We are rolling back and disabling the "Who's Reading About" module on the pulse pages, as it hasn't performed as well.
The feature is also consuming a fair bit of computing resources, and causing a substantial increase in server side latency ( which went from ~500 ms to ~700 ms ).
Being a small startup, we have the ability to experiment with new ideas. But when something doesn't work as well as expected, its best to prune it out. It helps keep the product lean, as well as frees up space and time for other ideas.
The Geo-Popularity Platform on which this feature is based will continue to be developed. We have a few things in the pipeline, which we hope to unveil shortly.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Popular & Engaging posts for your blog
Update ( 7/9/2009 ) : We have moved the popular posts to a separate page. For the blog in our example below, the popular posts page is at http://www.wowzio.com/blogs/popularposts?ids=12271 . You will now see a link called 'Popular Posts for this blog' on the 'seewidgets' page, that links to this new 'Popular Posts' page.
Most bloggers are interested in knowing which posts of theirs are most popular and engaging amongst their readers. If you have installed ( at least ) one of Wowzio's widget or button on your blog, you can find the answer by simply going to your 'seewidgets' page on Wowzio. ( this is the link next to the 'grab' link at the bottom of your Wowzio widget )
As an example, for the blog You Get What You Give, the 'seewidgets' page on Wowzio is at http://www.wowzio.com/widgets/seewidgets?ids=12271. As you scroll down, you will see 3 lists of popular posts for this blog, the first one is over the past 24 hours, the second one is over the past 7 days, and the last one is over the past 4 weeks. We have also exposed these 3 lists via rss feeds.
We compute popularity and engagement of blog posts in our 'Pulse' platform. For more info on 'Pulse', click on what is Pulse.
Most bloggers are interested in knowing which posts of theirs are most popular and engaging amongst their readers. If you have installed ( at least ) one of Wowzio's widget or button on your blog, you can find the answer by simply going to your 'seewidgets' page on Wowzio. ( this is the link next to the 'grab' link at the bottom of your Wowzio widget )
As an example, for the blog You Get What You Give, the 'seewidgets' page on Wowzio is at http://www.wowzio.com/widgets/seewidgets?ids=12271. As you scroll down, you will see 3 lists of popular posts for this blog, the first one is over the past 24 hours, the second one is over the past 7 days, and the last one is over the past 4 weeks. We have also exposed these 3 lists via rss feeds.
We compute popularity and engagement of blog posts in our 'Pulse' platform. For more info on 'Pulse', click on what is Pulse.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Striving for a kids and family-friendly environment ...
We found out via feedback from our user community that there was adult/mature content that was starting to make its way in to some of our Pulses. We have started the process of removing adult/mature content from Wowzio Pulse. A big thank you to all of you who gave us a heads up, we appreciate it, as it helps keep Wowzio a kids and family-friendly service. Please don't hesitate to write to us when you come across objectionable content via our feedback form.
If you are a blogger who publishes adult/mature content, please refer to our Terms of Service.
If you are a blogger who publishes adult/mature content, please refer to our Terms of Service.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Some incremental features rolled out this week
We have been rolling out incremental updates over the past week, here's a few of them :
We have eliminated a few single points of failure in our frontend serving infrastructure. This will make our widgets serving infrastructure more available. We have also beefed up the hardware a little bit, so as to give us more widgets serving capacity.
On the seewidgets page for your blog, we have added the 'Popular Posts' section. So if you are wondering what posts in your blog have been the most popular over the last 24 hours, 7 days, or 4 weeks, you can see that list here. The posts are sorted by popularity in descending order, with a popularity score next to each post. The popular posts for you blog list is also available as RSS feeds.
On the badges page, we have now added a Beacon install option. This is for those bloggers who do not want to install a badge ( nor a widget ) from Wowzio, but would like to participate in Wowzio Pulse.
We have eliminated a few single points of failure in our frontend serving infrastructure. This will make our widgets serving infrastructure more available. We have also beefed up the hardware a little bit, so as to give us more widgets serving capacity.
