It looks like they track our geo-location and the referring website.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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).<p>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.
"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?<p>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.
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"...<p>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!<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>If you want to listen to the album with the ability to skip tracks I recommend NPR's first listen: <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160323435/first-listen-the-xx-coexist" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160323435/first-listen-the-xx-...</a> (interestingly the first listen was published Sept 2nd, and Sept 3rd is the first day for the linked data viz)
I wonder if the idea is worth more than the act.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Good idea. Used up now I think.
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?<p>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.<p>I am probably the only one put off by the northern hemisphere in what looks like Mercator, so won't moan about that ;-)<p>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.<p>Also, poor China... They don't get to play.
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.