Be the Middle Cat
Be the Middle Cat
Illustration for article titled Day 1 with Kinja’s Active Now Feed

I’m doing that Active Now feed thing which is like a comment-based version version of that “Trending on Kinja” sidebar combined with the “Best of Kinja” posts. Since work was slow I noted the sites* of the top 25 posts (the first page) at the top of each hour** for eight hours today.

Did I learn anything from this exercise? Yes and no. The Active Now feed is dynamic. I noted stories within a minute or two either way of the top of each hour but the list changed every time I refreshed the page. These are just eight snapshots taken over the course of a day. I can infer some broad trends but that’s about it.

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Illustration for article titled Day 1 with Kinja’s Active Now Feed

Unsurprisingly the main pages are the bulk of the top 25 along with the usual suspects of sub blogs (the ones that used to be the reader run community forums for main pages). I think a lot of posters on those sub blogs don’t realize that a lot more people than they realize will know someone stole their BBQ grill or that they are thinking of buying a canoe.

Will I use the Active Now feed in the future? Yes. I normally don’t visit Deadspin and Jalopnik but there are the occasional posts that interest me when I see them in the trending sidebar. I will probably catch more of those stories in the Active Now feed (even though it is comment based not page view based).

There are thoughtful sub blog posts that deserve a wider audience but I’m not seeing them surfacing yet. But it’s only the first day so I will wait to see how things shake out.

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*to keep things simple I counted the verticals of a main page (like Defamer or The Concourse) in the main page counts.

**times are Pacific Time (UTC-7 hours)

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