Demonstrating Value: AddThis & Removing Barriers to Entry

Engaging customers is tricky business, and it's easier than you might think to push them away by requiring registration too soon. Some time ago, over at AddThis, we wanted to increase usage of our sharing platform and postulated that it would increase dramatically if we removed registration as a barrier. Although we might end up with fewer registered users in total, these would be more engaged registered users, and we'd be giving the rest of our visitors just what they want: the ability to share their content, anywhere, with anyone.

To this end, we moved our "Get AddThis" process up to the front page of the site, and made registration optional (see our home page above.) Also note that the decision to "Register" was positioned as a value proposition: Do you want analytics? Create an account, it's easy. Just want to share? No problem, enjoy!

[Ed: Yep, that's our Halloween logo- check out how our very gifted lead designer Jeff Wong ran a little impromtu contest to decide what image to use.]

We tested this approach to a limited set of users, and saw a dramatic increase in usage and some very positive feedback. Not long after that, we rolled out the change to everyone. The end result was an enormous increase in usage of AddThis, and a higher registration-complete rate, because the users that started the registration process had a reason to complete it beyond getting over a barrier to entry.

For more examples, check out Sasha's excellent Posterous article below:

Designing for social traction: Turn a user into a passionate customer *before* making them sign up for your service - Sachin's Posterous

And Happy Halloween!

RT @inspiredmag 25 Extraordinary Pumpkin Carvings

'Tis the season: there are some really creative ideas here!

25 Extraordinary Pumpkin Carvings « PSDFan

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RT @abduzeedo Halloween Inspiration

Some great ideas for Halloween- a costume inspired by Lichtenstein, and some very creative pumpkin carving.

CHARMED: It's the Most Wonderul Time of the Year

Collection of Halloween Photoshop Tutorials

Here is a fun collection of Photoshop tutorials to get in the spirit of the holiday, from Tutorial9. Enjoy!

Spooks, Ghouls, and Photoshop Tools: The Ultimate Collection of Halloween Tutorials

The Interface of a Cheeseburger RT @inspiredmag

"In the first part of a series on the UX = Brand, the adventure of a web designer starts in a McDonald’s, where he discovers that there is a worm hole between the world of Branding and User Experience Design. Years later he learns that it is the Interface that connects both worlds."

Brand = User Experience: The Interface of a Cheeseburger « Smashing Magazine

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Who Rules The Social Web?

This chart looks at gender distribution among social web sites.


Who Rules The Social Web? | Information Is Beautiful

23 Brilliant Logos With Hidden Message

Some familiar and not so familiar logos, all with hidden meanings and messages.

23 Brilliant Logos With Hidden Messages | The Roxor | Design blog for resources and inspiration

One of the logos is from the Presbyterian Church (USA), which my family attended when I was a child. For more information about the design of that logo, which incorporates more hidden symbols than a Dan Brown novel, check out http://www.pcusa.org/oga/seal.htm

Shared via AddThis.com, hat tip to Foo

Top 10 Must Have iPhone Apps for Bloggers

"The web is going mobile and it is going faster than anyone can think. Majority of the bloggers are now using their iPhone or similar style phones to jot down ideas, write entire posts, stay connected and so much more. In this showcase we will be highlighting some of the most essential iPhone Apps for bloggers."

Top 10 Must Have iPhone Apps for Bloggers

Design Trends for 2009: Current and Future | Most Inspired: Design Inspiration Blog

"Design in general is always evolving and changing. From the dull, lifeless days of bland, boring websites to the age of color and excitement when it comes to web design – all in the space of just a few short years. There’s no doubt that design trends, styles and techniques are changing rapidly, and that as designers, it’s our responsibility to keep up and build on this change."

Design Trends for 2009: Current and Future | Most Inspired: Design Inspiration Blog

Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.

"After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry."

Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.

Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us

From TED.com: "Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways."

• Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us

One of the points the presenter makes is that an open office layout dramatically decreases productivity:

66%

What to do? As much as I love music, I personally find listening to songs with lyrics too distracting when I'm doing work that requires a lot of focused attention. Movie soundtracks and classical music can help, but even these can be distracting.