On the seewidgets page for your blog, we have added the 'Popular Posts' section. So if you are wondering what posts in your blog have been the most popular over the last 24 hours, 7 days, or 4 weeks, you can see that list here. The posts are sorted by popularity in descending order, with a popularity score next to each post. The popular posts for you blog list is also available as RSS feeds.
On the badges page, we have now added a Beacon install option. This is for those bloggers who do not want to install a badge ( nor a widget ) from Wowzio, but would like to participate in Wowzio Pulse.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Who's reading blog articles related to a topic around the world ( Geo-Popularity ) ?
Thats right, we have quietly rolled out this new feature on our 'Pulse' pages. As an example, click over to Brazilian Bikini and check out the "Who's reading about Brazilian Bikini ?" module on the right hand. You will see a list of the top 7 countries from which users are reading articles with the tag 'Brazilian Bikini' in them.
How are we computing this ?
We are leveraging our 'Pulse' infrastructure, see our previous blog posts about 'Pulse' for more info:
Twitter'ize your blog posts contextually in real-time
Pulse is going real-time ...
What is grabbing reader's attention this very minute ?
In a nutshell, when a user reads a blog post on a blog that has a Wowzio widget or a Wowzio beacon installed, we store that info along with the geo-location of the user. We then aggregate all the geo-location info for each blog post in a 'Pulse' topic, to compute Geo-Popularity. This computation is done in real-time, so it is current as of the time you see it.
Another good example is the 'Pulse' page for 'swine flu'. The Geo-Location module on this page lists the countries, where readers are reading blog articles related to 'swine flu'.
We will continue to roll out exciting & useful new features leveraging our Geo-Popularity Platform. If you see bugs, or have some thoughts and ideas around Geo-Popularity, we would love to hear from you, here's the link to our feedback form.
Note: We do not store any personally identifiable info, there is no way for us to go back and figure out who was reading what article, nor can we backtrack to an IP address. This is because what we store is the forward translated location info ( not the IP address ).
Update - June 9th 2009: You might not see this module on all Pulse pages. We only display this module when we have data thats greater than our minimum threshold, so we can compute the distribution by countries with a high level of confidence.
Update - July 14th 2009 : We are rolling back and disabling the 'who's reading about' module on the pulse pages, as it hasn't performed as well. Being a small startup, we have the ability to experiment with new ideas. But when something doesn't work as well as expected, its best to prune it out. It helps keep the product lean, as well as frees up space and time for other ideas.
How are we computing this ?
We are leveraging our 'Pulse' infrastructure, see our previous blog posts about 'Pulse' for more info:
Twitter'ize your blog posts contextually in real-time
Pulse is going real-time ...
What is grabbing reader's attention this very minute ?
In a nutshell, when a user reads a blog post on a blog that has a Wowzio widget or a Wowzio beacon installed, we store that info along with the geo-location of the user. We then aggregate all the geo-location info for each blog post in a 'Pulse' topic, to compute Geo-Popularity. This computation is done in real-time, so it is current as of the time you see it.
Another good example is the 'Pulse' page for 'swine flu'. The Geo-Location module on this page lists the countries, where readers are reading blog articles related to 'swine flu'.
We will continue to roll out exciting & useful new features leveraging our Geo-Popularity Platform. If you see bugs, or have some thoughts and ideas around Geo-Popularity, we would love to hear from you, here's the link to our feedback form.
Note: We do not store any personally identifiable info, there is no way for us to go back and figure out who was reading what article, nor can we backtrack to an IP address. This is because what we store is the forward translated location info ( not the IP address ).
Update - June 9th 2009: You might not see this module on all Pulse pages. We only display this module when we have data thats greater than our minimum threshold, so we can compute the distribution by countries with a high level of confidence.
