Making smarter readers: Lessons in Trilliscience
The Online Journalism Review has published my article on an idea for how online publishers can keep readers longer and further monetize their content.
Last week, I was chatting via IM with my brother about a party he hosted. Still in college, he’s 7 and a half years younger than me, so when he described the music playlist at his party as “crunk,” I had no idea what he was talking about. But in less than a second, I not only knew the meaning of “crunk” but was able to respond intelligently with: “As in Three 6 Mafia?” I had achieved instant context and instant application. How did I do it?
I was Trilliscient.
March 20th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Congrats ray.
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March 20th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Good stuff!
March 20th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Well written Ray. Very concise, quick, and to the point… even understandable to us in the idiot demographic.
-Nate
March 20th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Oh yeah, I remember that feature of Trillian. I had forgotten about it. I remember thinking it was really cool, but I turned it off because it alternately either (a) annoyed me or (b) distracted me from the conversation by giving me really cool, but totally unrelated, information.
I like the article, though. It’s a good idea for a news site, in particular.
March 21st, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Great article. Have you thought about the potential security/privacy issues inherent in Trilliscence? I suppose Apple/AOL can already monitor my instant messaging if they want, but this seems to open up my ‘private’ chats to yet another company…
March 21st, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Actually this is applying a technology released in Trillian to use within web pages, specifically on news sites. It’s not about an expanded use of chat technology - although what you are talking about is definitely a concern.
In particular, if you use Google Talk - take a look in your gmail inbox. You’ll see an archived transcript of every one of your conversations.
March 21st, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Ray, that makes sense. Except your article says you were chatting via IM with your brother when Trilliscence kicked in. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the technology. Wouldn’t be the first time…
March 21st, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Sorry - I thought you were talking about my idea.
Within Trillian itself - I don’t know how much they track. It would be bad karma for a company that simply allows users to aggregate their IM account, but who knows. I haven’t looked into it.
You can rest assured that AIM, Yahoo, and MSN archive our chat transcripts.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Sweet article, Ray.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Thanks for the note Ray,
That gives me some ideas for in contect tagging for my bibleicious project.