Posts

Observations about Twitter hashtags

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I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, and wanted to note two things I've gleaned, rather unscientifically. First, about tweeting topics (or trending hashtags) and culture. In Japan, many trending topics and/or hashtags encourage sharing of personal information, and moreso of interaction between twitter users. Some examples from the last few days are: "how I came to start tweeting" and "what age would you say I am?". What seems far less prevalent thematically in Japan when compared to the other places I've been watching (French, German, Irish, American), are people (celebrities, sports figures), TV shows, and states of mind. Since I don't keep abreast of most entertainment news, and think twice before presenting too many of my rants for public consumption, I'm finding it easier to participate in incorporating the Japanese themes into my tweets, than the Western ones. Second, a tale of two anniversaries and twitter strategies: MIT15

iOS vs Android users - commentary on an infographic

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A former manager of mine shared this infographic on LinkedIn the other day, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the findings it presents. First, it mentions that Android users mainly fit the 18-34 age bracket, which really seems to explain many of the other traits they're more likely to have. Specifically, the survey results reveal that Android users tend to have started using the internet around or after 2000, their incomes tend to be (significantly) lower than iOS users, they're not as well-traveled, and they tend to hold fewer educational qualifications. From the combination of these I suspect that the large portion of the sampled Android users simply haven't completed their undergraduate work yet. Next, let's look at the gender skew -more men than women typically use Android. There's a well-touted gender correlation with math and perhaps stereotypically, with meat-heavy food preferences. Although having said that, anecdotally within my local team, there a

Personal thoughts on Twitter and follower counts

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... iff (if and only if) you appreciate my blog! Here I'd like document various thoughts concerning my journey in Twitter, which I joined in 2009. At first, I wasn't convinced that I would enjoy using it. Already feeling overwhelmed by the Information Age, I also noticed a lot of highly public yet personal (read: inappropriate or irrelevant for mass consumption) tweets as well as quite a lot of rude behaviour (ad hominem attacks). At the time of joining I had no Smartphone, and even now I have a severely minimalist data plan, so I don't tweet "on the go". Since I walk to work, checking the twitter stream on my commute is also fairly hazardous (although having said that, when I had a painful bus commute I relied on audio casts and preferred musical recordings stored in my iPod due to the ease with which I succumb to motion sickness.) As of today, mostly due to the aforementioned circumstances, I still only have a handful of tweets. More depressingly, I

5 Writing tips, or a response to "8 Essential Tips to better Content Writing"

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Here's the original blog post upon which I'm commenting. (A disclaimer: I've had no interactions with this author save the message I left for him on his blog. I also have no metaphorical axe to grind nor malice with which I'm replying (the apt expression in Japanese would be that I'm not "selling him a fight"). It's simply that I wish to present my critique on the actual 8 listed tips. I certainly agree with his opening paragraph.) Now, my response proper: I believe his 8 tips could be condensed into 5. Moreover, in my world they would be re-ordered as the following: Valuable This merges his "valuable" and "solution" tips, and is related to "relevance" too, in terms of what the audience expects to find on the site, topic-wise. Credible  Using vetted sources for information is an essential part of all academic writing; lend credence to one's own assertions whenever possible online, too. This also touches

Why most bloggers needn't worry about high bounce rates

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I was encouraged to read a couple of posts that talked about bounce rates from a web analytics person. In them, he describes several contexts in which high bounce rates should not be construed as being a negative reflection of the quality of the site or content. My own bounce rate is nearing 75% to date. In the web metrics world, bounce rate is defined as when " the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages [within the same domain]  before a specified session-timeout occurs. " In the aforementioned blog, the first entry talked about when the page's call to action takes the user to an external page or an advertisement link, and what is most valid for blogs, when the page arrived at is a so-called "destination page". Since most blog designs that I've seen provide the most recent entry content for quick viewing on the root or landing page, people whose blog posts are brief enough to be displayed in their entirety, returning readers only need