Think & Play
Thoughtplay is the creative team behind various popular websites and other projects. At this blog we give away bright ideas regularly, and comment on interesting trends both online and off. The thought channel is for more business-related trends, play looks at entertainment and leisure, and thoughtplay introduces our own creative ideas, as well as news about our projects.
WSYVF is back! | 180108
We're delighted to announce that we've relaunched our famous election quiz site, Who Should You Vote For? - this time focusing on the US primaries and presidential election campaigns. There are three quizzes at the moment, one each just for Democrats and Republicans, and one for people independent of either perspective. Try them now!
Categories: thoughtplay
Dear internet... | 130907
If your website:
1. Only works in certain browsers
2. Only works on PCs
3. Requires users to register before they can see what it does...
Leave me alone.
Kind regards,
A User
Categories: thoughtplay
Should politicans be getting shirty? | 070307
Thoughtplay is always interested finding new ways of predicting the results of elections - especially if the system involves looking at group behaviour - so were keen to see how successful our new method is. The Cafepress site allows users to design T-shirts, mugs and other items and share the revenue generated from the sales of these products. The early-starting US Presidential race has led to many designs being created - but can anything be learnt from this?
Our theory is a simple one - that the more popular a candidate is, the more designs relating them likely to be created. The rationale behind this is that the designers are commercially motivated - the greater demand they perceive, the more likely they are to create a design. So how do the candidates compare?
From the Republicans the three leading candidates break down as follows:John McCain has 700 designs, Rudy Giuliani has 870 and Mitt Romney 566. How does this compare to current polling? Well, a Fox poll at the end of February had Giuliani on 39%, McCain on 19% and Romney languishing on 6%. So far, the model works, but how about the Democrats?
Hillary Clinton has an astonishing 6,580 designs, John Edwards has 1,830 and Barack Obama 3,980. As for the polls, the most recent had Clinton on 34%, Obama on 23% and Edwards on 12%. So our Cafepress prediction model works? Well, perhaps.
Clearly there are factors other than popularity (or perceived popularity) that influence the number of designs on Cafepress. The fact that all of the Democratic candidates have far more designs than their Republication counterparts is probably more indicative of a liberal bias in Cafepress shoppers than a likely landslide in 2008. There is also the fact that there is a limit to the number of designs you can create about a candidate who is, well, perhaps a little dull. Finally, not all of the designs indicate popular support. A quick review of Hilary's designs suggests that approximately half, far from being supportive, are downright insulting about the Senator.
So are we writing off this shirt-based form of political prediction? No. We still have confidence in the wisdom of crowds and think that in this instance the shirts are ahead of the polls. Whilst Barack Obama had around 60% of the number of designs of Hillary, they were almost all - especially the best-selling items - positive. The official Thoughtplay prediction for the 2008 US Presidential candidates is therefore Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans and Barack Obama for the Democrats - let's see if history bears us out.
Categories: thoughtplay
Big in Sweden? | 220207
Obsessive trackers of web user statistics will know this already, but Alexa has added some new traffic measures.
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Alexa tracks the relative popularity of sites by monitoring the browsing activity of users of the Alexa toolbar. It is far from perfect, but it is still the best way of tracking the traffic to a website if you can't get hold of the actual weblogs.
The new features include showing what proportion of the Internet community visit a particular site, and what the national breakdown of visitors is. We have been surprised to learn that our Whatshouldireadnext site is (relatively) most popular in Sweden.
Categories: thought, thoughtplay
WSIRN/TON monthly update: Feb 07 | 050207
The top ten books at the site haven't changed this month, so here's some different data. We've spent ages analysing three months' worth of the data from the second half of 2006, and can now show the top ten books that people entered into the site - in other words the books that people enjoyed and have prompted them to seek recommendations for something similar, regardless of whether they're registered users. Here they are:
1. Harry Potter (all titles) - J K Rowling (2,10,12, etc)
2. 1984 - George Orwell (4)
3. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (1)
4. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (29)
5. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (16)
6. The Lord of the Rings - J R R Tolkien (20,27, etc)
7. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (14)
8. The Life of Pi - Yann Martel (15)
9. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (36)
10. The Catcher in the Rye (5) - J D Salinger
The figures in parenthesis show the current position in the top ten of books listed by registered users.
