The XX shared their new album with only 1 fan to see how it goes viral. | Hacker News Reader

The XX shared their new album with only 1 fan to see how it goes viral.

coexist.thexx.info

274 pointseliaskg80 comments

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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).

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.

In modern browsers it's possible for a webpage to change its favicon dynamically. Developers should take the habit of indicating their site is playing sound there.

Good luck with that. "Hey annoying people, it's best practice to let us know when you're being annoying".

True... It would still be a useful good practice for non-annoying websites. Sometimes you start a video somewhere but can't remember in which tab it is.

If you were using Chrome, my extension MuteTab (http://www.mutetab.com/) could help. It shows which tabs are playing HTML5 audio/video or have other plug-ins such as Flash. Unfortunately, it just provides a list and cannot tell you for certain if a tab is playing sound or not. (It could in theory indicate if HTML5 video/audio, some Flash sites such as YouTube, and QuickTime were playing sound, but I haven't implemented that portion at this time.)

To be fair.. its sponsored by IE! :(

Yes, but you could have expected it when opening a music artist's page.

The parameter in the URL is a little bit strange though.

Not really strange, the entire point of the page is tracking how this link spreads and therefore being able to track who gave the link to whoever clicks it is clearly useful information.

As somebody who uses Safari, the fact that it doesn't "activate" Flash until you focus the tab is one of its best features.

I actually find that annoying - I like to open videos in the background to let them queue up (and/or let the adroll finish).

I've seen Firefox on windows too this too - do you know how to disable it?

The flash plugin itself is not actually loaded until the tab gets focus.

I use click-to-play in Chrome, but this doesn't use Flash.

Ditto. It conflicted annoyingly with what I already had playing. I managed to take in about four seconds of her vocal before realizing that it was unspeakably bland.

What sort of vocals do you like? Any examples? Just curious with regard to your qualitative opinion here. I happen to like this, but I won't judge. To each their own.

Would you any more go to a 3rd-world country without appropriate immunizations than you browse the public Internet without appropriate flash-blocking plugins?

and just like your immunizations won't save you from a gunshot, flash-blocking is useless here against html5.

FlashBlock extension is pretty good for this (if of course the music/video is flash based)

That I can cope with, what's really annoying is that it stops playing if I minimize the window.

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.

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

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.

This would have been an easy fix too. They should give everyone who loads the page a new referrer ID and associated it with that user's IP. Then just redirect or use pushState to modify the URI in the browser.

It's a shame that they made such an obvious mistake as it's a very cool visualization otherwise.

My guess is that they use the referrer only as a point of origin on the map. Each subsequent user to hit that referrer id plots on the map in sequence from the original, based on their geolocation. They probably do not plot users who do not share their locale.

Just a guess.

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.

>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?

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.

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

"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.

    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?

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.

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

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

Presumably your first sentence is incorrect, then, yes?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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).

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-... (interestingly the first listen was published Sept 2nd, and Sept 3rd is the first day for the linked data viz)

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.

I think it has to do with Microsoft's recent social kick (everyone is on that kick lately >.>) and it also uses the visual style from IE's recent ads. (Like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFE4rkSaKOY)

In the last year I became almost but not quite entirely unlike an IE-team hater... I mean, they're doing a lot of cool things both on IE itself and on Google/Apple/Mozilla-esque experiments.

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

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

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.

"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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Worked in Chromium (Arch Linux), but it does say it's in collaboration with Internet Explorer.

Worked fine for my FF 15.0.1

Even works on FF 13.0.1 (Fedora)...

confirm ff15 stuck at 100% ubuntu 12.04

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

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

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

Edit: Duh :(

Presumably the one fan mentioned in the submission headline.

It could be the Hacker News poster for this submission. You don't really see any other places that have such great spread.

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

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

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

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.

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

cool track (Angels)

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