4 ms·

The whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something

The whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something "higher brow" and more complex than just a spammy blog.

GuiA 11y ago
To be fair though the "science" of anything social always seems like fluffy nonsense made to make spaghetti throwing on the wall seem like methodical, analytical research.
- hderms 11y ago
  If your measurements are good enough you can make a methodology out of throwing spaghetti at a wall.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  Related: "Is Computer Science Science?" https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf > What is your profession? Computer science. > Oh? Is that a science? Sure, it is the science of information processes and their interactions with the world. > I’ll accept that what you do is technology; but not science. Science deals with fundamental laws of nature. Computers are manmade. Their principles come from other fields such as physics and electronics engineering. ...
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Science is manmade and man is of nature. It's true that most programmers do not do computer science but CS as a science does exist. CS is the study of data structures and algorithms. CS can be viewed as a branch of mathematics but it is much more process oriented than most math disciplines.
    - Atheros 11y ago
      If aliens ever land they're going to have the exact same sorting algorithms we have. Their history of CPUs will be the same as ours.
      - njonsson 11y ago
        Unless they chose the ternary path. It’s closer to base e and therefore closer to optimal than binary.
      - jcoffland 11y ago
        Unless they have quantum computers or something completely different that we have not thought of. There's a good chance that our conception of computer science, or even science for that mater, is completely unique in the universe, like a snowflake. Science is merely a model humans use to understand the world around them, with limited success.
LeifCarrotson 11y ago
Spammy blogs just wither and die. They do not produce a huge company like Buzzfeed.
tedmiston 11y ago
I felt similarly until I saw Fletcher Heisler (TrackMaven) give the talk Analyzing social media data with Python at PyOhio '14. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY Code + Jupyter Notebook: https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014 https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014

GuiA 11y ago

To be fair though the "science" of anything social always seems like fluffy nonsense made to make spaghetti throwing on the wall seem like methodical, analytical research.

hderms 11y ago
If your measurements are good enough you can make a methodology out of throwing spaghetti at a wall.
tedmiston 11y ago
Related: "Is Computer Science Science?" https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf > What is your profession? Computer science. > Oh? Is that a science? Sure, it is the science of information processes and their interactions with the world. > I’ll accept that what you do is technology; but not science. Science deals with fundamental laws of nature. Computers are manmade. Their principles come from other fields such as physics and electronics engineering. ...
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Science is manmade and man is of nature. It's true that most programmers do not do computer science but CS as a science does exist. CS is the study of data structures and algorithms. CS can be viewed as a branch of mathematics but it is much more process oriented than most math disciplines.
  - Atheros 11y ago
    If aliens ever land they're going to have the exact same sorting algorithms we have. Their history of CPUs will be the same as ours.
    - njonsson 11y ago
      Unless they chose the ternary path. It’s closer to base e and therefore closer to optimal than binary.
    - jcoffland 11y ago
      Unless they have quantum computers or something completely different that we have not thought of. There's a good chance that our conception of computer science, or even science for that mater, is completely unique in the universe, like a snowflake. Science is merely a model humans use to understand the world around them, with limited success.

LeifCarrotson 11y ago

Spammy blogs just wither and die. They do not produce a huge company like Buzzfeed.

tedmiston 11y ago

I felt similarly until I saw Fletcher Heisler (TrackMaven) give the talk Analyzing social media data with Python at PyOhio '14. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY Code + Jupyter Notebook: https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014 https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014