Categories: thoughtplay
The beauty of the commons | 110107
A few months ago there was much, largely downhearted discussion about 'participation inequality' (usability guru Jakob Nielsen) on the internet, focused around a general principle that websites relying on user-generated content show a similar pattern. The rule of thumb (Nielsen again) is "90% of users are lurkers... 9% contribute from time to time... 1% of users account for most contributions". Media commentator Seamus McCauley comments for example that "Wikipedia in 2006 isn't substantially more participative than Britannica in 1911" (the latter had around 1500 contributors; two-thirds of WP is created by a third of its users).
(The same general trend is observable at our own site, What Should I Read Next?. As little as 5% of traffic comes from registered users - though they account for around a fifth of activity at the site, and of course all of the data. Among those registered users, the pattern repeats: 27% of registered users generate 82% of the content. By the way, Ross Mayfield provides a nice analysis of the 'power law of participation' [thanks, jvvw].)
While the 1911 Britannica is a work of beauty, and the expertise of its contributors more clear than that of the eager Wikipedians, it was compiled under an authoritarian philosophy. The beauty of the participative commons is that we all have the choice. If only a small minority actually contribute, that's the way people clearly like it: more people want to consume than provide. We have only ourselves to blame if we don't like it - and isn't that better than railing at an authority - whether an encyclopaedia or newspaper editor, or indeed a dictatorial government - who we have little or no control over?
Categories: play, thought, thoughtplay
WSIRN/TON monthly update: Jan 07 | 020107
A hearty happy new year from Thoughtplay! We'll be sending out the first edition of our monthly email newsletter, The Internet Crow, this week. Meanwhile, an update from What Should I Read Next?:
The 10 most popular books (figure in brackets is the number of registered users' lists in which the book appears; the figure in bold shows change in position from last month, if any):
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (2325)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling (1794)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1728) +1
1984 - George Orwell (1717) -1
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1620)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1591)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien (1499)
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald (1347)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell (1324)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling (1186)
So not much change: once again 1984 and Hitchhiker's have changed places. We'll be keeping you updated every month. The What Should I Read Next? database now contains well over 290,000 individual recommendations, more than 30,000 new ones since last month. Well over 100,000 people have used the site in that time, too. Thanks as always for your support.
Categories: thoughtplay
Join our mailing list | 011206
Join the Thoughtplay mailing list for occasional updates on new projects or interesting things we've come across. (Only the * fields are mandatory.) We will never share your email address with anyone else.
Categories: thoughtplay
WSIRN/TON monthly update | 011206
Here's an updated chart of the the 10 most popular books at What Should I Read Next? (figure in brackets is the number of registered users' lists in which the book appears):
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (2215)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling (1658)
1984 - George Orwell (1594)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1583)
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1500)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1483)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien (1393)
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald (1266)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell (1213)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling (1098)
Only one change in the positions from last month: 1984 has overtaken Hitchhiker's to grab the No 3 spot. We'll be keeping you updated every month. The What Should I Read Next? database now contains well over 260,000 individual recommendations!
Categories: thoughtplay
Millionaires again (in a sense) | 141106
We're delighted to announce that our book recommendation site What Should I Read Next?, with its sister film/music recommendation service at ThisOneNext has just had its millionth visit!
Categories: thoughtplay
WSIRN/TON monthly update | 011106
Here are the 10 most popular books at What Should I Read Next? (figure in brackets is the number of registered users' lists in which the book appears):
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (2160)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling (1598)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1533)
1984 - George Orwell (1532)
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1449)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1431)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien (1348)
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald (1222)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell (1174)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling (1054)
Categories: thoughtplay
Crowdsourcing SMS information services | 301006
Services such as AQA in the UK and Google SMS in the US rely upon staffers providing answers to users' questions. How about some crowdsourcing?
Why not combine with something like Amazon's Mechanical Turk to answer people's questions by SMS - leverage the masses like Wikipedia, with 'Fraggles' competing to write/rate the best answer; they then get a cut of the SMS fee. (Though it would rely upon people rating quickly in order to give the user a prompt response.)
Categories: thoughtplay
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