I spent a few minutes tonight doing the
MIT Weblog Survey (off
Blogger Buzz). Despite the unfortunate choice of the term "weblogging" (so
very last century), it's pretty cool that yet another person is writing his PhD dissertation on the social nature of blogging. Plus, I like doing surveys. (Confession: I actually volunteered to do AC Nielsen's annual Asia-Pacific survey of internet behaviour, and then I volunteered to join their email list so that they could keep reminding me to do their survey every year.)
Anyway, as part of the MIT survey, you punch in your blog URL and it selects at random five links to ask you more detailed questions about. The five lucky winners off my blog were:
- Stellou
- Prima Taste (from last week's chilli crab post)
- umami
- lisa montgomery
- The BoKoLog
This includes: two close friends whom I see all the time, a close friend whom I'd see all the time if we hadn't spent the last eight years living in different countries, someone I don't know at all but whose blog I enjoy very much, and, coming completely out of left field, a completely non-blog link.
Which, for a random selection, is also pretty representative of the different types of links on this blog. Whatever algorithm the survey's using, it's pretty neat. (Then again, it
is made in MIT.)
6 Comments:
Herh herh ...yuan lai you are a survey sucker too! Hah! Just like me!
And yes, I'm on the AC Nielsen thing too ... geek hor?
Anyway, this MIT survey is quite skewed lah. Not as international as I expected ... they're gonna get very US-based results, despite the universal reach of blogs which is kinda ironic. How many of us use AIM here and we do meet the people we IM everyday, fairly often, simply because of proximity on our tiny island.
The links that were randomly picked from mine, were from more or less the same blog. Lightsabers, PSP, Lumines, Daniel Libeskind and Epicurious. All informative links. Hmm ... which means that I haven't been a great blogger linking friends and sort huh?
Oh well, not that I know of a better way of writing the survey but that's my take on the inaccuracies.
BUT I STILL LOVE SURVEYS!
They make me feel ... loved!
Warp liao ...
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I had actually planned to translate it into about 20 different languages, but time got tight and I had to launch the survey in order to meet my Ph.D. deadline. After things settle in July, I'm hoping to still follow through with the international versions.
Anyway, thanks for taking the survey.
Oh, the algorithm btw is just a random selection of your external links. Some people think this is completely representative, others think it's horrible.
Very coincidentally, your blog happened to be one of the links that they turned up from my blog. :D
I wonderwhy you love doing surveys so much, is it a therapeutic thing? Some surveys are so frigging long I can't even get through it halfway.
online surveys = cheap form of narcissism
I mean, don't you want to hear more about how you're special in this world?
Abi --- Clearly, we are sisters.
cameron --- Wow, thanks for stopping by! And I suppose yeah, random is what would work best for a survey like yours. It all evens out, eventually.
Mr Moron --- I don't do all surveys, willy-nilly. E.g. I'm not a big fan of those "Which _______ Are You?" quizzes and such, which are kinda mini-surveys. I tend to do those that I think will give me a chance to analyse my own behaviour, or that might help a fellow out.
Nardac --- I think blogging's an even cheaper form of narcissism :)
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