Business - Written Sunday, October 19, 2008 by Jeff DeChambeau - 2 Comments

XKCD, YouTube, and the Emerging Personalities of Applications and Companies

Every so often, Randall Munroe,  author of the XKCD webcomic, gets it right — really, really right. A while ago, Munroe had this to say about comments on YouTube, something I tend to agree with most of the time (just search for any term that is mildly related to a controversial issue, and feel your brain melt as you push your way through increasingly inane comments filled, with growing amounts of four letter words — often typoed down to three, or even two letters). A recent XKCD comic followed this up, suggesting that YouTube read back comments to the users about to post them, so that the users are given a chance to see just how little they really are contributing (leading them to conclude that “I’m a moron… I… I didn’t know..”). YouTube was paying attention to this suggestion, and actually added audio preview as a(n optional) feature.

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