We Are Hunted
Encyclopedia
We Are Hunted is a music aggregation website that launched in April 2009. It tracks the 99 most popular emerging songs online each day across blogs, social media platforms, forums, P2P networks and Spotify
via an intuitive web interface. The site was developed as a result of a joint partnership with digital innovation start-up
Native Digital and Australian news search engine Wotnews.
The site's song, artist and genre charts are updated in real-time to reflect what people are saying and playing each day. This is achieved by continuously sampling conversations that occur on music news sites, blogs, and social media.
We Are Hunted also monitors the mainstream press, blogs, Twitter
, Spotify
, MySpace
, YouTube
, Last.FM
, iLike
, BitTorrent, and Limewire
.
The site's per-track analysis includes sentiment detection to distinguish whether people like or dislike particular songs; semantics to understand exactly who people are talking about; clustering and classification to group related artists, and network analysis to uncover the connections between artists and the people who write about them.
The website concept arose from a discussion between founders Nick Crocker and Ben Johnston in early 2008. Crocker met Stephen Phillips, the founder of Australian news search engine Wotnews, in November 2008. Crocker and Johnston finalised the site concept, gave it a name and designed the front end, while Phillips and the Wotnews team took over with the development of the site and the customisation of the semantic search platform.
The site was launched on April 17, 2009. It was featured on popular online technology blogs Wired
, TechCrunch
, Mashable
and TechNation. We Are Hunted received over 100,000 visits in its first week online.
application driven by the News Server product from Wotnews. It is built on an open source platform featuring Linux
, MySQL
, Python
, Django and Sphinx
. The server also powers Wotnews' Australian news site as well as providing news and stock market analytics for some of Australia's biggest banks. At its core, it is able to aggregate, analyse and search news, blogs and social media in near real-time.
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
via an intuitive web interface. The site was developed as a result of a joint partnership with digital innovation start-up
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
Native Digital and Australian news search engine Wotnews.
Overview
By combining activity on blogs, social media platforms and forums, We Are Hunted accesses musical trends that traditional charts cannot. We Are Hunted aims to help listeners find new music and to help artists reach new audiences.The site's song, artist and genre charts are updated in real-time to reflect what people are saying and playing each day. This is achieved by continuously sampling conversations that occur on music news sites, blogs, and social media.
We Are Hunted also monitors the mainstream press, blogs, Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, Spotify
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Last.FM
Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
, iLike
ILike
iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program and sidebar are not required in order to use the site but allow for ease in discovering new artists....
, BitTorrent, and Limewire
LimeWire
LimeWire is a free peer-to-peer file sharing client program that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems supported by the Java software platform. LimeWire uses the gnutella network as well as the BitTorrent protocol. A free software version and a purchasable "enhanced"...
.
The site's per-track analysis includes sentiment detection to distinguish whether people like or dislike particular songs; semantics to understand exactly who people are talking about; clustering and classification to group related artists, and network analysis to uncover the connections between artists and the people who write about them.
Genesis and Ideology
"So many websites are too complex, too wordy, too long. I wanted this site to be digestible in three seconds ... to deliver users exactly what they want — amazing, new music, every day." - Nick Crocker, We Are Hunted founder, May 2009.
The website concept arose from a discussion between founders Nick Crocker and Ben Johnston in early 2008. Crocker met Stephen Phillips, the founder of Australian news search engine Wotnews, in November 2008. Crocker and Johnston finalised the site concept, gave it a name and designed the front end, while Phillips and the Wotnews team took over with the development of the site and the customisation of the semantic search platform.
The site was launched on April 17, 2009. It was featured on popular online technology blogs Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
, Mashable
Mashable
Mashable is an American news website and Internet news blog founded by Pete Cashmore. The website's primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology, memes and gadgets...
and TechNation. We Are Hunted received over 100,000 visits in its first week online.
Technology
We Are Hunted is a web-based BoxeeBOXEE
Boxee is a cross-platform freeware HTPC software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV...
application driven by the News Server product from Wotnews. It is built on an open source platform featuring Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
, Django and Sphinx
Sphinx (search engine)
Sphinx is a free software search engine designed with indexing database content in mind. It currently supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and ODBC-compliant databases as data sources natively. Other data sources can be indexed via pipe in a custom XML format...
. The server also powers Wotnews' Australian news site as well as providing news and stock market analytics for some of Australia's biggest banks. At its core, it is able to aggregate, analyse and search news, blogs and social media in near real-time.