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Andrew Marantz has an interesting read in The New Yorker about Lulu, a mobile app already downloaded five million times that allows female users of Facebook to make positive and negative evaluations of male users on the basis of their romantic, personal, and sexual appeal. Lulu is rigidly heteronormative—only women can rate men—and women tend to use Lulu the way someone investigating a potential mate a generation ago might have sought out the town busybody.
“It’s one of these rare products that evokes only strong reactions,” says Sam Altman. “No one feels ambivalent about it.” To rate a man on Lulu, a woman selects from a battery of pre-written hashtags—some positive (#LifeOfTheParty, #DoesDishes), some negative (#Boring, #DeathBreath), and some ambiguous (#DrivesMeCrazy, #CharmedMyPantsOff, #PlaysDidgeridoo). Those responses are distilled into a harshly precise numerical score. Alexandra Chong calls her startup “a community where women can talk honestly about what matters to them.” Others have called it Yelp for men. “Of course people on Lulu talk about sex,” says Chong. “Sex is part of what women talk about.”
A man must grant his permission for a Lulu profile to be created on his behalf, and, perhaps surprisingly, most men consent, says Chong. “We try to tell men, ‘Women on Lulu are building men up, not just tearing them down.'” Many women use Lulu for caveat-emptor purposes, such as managing expectations before a date. “One guy I went out with had a lot of hashtags like #OneTrackMind," says Sarah Burns, "so I dressed conservatively, didn’t drink too much—I tried to send the message, I’m not going home with you tonight. Which I didn’t.”
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:32PM
I started trying to contribute a steady stream of articles after LamX raised a flag weeks ago, and I've been paying attention to the number of posts each sort attracts (and also articles submitted by others). The pure science articles attract maybe a dozen posts, tops. New gadgets or services do better, maybe two dozen. Quasi-political/societal/controversial consistently top two score to 50+. The highest conversation generators seem to be controversial tech articles, such as about systemd. But those don't come with enough frequency to constitute the entire story line-up in a 24-hour period, so the other sorts must fill in. Articles like these do attract discussion. Like it or not, admit it or not, folks, that though this is a technical audience it still loves to gossip, kvetch, and invey as much as any other.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:35PM
This is why it would be nice for some of the staff to do or give access to some willing (hear, hear! I've talked about this before, I'd love to do that) to do some rudimentary analysis of the data generated by SN's users.
We could then have an idea as to the representation of articles, number of posts they generate, the depth of threads etc. These are purely trivial questions, easy to answer if somebody had the time to create a couple of queries/views on the DB so report some metrics at regular intervals. I've got a bunch of ideas on this that could help us see where we're going and what direction SN is taking. Not that we'd necessarily want to take corrective action but it may explain some people's preference to post on certain topics and not others for example.
From there, we could build cliques of users and if we were really anal, try to see whether some people are modding one another up. Ok that's going too far. But anyway the point is that we're sitting on a pile of data and we're not really using it as far as I know. There could be some interesting stats to pull up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 30 2015, @02:05PM
I think that would be worth doing, too. I haven't plotted them out as data points because ironing out subjectivity in how an article is tagged/classified would seem necessary to avoid massaging classification to suit a pre-conceived narrative; that is, is an article about Congress considering a law to ban drones "News," "Techonomics," "Hardware," or "Security?"
As far as getting that data, you don't need to get any special access from SN staff to get it. Start a running tally now, let it roll for a month or so (or however long to achieve the level of confidence you're going for), and then plot & analyze. It seems like there would be some insights just from doing that. If you needed more that isn't viewable on the site, I'm sure you could hop on one of the IRC channels and ask for it.
That aside, I've tried to make it a morning ritual to find 4-6 articles SN might be interested in. I do try to avoid clickbait stuff (I will *not* submit anything about Bruce Jenner), but apart from that it's pretty much catch-as-catch-can. Some days there's lots and lots and you throw them into the hopper to maybe roll out over the next 72 hours. Some weeks it runs thin--this week has been one of those so far. From talking to the guys on IRC and my own observation, Friday through Sunday is slow. Personally I think we should start a Friday feature for the DIY'ers in the community to talk about their weekend projects, post pics, ask for advice, etc. I could see everything from RPi to woodworking to homebrew fitting nicely into that slot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:59PM
Yeah, I can remember when technology news was about technology. Those were the days.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:15PM
Just because I don't comment on an article, doesn't mean I don't want to read it. I'd be sad if the site switched exclusively to "conversation-generator" social and controversy type articles. I'd be equally sad if it went to pure tech. I like the current mix.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:22PM
Half the point of the nerd news is just to scare away the non-nerds. I want to discuss politics with nerds, so scaring away the non-nerds is important. About 85% nerdy stuff ought to do the job.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:40PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams