Month: February 2010

As the age of viral video dawned, “Here It Goes Again” was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents, and by the time we returned to the studio, 700 shows, one Grammy and nearly three years later, EMI’s ledger had a black number in our column. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement. Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites. Believe it or not, in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos.

Features that I don’t personally believe in are unlikely to see the light of day, such as an unread-count icon badge. I believe unread-count badges signify unseen items with some degree of urgency or time significance that were triggered by other people or external events. Instapaper articles are added by you, aren’t urgent, and in most cases, have been seen already (when you chose to read them and clicked Read Later).