-out of C-3PO and R2-D2, but an autographed picture of Chewbacca in my office. I’ve always wanted a life-size R2-D2 of my own, and I think I’ve found the perfect one. This particular R2-D2 is a mini fridge that […]
By Luke Anderson
I fully admit that I’m a Star Wars geek, and not only have a cardboard cut-out of C-3PO and R2-D2, but an autographed picture of Chewbacca in my office. I’ve always wanted a life-size R2-D2 of my own, and I think I’ve found the perfect one.
This particular R2-D2 is a mini fridge that was offered up as a prize back in 2002 at 7-11 stores in Japan. As such, only a run of 1000 were made available. Somehow ToyEast has gotten their hands on one, and is selling it off for $1,070. If you’ve got a grand burning a hole in your pocket, then by all means jump on this one, as it likely won’t last.
By Andrew Liszewski Has it been 10 years already? I know a lot of people really, really like The Large Lebowski, and while I enjoy the film as a whole (performances, writing etc.) I definitely don’t find it as ‘hilarious’ as most seem to. But fan or not, who could possibly resist the awesome bowling ball […]
By Andrew Liszewski
Has it been 10 years already? I know a lot of people really, really like The Huge Lebowski, and while I enjoy the film as a whole (performances, writing etc.) I definitely don’t find it as ‘hilarious’ as most seem to. But fan or not, who could possibly resist the awesome bowling ball packaging that Universal Studios has cooked up for the 10th anniversary edition of the film? The lack of Blu-ray does leave me scratching my head, since I don’t think I’ll ever spend the money on a non-hi-def DVD ever again, but once it does get the HD treatment I’m sure you can just swap out the SD versions. And while the 10th anniversary edition of the film won’t be available until September 9, you can pre-order a copy now from Amazon for just $23.99.
Scribd, the popular document sharing hub, has finally rolled out a much-needed redesign. The site has long been hampered by a messy homepage that wasn’t attractive for first-time visitors, displaying a list of its top features in lieu of a YouTube-esque stream of featured documents. The old design made it clear that Scribd worked well as a utility, but didn’t make it attractive as a destination site. Now, the new site highlights a sampling of its top documents and includes a number of UX changes that Scribd hopes will remedy this issue.
Scribd, the popular document sharing hub, has finally rolled out a much-needed redesign. The site has long been hampered by a messy homepage that wasn’t attractive for first-time visitors, displaying a list of its top features in lieu of a YouTube-esque stream of featured documents. The old design made it clear that Scribd worked well as a utility, but didn’t make it attractive as a destination site. Now, the new site highlights a sampling of its top documents and includes a number of UX changes that Scribd hopes will remedy this issue.
One of the major changes in the design is a new emphasis on search. Scribd has seen impressive growth since its launch in Spring 2007, and now claims more than 20 million very special visitors monthly. But more than half of that traffic comes from search engines - something that the site would like to change. The new design is intended to make the search function more prominent, encouraging users to turn to Scribd instead of Google or Yahoo when they’d like to find a document. And CEO Trip Adler states that it’s working: while A/B bucket testing the new design, Scribd has seen the number of searches double (the number of uploads increased by 70% as well).
Finally, in conjunction with the redesign, Scribd has ditched its yellow generic “document” logo in favor of something that reminds me of colored pencils.
Scribd’s biggest competitor is DocStoc, a document sharing portal that offers a similar Flash-based viewer.
Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published current data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results don’t seem to shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends. Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.
In an email to users this day, Yahoo announced that its year old social network Yahoo Mash will be shutting down on September 29. This was Yahoo’s fourth serious attempt at getting a foothold in social networking after Yahoo 360 and failed acquisition attempts of Facebook and Bebo.
Entries (RSS)