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Reddit Starts Trending

There’s a new way to discover communities on Reddit, as one of Twitter’s most popular and useful tools has migrated to the “front page of the internet.”

Redditors now have the ability to see which subreddits have been trending on the day, in an effort to get users exposed to the site’s smaller communities. According to Tech Crunch, the site will use an algorithm to highlight a handful of non-default subreddits that have been seeing high amounts of activity.

Logo for new subreddit of trending communities on Twitter

The “Trending Subreddits” logo on Reddit

The trending subreddits are located near the very top of the front page, above the top post on the first page. The trending subreddits for today were “oddlysatisfying,” “JapaneseGameShows,” “smashbros,” “minimalism,” and “gameofthrones.” The focuses of these are pretty self-explanatory.

The deafults, that ate excluded, are those that non-registered users see when they visit the site, and include, among others: Gaming, AskReddit, Funny, Pics, Technology, TodayILearned, WorldNews, and Music.

So far, reactions have generally been positive. The highest-voted comment on the “TrendingSubreddits” thread, reads,

Huh this is new, I like this idea. Its a good way to discover new subs.

Others used words like “fantastic addiction,” “one of the best new features in years,” and “great feature.”

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Exam Time: Ranking the Most Followed Universities Per Capita

It’s exam time! For those students toiling away at our post-secondary institutions, the next few weeks will be spent with noses dug into textbooks, coffee shops crowded with caffeinated co-eds, and a general sense of dread.

In honour of the season, this week’s post looks into which Canadian universities are performing the best on Twitter.

In order to quantify the which universities are getting the most bang for their buck on Twitter, we compiled the most recent enrollment numbers from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, as well as the number of followers per primary Twitter account as of April 2, 2014.

Image of Carleton University logo with Twitter bird on top.

Carleton University’s Twitterized logo. Carleton has close to 18,000 followers at writing

The school with the highest number of followers per capita? One that also ranks high on the National Survey of Student Engagement – Royal Roads University.

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Twitter Activism on a Local Level: The Day a Bridge Tweeted

“I am frustrated….I am alone and cold and I have been left all alone here for a long time!”

These words make up the biography for the “Airport bridge” Twitter account. That’s right, the airport bridge.

Snapshot of Airport Bridge Twitter account

The Twitter account continuing to play up the non-human character.

Launched Monday of this week, the account personifies one of Ottawa’s longest-running municipal disasters, a proposed pedestrian bridge originally scheduled to be completed in October 2011. Nearly three years later and $4.5 million over budget, the bridge remains incomplete.

The bridge has faced a number of problems, from faulty concrete that needed to be torn down and re-poured to rethinking its entire design. While the city expects the bridge to be complete by this year, no construction is currently underway.

As a result, one fed-up citizen decided to take the matter into her/his own hands, and where better to turn than social media?

After a relatively quiet first two days, the Huffington Post published a story about the Twitter account on Wednesday night, when it had 35 followers. By Thursday, the account had taken off. At the time of writing, the bridge’s account was up to over 620 followers.

While the creator of the account has been extremely loyal to the idea of being a personified version of the bridge as opposed to revealing his/her identity, s/he has remained active in pursuing media attention.

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Women's university hockey action.

Moving Women’s Sports from the Margins to the Living Room

Published on Elle Beaver – March 20, 2014

Close to 13 million Canadians tuned in to watch the women’s hockey gold medal game at last month’s Olympics, with a peak of 6.37 million viewers in the dying minutes when Canada mounted their incredible comeback against the U.S.

During the previous summer games in London, 3.8 million watched the semi-final soccer match between the same two nations.

So please, say again that women’s sports are boring. Or that the players aren’t as athletic or skilled. Or the games aren’t competitive.

The numbers don’t lie. It has been a slow progression, but Canadians are showing that such criticisms are outdated, and more to the point, founded in thin air.

With the Canadian Interuniversity Sport winter championship season in full swing, Rogers has reached out to provide Canada’s top student athletes a national stage. Two weeks ago, the men’s basketball championship was broadcast on Sportsnet, while the semi-finals were on Sportsnet360. This past weekend, the women’s basketball tournament had two semis and one final game on SN360, while the women’s hockey gold medal game was also broadcast on SN360.

Of course, the fact that Rogers’ SportsnetU programming is showing any winter championships is progress in and of itself, as broadcasting anything aside OUA football games of the week and national football playoffs was generally unheard of before this year.

Taking on a new direction, however, Sportsnet broadcasted the semi-finals and title games of the men’s and women’s basketball and men’s hockey championships, as well as the final game of the women’s hockey championship. It’s high time that our amateur student athletes get a greater national spotlight, but in a hockey crazy market that broadcasts the Tier II Junior “A” championship tournament across the country, the fact that the university championship for basketball is shown cannot be understated in itself.