Update - July 14th 2009 : We are rolling back and disabling the 'who's reading about' module on the pulse pages, as it hasn't performed as well. Being a small startup, we have the ability to experiment with new ideas. But when something doesn't work as well as expected, its best to prune it out. It helps keep the product lean, as well as frees up space and time for other ideas.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Pulse Widgets - Twitter'ize your blog posts contextually in real-time, automatically
Today is an exciting day for us, we have rolled out 'Pulse' widgets. These can be found on our 'Pulse' pages in the right-hand column, some examples are :
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/973810_iphone-os
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/43032_android
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/366019_blackberry-os
Last month we rolled out a feature that would make 'Pulse' real-time. What's special about these 'Pulse' widgets is that they hook directly into the real-time 'Pulse' feed for the corr. topic. Hence these widgets update in real-time, and do not depend on any other intermediary sub-systems.
As an example, if you have a blog about mobile operating systems, you could place 'Pulse' widgets found on the above mentioned 'Pulse' pages on your blog and it will provide readers of your blog with contextual, fresh and relevant content aroung 'iPhone OS', 'Android' & 'Blackberry OS'. You can also use the corr. RSS feed for a 'Pulse' topic, and syndicate it on your blog in a different fashion.
For a blogger who has just blogged about a late-breaking event ( eg. terrorist attack in mumbai ), and tagged your post appropriately,
Wowzio will via 'Pulse', syndicate and distribute that post over the web in a contextual & relevant fashion, in real-time.
In fact, the 'Mumbai terrorist attack' was one of the triggering events, that got us thinking of combining the real-time feature of twitter, with the rich publishing medium of blogs. One way to think of this feature, is that it is helping twitter'ize your blog posts in a contextual & relevant fashion, automatically.
If you are a blogger and you would like to participate in pulse, please refer to how to participate in pulse. As always, we would love to hear from you, best way to share your thoughts with us is via our feedback form.
Thx,
Wowzio Team
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/973810_iphone-os
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/43032_android
http://www.wowzio.com/pulse/366019_blackberry-os
Last month we rolled out a feature that would make 'Pulse' real-time. What's special about these 'Pulse' widgets is that they hook directly into the real-time 'Pulse' feed for the corr. topic. Hence these widgets update in real-time, and do not depend on any other intermediary sub-systems.
As an example, if you have a blog about mobile operating systems, you could place 'Pulse' widgets found on the above mentioned 'Pulse' pages on your blog and it will provide readers of your blog with contextual, fresh and relevant content aroung 'iPhone OS', 'Android' & 'Blackberry OS'. You can also use the corr. RSS feed for a 'Pulse' topic, and syndicate it on your blog in a different fashion.
For a blogger who has just blogged about a late-breaking event ( eg. terrorist attack in mumbai ), and tagged your post appropriately,
Wowzio will via 'Pulse', syndicate and distribute that post over the web in a contextual & relevant fashion, in real-time.
In fact, the 'Mumbai terrorist attack' was one of the triggering events, that got us thinking of combining the real-time feature of twitter, with the rich publishing medium of blogs. One way to think of this feature, is that it is helping twitter'ize your blog posts in a contextual & relevant fashion, automatically.
If you are a blogger and you would like to participate in pulse, please refer to how to participate in pulse. As always, we would love to hear from you, best way to share your thoughts with us is via our feedback form.
Thx,
Wowzio Team
Thursday, April 2, 2009
1 Billion widgets ...
Over this weekend, we reached a notable milestone. Wowzio served out 1 Billion widgets, this is since we went live in June 2008. Our current run rate is approx. 200 Million widgets a month.
To mark this event, we are opening up access to Wowzio for the next 24 hours. So for the next 24 hours, you do not need an invite. Simply head over to the widget builder and start building widgets for your blog.
We have also been working on Pulse and recently rolled out an enchancement to it, that makes Pulse real-time.
To mark this event, we are opening up access to Wowzio for the next 24 hours. So for the next 24 hours, you do not need an invite. Simply head over to the widget builder and start building widgets for your blog.
We have also been working on Pulse and recently rolled out an enchancement to it, that makes Pulse real-time.
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