
The XX shared their new album with only 1 fan to see how it goes viral. - eliaskg
http://coexist.thexx.info/?referrer=0c5fc7c8-f178-45a5-b34f-ed841150356d
======
dpcan
It looks like they track our geo-location and the referring website.

I like watching the animation, and it's a cool site. What would be more
awesome (IMO) is if they took this information and created a visualization of
the path their band took to finally reach me.

So, it showed them on the map, in their garage playing, to the studio, to
distributing the track to that one guy, to him posting it to a website, to
another guy re-tweeting, to some kids posting to Facebook, and finally
reaching me on Hacker News - and do this with a map with photos on it as well.

Over time it would just get longer and more interesting. Especially if they
let me link myself to the site somehow with a photo so when others watch their
path, they see the people that got them there.

Just a thought. Kind-of like the beginning of that Movie "Lord of War" where
they follow the bullet from manufacturing to the hands of the warlords to it
being fired.

~~~
spydertennis
this is a cool idea but eventually it would just be lots of minutes of photos
of people sitting in front of their computer screen.

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SquareWheel
As somebody that opens a dozen HN tabs at once, I do not appreciate the
automatic playing music.

~~~
CamperBob2
The worst part of the whole experience is when you realize that there _still_
is no visual indication in a Firefox tab when the page it contains is running
a video or Flash script, or otherwise is making noise in a way that the
browser engine can detect.

Do any other mainstream browsers make it easier to find the tab that's
responsible for making racket without madly clicking through all of them
and/or closing every open browser window?

~~~
mmcnickle
The issue is that the plugin model means that Firefox has no way of knowing if
sound is playing via a plugin. The plugins access the OS's sound layer
directly.

Edit: The relevant bug report:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486262>

~~~
christianmann
Except that it's not playing via a plugin. It's HTML5 audio. I feel as though
this, at least, could be known and indicated.

~~~
mmcnickle
The objection [from the bug report] being that they don't want to introduce
inconsistent behaviour depending on how the sound is being played (plugin vs
HTML5 audio).

~~~
xtdx
If I don't like how a plugin works, I can uninstall the plugin. If I don't
like how the browser works, I can... oh, I guess I can uninstall that too.

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vannevar
You're never going to get virality from an experiment involving a band that
has already had a hit record. The best you're going to get is to see how
quickly the music media finds out that the link was released.

~~~
notJim
That's what I would have thought, but I found this on Facebook before my
music–blog reading friends found a link to it.

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simias
I can see a problem with this, when I open the link the URL remains the same
(i.e. the "referrer" part is not updated). If I were to share it I'd just
copy/paste the URL, in effect meaning that I won't appear as a "node" in the
graph. I wonder if that's why the graph seems very "centralized" around a few
points.

Unless it's because I refused to share my location. They should explain why
they need it beforehand, I would never allow that by default (I only
understood the point once I saw the map).

EDIT: Also, it will probably not take the retweets and similar into account,
as the URL will remain the same. Overall it's an interesting concept but I
doubt it'll provide any worthwhile data.

~~~
Shorel
Boo, scary websites want to know where you are.

Honestly, I don't see the problem, this is not worth raising the cat-signal
for.

And you are right about the referrer. They don't generate it, use it or do
anything useful otherwise.

May be doing it right is a good plan for another YC startup.

~~~
Foy
>Boo, scary websites want to know where you are.

Nothing wrong with being alarmed by a site that automatically plays music and
wants to know where you live.

If the cashier at Subway or any other stranger with whom you had minor contact
one day asked where you lived wouldn't you be more than just a little alarmed?

~~~
stilldavid
What if a major retailer asked for your ZIP code at the register? This happens
to me often and is much more analogous to the situation than a cashier asking
where I live.

~~~
tensor
I decline. They don't need to know this.

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ewolf
"A collaboration with Internet Explorer" and everything's jaggy on a big
screen — can't deny the irony. When will Microsoft finally learn how to
properly use web technology?

Regarding the link copy issue: They could've just added an automatic
redirect/URI change on page load. Too bad they didn't think of that.

~~~
diggan

        When will Microsoft finally learn how to properly use web technology?

When they invent some good web technology. Oh, wait, they totally did... You
heard of AJAX?

~~~
ewolf
They certainly contributed to the web, even if part of their contribution was
rather counter-productive (IE, we're looking at you!). But you have to admit
that it's quite embarrassing for a company as well-known and large as
Microsoft to finally use HTML5/Canvas on a website and still not being able to
draw smooth curves.

~~~
diggan
Well, I say AJAX feels like a better feature than Canvas. Where would we be
without AJAX?

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eslachance
The "stream" animation is very laggy in Firefox 15, but works fine in IE9, so
I guess "In collaboration with IE" is more "optimized for IE"...

I kinda like the music though, and the social experiment is nice. I'm assuming
the massive spike in sharing that stems from the US is actually this post
right here!