When you add in the lack of media coverage for women’s professional sports (like the CWHL and WNBA), the fact that our female university stars can shine on such a stage is even more important.

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Deadspin’s Takeover on Twitter: What Was the Point?

There’s no denying that Gawker Media has a certain edginess that draws readers in like addicts.

As one of the leading click bait sites, Gawker does a lot of things to give it that reputation: they swear in articles (gasp), they rally against the status quo when others back down, they write lists about everything from Lost characters to pie. They even split fans of America’s pastime and wreaked havoc with the whole Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this year when they bought a vote from ESPN’s Dan LeBatard. They are not strangers to controversy, and people either adore or hate them for it.

Having earned such a strong following (47 million monthly users in the U.S. alone) and extreme levels of engagement, it’s easy to picture some marketing teams spending countless hours stressing over how to tap into that sassy, no bullshit, screw societal norms attitude.

The Atlanta Hawks decided to just eliminate the middle man.

Deadspin Twitter takeover Atlanta

Deadspin’s Drew Magary tries to rebrand the Atlanta Hawks as the “Death Hawks” on their official Twitter account.

Earlier today, the team decided to hand over their Twitter feed to Deadspin (Gawker’s sports site) writer Drew Magary (as well as allowing him to sing both the Canadian and American national anthems before the Hawks game against the Toronto Raptors).

Magary brought his usual balance of wit and astute observational skills to the feed, evidenced by his repeated attempts to make “CAW” the team’s new slogan, as well as his insistence on rebranding the team as the “Death Hawks.”

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Trailblazing Goalie Shannon Szabados Draws Support Across Social Media

Published on Elle Beaver – March 11, 2014

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It’s been a busy couple weeks for Shannon Szabados.

Just over two weeks ago, the 27 year-old was laying at centre ice of the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Sochi with a gold medal around her neck and her 20 teammates standing behind heras Szabados celebrated a second straight Olympic gold medal win.

On Wednesday, Szabados accomplished another remarkable feat: suiting up with the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers for a morning practice. Just two days later, Szabados joined a short list of women who have signed contracts to play for a professional men’s league when she joined the Columbus Cottonmouths of the Southern Professional Hockey League.

Despite the impressive achievement of practicing with the Oilers, it wasn’t quite what some fans wanted. The previous night, users took to Twitter with the hashtag #SzabadosForBackup as they crossed their fingers to witness history. Earlier in the day, the Oilers traded away their backup goalie Ilya Bryzgalov and in turn brought in another goalie, Viktor Fasth, in a separate trade. The problem staring down the Oilers was a big one: with a game the same night that the trade happened, they were without a backup goalie.

Shannon Szabados Edmonton Oilers Goalie

Surprisingly, this conflict happens more than expected. Due to a rule in effect from 1966, the NHL requires teams to have two goalies dressed for each game. In the past website producers, beer league veterans, and local hockey coaches have all gotten frantic calls to dress as an emergency backup.

Edmonton’s situation was more unique: they had (a bit) more time to organize a backup goalie, and the city is heavily ingrained into the history of hockey and has a wealth of local talent. Szabados, a native of Edmonton and current starting goalie for the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology men’s hockey team, was a serious contender. Had she got the call, she would have been the first female to dress for a regular season NHL game.

Ultimately, the Oilers dressed Kurtis Mucha, the starting goalie for the University of Alberta’s men’s team. While the hopes of creating history were dashed, the real progress was happening online.

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True Detective: Giving Life To Our Favourite Characters Online

Imagine if you could bring your favourite fictional characters to life. To get a peek into how they live outside of the pages of their novel or behind the scenes of their TV show.

Well, with Nic Pizzolato’s philosophical and metaphorical Rustin Cohle, people have decided to do just that. “Rust,” as his few friends in HBO’s smashing new hit True Detective call him, has captured the minds of the more than 12 million viewers who have tuned in weekly for the past two months. On Sunday, the first season wraps up and Rust will make his last appearance on the silver screen.

Mystery of the Yellow King fake Hardy Boys book based on True Detective

Copyright © 2014 supermercado
This mockup reimagining True Detective as a Hardy Boys book demonstrates how fans are making the show their own. Click the photo for more details on this piece, and on how to purchase your own.

To put it in the most simplistic way possible, the character of Cohle is deep, dark, and complex. Matthew McConaughey, the actor who took on the challenge of capturing Cohle – and has done an incredible job, according to just about everyone – went so far as to create a 450-page graph to trace Cohle’s life, and many personalities, over the 17 years spanned on the show. These multiple distinct personalities, and a knack for questioning the meaning of life and the universe in utter poetic language, have set Cohle apart as one of the most memorable television characters we’ve seen in this millennium.

People have eaten it up. If “true” television success is to be measured by engagement rather than pure ratings in today’s media environment, True Detective is successful in every way.

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