Sometimes a better solution is ambient sound software. These can be wonderful tools for taking back your concentration in a noisy environment. Here's a link to an app I use on my iPhone:

• Ambiance

I'm partial to a light thunderstorm, but the ocean is nice too. What do you listen to when you're working hard and need to concentrate?

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ZenNews iPhone app

Neat little app that visualizes news as tag clouds that allow you to drill into a topic.

ZenNews - Features

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2009 State Of The Blogosphere

"2/3 of professional bloggers are male, and 60% are between 18 – 44 years old. 75% have college degrees, and 40% have graduate degrees. Half have household incomes of $75,000 or more. 17% of them say blogging is their primary source of income. A whopping 74% of bloggers use Twitter, v. 14% of the general population. Their no. 1 use of Twitter is to promote their blogs."

2009 State Of The Blogosphere: The Full BlogWorld Presentation

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3 Nifty iPhone Apps For News Consumption On The Go

"...There are a couple of iPhone applications built by independent programmers that provide even more news consumption bliss, and there are three that I wanted to highlight today."

3 Nifty iPhone Apps For News Consumption On The Go

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Data Driven Design and Google Secrets

Some designers find the idea of data-driven design process constraining, but the end result can be that better data can lead to better decision making, which in turn can lead to better user experience.

In this article, Google's Director of User Experience Irene Au discusses data-driven design process at the search giant:

"Search is such a fragile interface. It's humbling to see how the slightest changes in design, just pixel-level changes or barely perceptible changes to colours, can have such a dramatic impact on usage and revenue. At Google, we're in a unique position to measure the impact of design on the business, and we take advantage of that opportunity to make design decisions based on evidence."

The secrets of Google's design team | News | TechRadar UK

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Facebook Facelift - Home and Profiles on Vimeo

There are some terrific takes on redesigning portions of Facebook out there. Here's a home and profile redesign:

Facebook Facelift - Home and Profiles on Vimeo

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Because clickin is so 90's: Audio-visual Navigation | HUNDERTMARK

Web cam + mic + browser = audio visual navigation:

Because clickin is so 90's | HUNDERTMARK

Do you have the AddThis toolbar? If so, you can use it to translate this article or any page:

• Under the sharing options, click "More"
• Scroll down to or search for "Translate"
• A new tab will open with the article translated for you to enjoy!

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The Art of Pumpkin Carving

Autumn is my favorite season, and October is my favorite month. With Halloween drawing near, here's a collection of pumpkin carving resources and inspiration!

Pumpkin Carver's Panoply » Curbly | DIY Design Community

Extra tidbit:

Five questions with a pumpkin carving pro

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Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices « Noupe

Nice little writeup about designing comment forms. User feedback is good!

Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices « Noupe

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CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

From Smashing Magazine:

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 « Smashing Magazine

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Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide | Hi, I'm Grace Smith

Huge collection of wireframing tools, resources, tips, tutorials, etc. from designer Grace Smith:

Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide | Hi, I'm Grace Smith

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14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets | delimitdesign.com

From Delimit Design, cheat sheets!

14 Most Useful design cheat sheets and coding cheat sheets | delimitdesign.com

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Blogging resources

I'm playing catch-up this weekend, having not blogged much for a couple of days. This first post is a handful of useful blogging resources.

First, if you're not in the mood for designing your own blog template, a collection of pre-packaged templates:

40 Amazing Blogger Templates for Personal Blogs

But we're all creative folks, right? (well, ok, I haven't worked out my template for this blog yet, but I'll get there...) Starting from the beginning? Here's a guide:

How to Make a Creative Blog Layout

Want to work out that perfect background design? Here's a collection of techniques and tutorials about designing website backgrounds:

Outstanding Website Background Guide: 60+ Impressive Resources « Noupe

Once you've got your blog up and running, here are

15 Basics of Insanely Useful Blogwriting

Enjoy!

iPhone 3G Stencil - Graffletopia

Includes standard interface components for the iPhone 3G: buttons, fields, map elements, keyboards, icons. Created by Theresa Neil.

iPhone 3G Stencil - Graffletopia

Shared via AddThis from Twitter via Smashing Magazine

Visualizing Music Discovery

This site was listed as a 2009 top 50 website by Time Magazine, although it's been around since 2006; I stumbled onto it at VisualComplexity.com. It has a fun interface that encourages interaction and play.

