Mad internet scientist

My heart is racing! Who would have thought a low-resolution cell phone video could kick-start physiological arousal as well as thirty minutes on a treadmill can?

So I’m working on integrating Twitter into this brand new blog and I see an update from Jason Calacanis reading, “I’m streaming live right now, come chat!” I think to myself, what the heck, I’ve got a few minutes to kill, might as well see what’s going on over at Mahalo.

I click the link and suddenly someone’s shouting at me through my computer speaker, “Seventy-five! Seventy-five! Do we have seventy-six? Going once! Going once! Going twice! We have eighty! WE HAVE EIGHTY!” I have no idea what’s going on, but a little bit of deduction suggests a Digg page about evil robot rankings is at work.

Jason continues to shout, “Blog this and I’ll Twitter your blog! Blog this and I’ll Twitter your blog!” That’s what got me– what better way to inaugurate my new domain than with a few hundred visitors referred by Jason? I threw a post together as quickly as I could (naturally, of course, the more fleet-fingered beat me easily).

Even though I wasn’t “qik” enough, I’m still impressed by the success of the experiment. In under five minutes the mob mentality of it all yanked a blog post, a Tweet, a Digg, and and ten minutes watching a streaming cell phone video out of me– and hundreds of other users, too.

(The only sticky wicket: some cell phone service issues stopped the feed mid-stream, so we’ll never know what happened to the Mahalo team after that!)

Although Jason’s tactics are unorthodox at times, the contrived race to promote the story worked wonders (I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s made it to the front page by now). Future individuals looking to spread their content might want to consider a similar tack.

In the meantime, though, I’m going to take a few deep breaths and search for a bottle of water. While I’m away, though, you’ll probably want to go ahead and Digg the story.

Edit: As for the official word, take a look at Chris Miller’s post– it must have been a pretty different experience from inside the room!

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Tagged as: calacanis, digg, mahalo, robots, twitter, Web Culture