Do you use Twitter? Now you can use it to suggest links! All you need to do is follow BBSuggest and start tweeting @ it.
For example, if you're an amateur astronomer and spot a report concerning Earth's impending destruction at the hands of a planet-destroying robot the size of the moon, tweet "Unicorn chaser! [link here] @bbsuggest" -- easy! Your contributions will head into our bloggin' brains -- and then into the collective superconscioussness of the Boing Boing trend tracker, an info-dense visualization of the topics and trends hit up by BB readers.
Many thanks to Palm, which is sponsoring the tracker, as you'll doubtless notice when you visit it.
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well hey... at least it's not a faucet this time.
When I first saw this, I thought that said UnicRon chaser, which makes as much sense, maybe even more so, as unicorn chaser in the context. Or maybe that was just my Transfangirl side speaking.
Do I use Twitter? Gee. last time I looked I wasn't a teenage girl so, uh. no....
It certainly did say Unicron Chaser!
Heh! neat idea, particularly because other people can then see all the ideas submitted that way. (using the twitter search function).
There's value to be gotten from some of the submissions that don't make it onto BB - and even from some of the incredibly lame submissions that I'm sure y'all get.
Fun!
Saskplanner: heh. Clearly you don't have any idea of the various ways Twitter can be utilized.
No crime in that. Your loss really.
Looks like the spammers have found it already, not suprising, esp. when only three mentions are required to shoot your link to the top of the list!
Seriously though, interesting idea, not sure how valuable all the metrics will be as the service settles into a normal volume of "tweets" (whatever that level may be). I suspect the truely "wonderful" suggestions will get lost in the noise, drowned out by the items that are better known and get more mentions.
The wonderful one-off mention would never appear on the lists (as I see it), and it is the rare one-off link that makes Boing Boing so, uhm, Boingy?!
I think a better name might have been (could be?) "zeitgeist" - not really picking nits, just that is what I think it will evolve into, not the most interesting links, but a balance between interesting, well-known, and timely links.
Dude! I can totally poach your suggest-stream for Steampunk items now! ;-)
I do you've scripted some data mining tools and you're not making some poor intern look at every tweet.
LOL! I broke my own rule and commented before reading the article!
Question: How are you dealing with re-tweets and vias? Are you being careful not to create a system where people with a lot of followers have a distinct advantage in getting your attention?
So this is basically a pre-packaged system developed by others -- we're exploring it ourselves and figuring out how best to make use of it.
Please consider using identi.ca rather than Twitter. Or even set up a BoingBoing StatusNet microblog. A proprietary data silo doesn't deserve BoingBoing's patronage.