Musicovery : interactive webRadio

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iRobot's Soft Morphing Blob 'Bot

Ok, so it's not really about user experience, but it's still pretty cool!

Blob 'Bot Takes Its First Steps

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Textual clock screensaver

This is a fun little screensaver that displays the time as words (in Helvetica! although this can be changed.)

Simon Heys » Word Clock

Shared via AddThis from Smashing Magazine's article, 10 Creative Ways to Display Time. Enjoy!

Emphasis of Scientific Disciplines in Different Countries

This is a data visualization (circa 2007) that illustrates and compares the emphasis of different areas of science by country. Be sure to zoom out; it takes some time to take in, but the differences are fascinating.

The Strengths of Nations

and another looking at which scientific areas produce the most patents:


The Scientific Paradigms that Support Patent Generation

and finally, an illustration of how scientific paradigms inter-relate:

How Scientific Paradigms Relate

Descriptions and discussion of these illustrations can be found here:

http://wbpaley.com/brad/mapOfScience/

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Concept Multi-tasking for the iPhone

Ocean Observations explores the idea of visual multi-tasking for the iPhone. Can I have this, soon, please? From their page: "The number one requested iPhone feature multitasking is tackled in this 'What if iPhone had...' concept by Ocean Observations. There are several benefits of multitasking, and we believe it will come to the iPhone sooner or later. "

YouTube - oceanobservations's Channel

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Design Process of Koi Illustration

From Jacob Kass, the process of developing an illustration inspired by a Koi image using Illustrator and Photoshop.

Design Process of Koi Illustration

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The Evolver project

Beautiful architectural design work from students build in the Swiss Alps, courtesy of designer-daily.com:

The Evolver project

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Browser wars

From ComputerWorld, "with major new versions released this year, Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari vie for the browser crown."

Browser wars redux: The top 5 contenders duke it out

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Why Desktop Touch Screens Don't Really Work Well For Humans

A Techcrunch reviewer looks at HP's TouchSmart computers, and discusses desktop touch screen usability.

Why Desktop Touch Screens Don?t Really Work Well For Humans

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Vintage Websites

Feeling retro? Here are a bunch of groovy vintage website designs.

40 Beautifully Designed Vintage Websites

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Google Wave 101

Concise description of what Google Wave it, how it works and some links to tools and extensions.

Google Wave 101 - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

More description and screenshots over at Lifehacker:

http://lifehacker.com/5370738/google-wave-first-look

Shared via AddThis from Twitter

Virtual reality technology from Cisco

Virtual interfaces, Minority Report and Dinosaurs:

Virtual Reality is Now More Real than Virtual | Inspired Magazine

Shared via AddThis from Twitter via Inspired Magazine

The myth of the page fold

Nice discussion about the the myth of the fold, how users scroll, and designing for content below the mystical fold line.


The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing | cxpartners

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Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs

Impressive list of visual design resources, from professional and freelance blogs to design tools and resources.

Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs

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The Fun Theory

Brilliant brand advertising by Volkswagen: solving problems by making the solutions fun! Check out how designers convinced more people to use the stairs.

Pianotrappan | Rolighetsteorin

Shared via AddThis from Facebook, hat tip to Erin Malone.

RT from @InspiredMag: Camoflague by Liu Bolin

Science fiction movies toy with the idea of invisibility all different kinds of ways- light passing through things, light passing around things, cameras projecting what's behind to give the illusion of invisibility (ok, yes, that was James Bond.)


This Beijing artist did it the hard way, and the results are spectacular. Hat tip to Inspired Magazine and DesignBoom, the original blogpost.

camoflague by liu bolin

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Hand Drawn Sharing Icons

Some very nice hand drawn icon sets: 8 Hand Drawn Icon Sets For Bloggers - slodive

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Usability enhancements announced for Google Search

Some of the changes:

• Quick, in-browser viewing of Google Docs
• An improved interface for local information in web search
• Access to multiple providers in weather results
• Search options panel for mobile 

Read more:
Facebook | Google: This week in search 10/9/09

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UX Booth: User Experience Blog & Free Website Usability Testing

UX resource that my friend Foo passed along:

UX Booth: User Experience Blog & Free Website Usability Testing

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Introducing The Social Compass | Brian Solis - PR 2.0

Introducing The Social Compass | Brian Solis - PR 2.0

"...points a brand in a physical and experiential direction to genuinely and effectively connect with customers, peers, and influencers, where they interact and seek guidance online."

