by RJN » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:48 pm
geckzilla wrote: ↑Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:29 am
I think the social network system is complex enough that it is nearly impossible to determine what exactly gives it a high viral rating.
This is a fascinating topic that I think about a lot. The main reason I thought this image would do well on FB APOD was because it did so well on FB Sky. This image was one of the most popular images there over the past few weeks. Although I liked the image, that surprised me. Although APOD's not been lacking for Jupiter images recently, I decided to see if that FB Sky popularity was a fluke. It was not. I was able to use it to provide an update to the "shrinking Great Red Spot" story, which I hope was interesting to the APOD readership, although I know by now that the image itself is usually the strongest draw.
I think your assessment above is mostly correct, but that the reaction of "focus groups" can indicate potential virality better than intuition. This is like a microcosm of the movie industry. Some movies cost millions of dollars to make but bomb at the box office. Analogously, some images take a great deal of thought and effort to take and compose, but end up having little educational value or popularity. However, after they are made, playing movies (and images) pre-release before a focus group audience is usually a pretty reliable indicator of how well the movie will do at the box office, or an image will do on APOD. But of course, even then there are surprises.
Again, popularity or potential popularity is not the only factor determining which images are selected for APOD. But predicting popularity is an interesting topic for me nevertheless. (I sometimes think that APOD can even be used as a testbed to study, in a limited way, social popularity.)
[quote=geckzilla post_id=281900 time=1524799744 user_id=124138]
I think the social network system is complex enough that it is nearly impossible to determine what exactly gives it a high viral rating.
[/quote]
This is a fascinating topic that I think about a lot. The main reason I thought this image would do well on FB APOD was because it did so well on FB Sky. This image was one of the most popular images there over the past few weeks. Although I liked the image, that surprised me. Although APOD's not been lacking for Jupiter images recently, I decided to see if that FB Sky popularity was a fluke. It was not. I was able to use it to provide an update to the "shrinking Great Red Spot" story, which I hope was interesting to the APOD readership, although I know by now that the image itself is usually the strongest draw.
I think your assessment above is mostly correct, but that the reaction of "focus groups" can indicate potential virality better than intuition. This is like a microcosm of the movie industry. Some movies cost millions of dollars to make but bomb at the box office. Analogously, some images take a great deal of thought and effort to take and compose, but end up having little educational value or popularity. However, after they are made, playing movies (and images) pre-release before a focus group audience is usually a pretty reliable indicator of how well the movie will do at the box office, or an image will do on APOD. But of course, even then there are surprises.
Again, popularity or potential popularity is not the only factor determining which images are selected for APOD. But predicting popularity is an interesting topic for me nevertheless. (I sometimes think that APOD can even be used as a testbed to study, in a limited way, social popularity.)