Bonfire of the vanity
17 November 08

Some things aren’t meant to be measured. It’s bad enough that people read so much into their blog stats, follower numbers etc, but now we have more evil forces like Twitterank. The number of people willing to surrender their privacy to its password anti-pattern is even more astonishing given its payoff: a dimensionless, reference-free number. Can this really tell you anything of value? Every day, social networks are clogged with this kind of pointless egotism, not mentioning the high-end vanity apps like Qwitter, which just add more fuel to the flames.
I understand that people love hearing about themselves. But if you listen hard enough there’s plenty of real human feedback on a network like Twitter. You don’t need to run an algorithm to tell you how much you’re getting out of it.
2 comments on Bonfire of the vanity
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James Wheare on 2 December 08:
Sure, people don’t *need* this stuff, they want it.
I think you’re missing the fact that these things are all a bit of fun that you try, have a quick chuckle over the fact that you have a follow quotient of 4.49, and then move on and not give a shit. Those who care the most seem to be the people blogging about how much it sucks and anyone who admits to noticing it is destroying the very soul of the internet.
Oh and the people commenting on said blogs…
(Yes I did go and calclate my follow quotient)
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