Published in BuzzFeed Tech·Feb 3, 2017Analyzing 10 Million Inauguration EmojiDuring Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, we asked our readers to answer a series of questions on BuzzFeed using only emoji. Over the period of a few hours, we received hundreds of thousands of responses, tens of thousands of distinct emoji sequences, and a whopping 10 million emojis. The Official TRUMP Emoji The data spells…Emoji3 min readEmoji3 min read
Published in Data & Society: Points·Nov 23, 2016Fake News Is Not the Only ProblemBias, propaganda, and deliberately misleading information are much more prevalent and do more damage. — Points: Buckle up for a longer than usual Points post, friends (and don’t worry, there are lots of illustrations). Gilad Lotan, Chief Data Scientist at betaworks, chaperones us through some trends in how conversation and attention are being shaped online and argues they present a larger problem than “fake news.”…Journalism11 min readJournalism11 min read
Published in i ❤ data·Sep 29, 2016#TrumpWon? trend vs. realitya deep dive into the underlying data — Why is everyone so obsessed with this hashtag and the fact that it was in Twitter’s trending topics list the morning after the first presidential debate? Perhaps the competitive nature of a presidential debate — the fact that there’s supposed to be a “winner” — means that we’re reading into…Social Media7 min readSocial Media7 min read
Published in Render-from-betaworks·Feb 23, 2016The Network is Everything —analyzing the Anchor launch using social data. — Startup5 min readStartup5 min read
Published in i ❤ data·Feb 10, 2016Let’s not be HypocritesMy response to the Uber “Dead Miles” Argument — Jay Cassano reached out to me as he was writing his piece on Uber’s “dead miles” (linked below), questioning Uber’s current practice saving driver location data for potential product development. He was specifically interested in a Data Scientist’s opinion on the value of one’s location data — can we put…Entrepreneurship4 min readEntrepreneurship4 min read
Published in i ❤ data·Dec 31, 2015Apple’s App Charts: 2015 Data and Trends…or how much harder it is to get into the top charts — If you’ve launched an iOS app, you know just how difficult it is to gain traction. Even when spending on marketing, the odds are stacked against your success. The iTunes ecosystem is a walled garden, where on the one hand, Apple has full control over what’s accepted, while on the…Data10 min readData10 min read
Published in [in beta]·May 19, 2015Scale ModelFind, Follow and Reach Communities on Twitter — In a media ecosystem dominated by networks, gaining an understanding of your audience may be confusing. Who are all those followers, and how can you actually reach specific groups of users? …Betaworks6 min readBetaworks6 min read
Published in i ❤ data·Apr 24, 2015#FreddieGray — is not trending on Twitter?Last night, someone forwarded the following tweet to me: A few years ago, at the peak of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, I published a piece that explained how Twitter’s Trending Topics (TTs) algorithm works, and why, that very popular hashtag actually never trended in New York City. Even though we…Freddie Gray2 min readFreddie Gray2 min read
Published in The Message·Jan 16, 2015Apple, Apps and Algorithmic GlitchesA data analysis of iTunes’ top chart algorithm — On October 29th and December 18th, 2014, something very strange happened to the iTunes top apps chart. Like an earthquake shaking up the region, all app positions in the chart were massively rearranged, some booted off completely. …Tech11 min readTech11 min read
Published in i ❤ data·Aug 4, 2014Israel, Gaza, War & DataIsrael, Gaza, War & Data social networks and the art of personalizing propaganda It’s hard to shake away the utterly depressing feeling that comes with news coverage these days. IDF and Hamas are at it again, a vicious cycle of violence, but this time it feels much more intense. …10 min read10 min read