Posted by Jesse Thomas, whose team worked on the graphic.

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Exploring iPhone App Design Trends

Jen Gordon takes a look at recent trends in iPhone app design, including:

• mirroring iPhone look and feel 
• mimicking hardware interfaces
• layered interface elements
• illustration
• gestural interactions

and more.

Check it out: iPhone App Design Trends - Smashing Magazine

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Verizon/Google vs AppleT&T - Register

"The two largest US cellcos went on the warpath this week with contrasting statements about their web strategies.

Verizon Wireless formed a far reaching partnership with Google, echoing the search giant's existing alliance with Sprint and pointing to Android dominance of the CDMA carriers' own-branded web services platforms, which will be vital to differentiation in the open access world, and will take shape from 2010.

AT&T is exploring its own options to create an AT&T mobile web experience that will compensate for falling data rates and the loss of the usual carrier lock-in weapons – exclusives, subsidies and closed network/software platforms. It increasingly seems to be distancing itself from Google and turning to a range of partners usually more associated with European operators, from Opera to Nokia."

Read more:  Mobile web polarizes as duellists pick their seconds - The Register

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Social Media and Brand Behavior

Discussion of the effect social media has on how participants engage with brands:

Search is the Internet OS!: Social Media Has Direct Influence on Brand Search

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Crowdsourcing Translation

AddThis is used all over the world, by over 500 million people. To make sharing easier, anywhere, we wanted to translate our sharing menu into as many languages as possible. We started out doing this using the AddThis Forum which worked well, but probably wouldn't scale. Instead, we thought a more structured tool would help not only enlist the help of our user base, but also help to communicate which languages are supported or in the queue.


To this end, we recently launched a Language Database to allow users to submit translation revisions and new languages. We're up to 50 supported languages as of our last release. One of these days we're going to wade into Latin and Pirate, but in the meantime, if you speak one of the languages we don't yet support, we'd love to hear from you.


Visit the AddThis Language Database

 

Tools to make designer's lives easier

Might have to check out the last tool, FiveSecondTest, looks interesting:

23 Brilliant Web Apps To Simplify Designer's Work Life @ SmashingApps

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Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA

ZURB | Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA

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Beautiful AddThis Toolbox Implementation

Abduzeedo is a blog about design, and their recent implementation of the AddThis Toolbox to create a sharing menu is big, bold and beautiful, just as you'd expect. Check it out: scroll down the following page (and enjoy the case study as well!)

Introducing Inknition + a Nice Case Study | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspiration and Photoshop Tutorials

You can get your own AddThis Toolbox code here, as well as a collection of custom sharing icons.

Shared via AddThis

Fun with 404

We've all seen them, either by clicking on an old link or mistyping a URL in our browser: the 404 "page not found" error page. The number comes from the http standard response code: Oops. Sorry, can't find that page.

One of my co-workers expressed his opinion that users should never get 404/"page not found" errors, that instead the design of the site should be clever enough to place them where they intended to go, or at least close enough. This is a great strategy, and while it may not always be possible, I've seen it put to good effect. As an examepl, if a user is in the middle of directory of services, and mistypes a service detail page URL, the interface could give them the standard 404 page. But instead, it could take them to a searchable a-z list, thus assuming they were trying to look for a particular service based on what they types. Nice, and definitely a better user experience.

All of that said, you still need a page for users to land on when clever site architecture just can't get the job done. Here are a few ideas and suggestions:

• Don't leave the user at a dead end. Give them some way to continue by offering a sitemap, search feature, popular links or some other way to go somewhere else. Make sure the global navigation and footer is available.
  