It would be nice to have some solid stats, as well as some info on my own
share. With the mass of wires it's hard to tell whether someone actually stems
from me or not.

~~~
wmeredith
I'm not sure if the big spike was HN or not. This hit the front page of Reddit
and The XX already has a large following of tech savvy hipsters.

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wmblaettler
The concept is very cool, but I find the UI lacking. I'd expect to see a
cumulative expansion from patient zero, with a more continuous timeline. This
appears to show the current visitors at that moment in time, which could allow
for the viewer to see how visits fluctuate with time of day and surges grow
larger over time, but it fails to even show this very well.

Of course it's easy to criticize, so props for the neat idea and decent
execution.

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mmaunder
That's pretty, but it doesn't look viral. One expects to see one point going
to somewhere between 1 and a large number which spreads to somewhere between 1
and a large number and so on. It should look more chaotic and more like a
fractal I'd think. This looks like one fan spread it to a huge number. So I'm
guessing there is missing data e.g. the first fan getting too much credit.

~~~
chrisrhoden
It's because everyone is sharing the same link instead of sharing their own.
The link on this HN page is the original sharer's URL

~~~
mmaunder
Exactly, and it's a real bummer because true virality would have looked much
more interesting.

~~~
eevilspock
How is HN being a sharing node not "true virality"? I think you don't quite
understand "viral".

~~~
sirclueless
The point was to see the web of virality, but if everyone uses the same url
instead of generating one via the "Share" link on the page itself that falls
apart. If you copy-paste the url from HN to facebook, for example, then the HN
sharer seems to have originated all of the Facebook inbounds.

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Matsta
Essentially a good idea, but really badly executed. Looks like a flash website
from 2005

~~~
andr
This is more about the social experiment than reaching new levels in graphic
design.

~~~
SquareWheel
I actually really like the graphic design. And the music too, for that matter.

------
tnorthcutt
Neat idea, and pretty visualization. I think they could have done a lot more
with it, though. For instance, sometimes dragging the slider to a point
produces no result (other than colore dots on the map - no sharing lines,
though).

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crisnoble
This is very cool, awesome visualization from an awesome band. Weird that IE
sponsored it but beautiful nonetheless.

If you want to listen to the album with the ability to skip tracks I recommend
NPR's first listen: [http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160323435/first-listen-the-
xx-...](http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160323435/first-listen-the-xx-coexist)
(interestingly the first listen was published Sept 2nd, and Sept 3rd is the
first day for the linked data viz)

~~~
dpcan
Looking at the page's source, they have created a browser update path for
users of older versions of IE. Looks like this is another way of getting rid
of old browsers.

------
brittohalloran
Ahhhh, hence the "this website wants to track your location"

~~~
daleharvey
It has a visualisation of who is listening to it on the page

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Dn_Ab
I wonder if the idea is worth more than the act.

By actively talking about how, if 1 fan can make something viral you have
created an external something that can catalyze the spread. The idea of 1
person trying to make something viral is interesting in itself and will help
generate the impetus that just might carry it through to 'viral', independent
of the music and the action itself.

It matters if that 1 fan is a highly connected node or only 1 or even 2 from a
highly connected node with each having a high reshare probability.

Good idea. Used up now I think.

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error54
"In collaboration with Internet Explorer"

Doesn't even have a good fail back on IE 8 which still has a good percentage
of the market.

------
zackbloom
I'm a little unclear why they're plotting this on a map of the world. Isn't
virtually all of the spread over the internet? What is the relevance of
physical location? It'd be more interesting to see what online communities
were involved (referrer data).

------
scelerat
Is this Patient Zero the first person to whom they gave the track, or the
first person to share the track resulting in viral distribution?

There is a difference. Dead ends are possible and entirely likely.

------
cgil
It's interesting to see the clustered areas of popularity, ie. NA and western
Europe. Are they limiting distribution/tracking in Eastern Europe and Asia or
is there no fan base there?

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opminion
Thanks for the music.

I am probably the only one put off by the northern hemisphere in what looks
like Mercator, so won't moan about that ;-)

No thanks for the automatic play on page load.

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tankbot
Cool idea but as others have mentioned, the 'viral' visualization is pretty
but doesn't represent any one-to-many shares.

Also, poor China... They don't get to play.

------
Paul_S
doesn't work for me (FF15) - stuck at 100% loading :(

~~~
xyzzyb
Worked fine for my FF 15.0.1

~~~
samwilliams
Even works on FF 13.0.1 (Fedora)...

------
morgannnn
I love this. They're such a creative band, cool when they take a real interest
in their fans, elements outside the music itself

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eyevariety
I love how Hacker News has a bunch of pissed of nerds that are mad that a
website advertising music plays said music.

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nodata
Aren't The XX from London? What does the starting point represent? The hosting
server at Microsoft?

Edit: Duh :(

~~~
corin_
Presumably the one fan mentioned in the submission headline.

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jamesaguilar
The scroll bar on the right doesn't work for me, but other than that, it's
cool!

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circa
Yeah but this leaked weeks ago. When was this launched? Still really cool.

~~~
circa
nevermind. I see it looks like Sept. 3rd. It did leak over 3 weeks ago but
this is a cool concept.

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zenocon
sadly, if you live in cape horn you can't play. sidenote: all the
"..grr...flash...grr.." comments on here made me chuckle (hint: right-click).
it sounds like a good album.

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mnicole
Listened to it on Rdio this morning, now I feel like I cheated.

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propercoil
cool track (Angels)

