News

Digg recently made a complete overhaul of their commenting system. Many reasons were cited, most notably how users were abusing the first post with replies (making the 12th reply to the 1st comment far more valuable than the actual 2nd comment). The changes were meant to make comments more usable for new users, even if it shook up the old users, and the old users were not happy about them.

However, I’m terribly interested to hear Digg’s thoughts on how the lower comments now perform. Where once a story was shown with all comments on a single page, now only the first 50 are, and a user must click to reveal the next 50 — it’s done dynamically, so once you click you now see comments 1-100 and not just comments 51-100. But it’s essentially an AJAX “browser fold” where things get hidden. Comment #2 has been appropriately promoted, but comment #51 has effectively been buried.

On an informal test with a highly active politics story, there were 200 total replies in the first 50 visible top-level comments. The next 50 posts, those that had been hidden, only had 6. This isn’t much of a surprise — Digg users aren’t the best at attention. Needing to click for more top-level stories is clearly a barrier, but is it comparable to the length of the page in the old system? Have these lower posts always had matching lower activity on them, or is this new “browser fold” now just an attention death-sentence?

A rule of thumb about breaking news: ask “so what’s next?” The more the answer leads into the unknown, the better the story is. Obvious, right? Last night on CNN they were obsessing over Castro’s health. I ask “what next?” and it’s not that unknown. At some point, Castro will die, it’s a given. But they spent a few minutes on content — how Cuba will react — and then it was all filler.

Video news is such a powerful medium, but it’s wasted on a 24 hour cycle. News comes in, you find out about it, and then you get on with your day. The killer app for news, IMHO, is an organization that groks the internet VOD, podcasting and IPTV. Sell subscriptions, get high-quality segments beamed directly into your cellphones and iPods, and be all about the information. Removing the requirement of being on-air all the time, and adding new layers of random access means you’ve removed the need for all the repetition and “entertainment” affectations that turn people off when it comes to television news.

“I think this is a dark day for TiVo, and this new feature is aimed at pleasing TV Networks and advertisers. I doubt a single customer would ever ask for this kind of feature, and that it happens while you skip commercials just drives the point home. TiVo is no longer TV your way, it’s TV their way.”—Matt Haughey

Kerry concedes. Hmm. This is better than dragging it out like in 2000, but this is not good in the big picture at all. I might have to change my tongue-in-cheek tag like “tracking the inevitable technocracy” to “tracking the inevitable civil war.” Still tongue-in-cheek, mind you. But I’ve never felt this nation so divided so firmly before, and over such unconstitutional ideas such as religious morality in government. It’s really frightening.

ABC News accidentally ran an AP news story on what happened at tonight’s debate…12 or so hours before it happened. Naturally, they’ve pulled the article. Annatopia grabbed some screenshots before ABC got wise to the error after being slashdotted. I’m mirroring them off .Mac here: 1 | 2 | 3

A quickie, from CNN:

The folks at Comedy Central were annoyed when Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly kept referring to “The Daily Show” audience as “stoned slackers.”

So they did a little research. And guess whose audience is more educated?

Viewers of Jon Stewart’s show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch “The O’Reilly Factor,” according to Nielsen Media Research.

I post about it not just because O’Reilly was trying to egg Stewart with typical FOX-right-wing-hammer strokes, but because Stewart was so completely unfazed by it and let such a honest sense of humor shine through all the insinuations.

Ubersite has an interesting play-by-play of the transcript available. And here is the original transcript off the FOX NEWS website.