• If there are any strategies that will help a user be more successful, that help will be appreciated. Keep it simple and brief, though, as users scan more than they read. 
• Here's even a blog post about monetizing 404 pages.
  

But why not have some fun? There are some very clever 404 pages out there, here is a collection from All About Technology: 53 Custom Designed "404 Error" Pages Of Big Sites (Shared via AddThis)

Enjoy, and be careful typing those URLs...

Touch interface

AppleInsider | Evidence of Apple's tablet-like input interface reappears

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Apple challenges new Woolworths logo

A look at the two logos in question; Apple felt that Woolworths new logo was too close to its Apple. You be the judge:

AppleInsider | Apple challenges new Woolworths logo

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Advice for Picking a New Phone

Nice collection of advice and resources for picking your next phone from New York Times.

Phone Smart - In Choosing a New Phone, Be Sure to Try It in Person - NYTimes.com

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Making Facebook More Usable

This is one designer's vision for redesigning Facebook's interface. Beautiful work: Facebook Facelift

How would you improve Facebook's interface? Or, even better, Twitter? Great exercises in web application design.

Shared via AddThis; hat tip to Jeff

Minimizing Complexity In User Interfaces

Very nice summary of strategies from Smashing Magazine. One of my favorite related strategies is: scale interfaces for users. It helps both first time users determine how much complexity they want and need to get their task done, as well as returning users who have increased in skill using your application.

This is a strategy we try to employ everyday at Addthis. Many publishers just want to grab AddThis code and go, so we built a simple process to do so right up front on the home page, no registration required. Huge enhancement to user experience for our visitors, and enormous uptake for overall usage of AddThis. Want more options? Sure, no problem! But publishers don't have to deal with complexity if they don't want to.

More from Smashing Magazine:

Minimizing Complexity In User Interfaces

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Keeping Your Designs In Line: A Grid Bookmarklet

From Allan Jardine | Reflections: "As all designers know, the grid is absolutely fundamental to layout, whether you want to keep to a tight grid, or break it for effect. Grid is a highly configurable JavaScript bookmarklet which overlays a layout grid on any web-site you wish."

Get the Grid Bookmarklet

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15 Fresh Online Magazine Designs « PSDFan

15 Fresh Online Magazine Designs « PSDFan

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Map of the World's Social Networks

This is a Italian blog post that includes a PDF map of the major social networks all over the world.

Media Duemila - La mappa di una "grande mutazione" | Vincos Blog

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Many Eyes

I was reading over a presentation that included a map created using this IBM site, an online tool for creating information visualizations. Check it out:

Many Eyes

Shared via AddThis, hat tip to Erin Malone's social games research.

Facebook shuts down malicious fake profiles | InSecurity Complex - CNET News

Evidently, hackers found a way past Facebook's captcha: Facebook shuts down malicious fake profiles | InSecurity Complex - CNET News

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AddThis Halloween Logo

At AddThis, we like to have a little fun with our logo on major holidays. Our creative director Jeff Wong recently posted ideas for this year's Halloween logo:

There are some funny outtakes there as well, check them out at his blog:

Jeff Wong Design: http://jeffwongdesign.blogspot.com/2009/09/vote-for-addthis-halloween-logo-sneak.html

Nice mashup: GoPublic

This site is a mix of information from Facebook and Twitter all centered around Public Transportation. Great example of the power of bringing together different kinds of social media about one topic.

GoPublic

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Watching a book evolve: the preservation of favoured traces | ben fry

Darwin's best known work, "On the Origin of Species" saw major revisions over its sixth editions. This info-animation shows how this book changed across it's iterations. From the introduction by the author, Ben Fry:

"We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin's On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.

The second edition, for instance, adds a notable "by the Creator" to the closing paragraph, giving greater attribution to a higher power. In another example, the phrase "survival of the fittest" usually considered central to the theory and often attributed to Darwin instead came from British philosopher Herbert Spencer, and didn't appear until the fifth edition of the text. Using the six editions as a guide, we can see the unfolding and clarification of Darwin's ideas as he sought to further develop his theory during his lifetime."

the preservation of favoured traces | ben fry

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Finally, Twitter Groups

Twitter Lists Competitors Respond: We Can All Get Along

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