Total Infosphere Domination
by Urizenus Sklar on 18/12/06 at 6:26 pm
I ran into these stats via a link on the SLCC site. Here is the main page. As the figures show, the Herald media family (from the SL Herald to our publisher and editor Walker Spaight’s 3pointD, to our Conspiracy Theory Desk reporter Prokofy Neva’s Second Thoughts) completely dominates the SL infosphere.
Actually, for all I know these figures are the result of monkeys pounding on calculators in a state of banana deprivation, and I have no idea what to make of them. They certainly aren’t right for the Herald since the SLH suffix seems to cut down the traffic count, and the figures do not incorporate traffic to our Alphaville Herald and Dragonscove Herald archives (which on some days get more traffic than SLH). Still, with advertisers milling around the Herald headquarters in trench coats offering us bars of candy and rides in their Porches, we have to ask “is there a reliable way to measure traffic?”
Prokofy Neva
Dec 18th, 2006
Uri, here’s an article I’ve written on my own blog about this wierd site, which I believe is run by Iron Perth. He’s just proved resistant to IM’s and even this article, which was also popular for awhile on his very site, and never explains his methodology. Because, I guess he just doesn’t have to. That’s Second Life for you. Do what you want, put stuff out there, let the chips fall where they may.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/12/clique_here.html
There’s several things to realize about this site. For one, I don’t think they are using a site’s actual, inherent traffic numbers to rank them. How could they? Did you agree to an Alexa-like widget on your site to be tracked? How can he track somebody else’s internal traffic numbers off Typepad? (I’d like to know how really).
I think what he does instead is have a feed from all the blogs, so that they appear on a large panel. Then visitors to what I call Clique Here click on whatever interests them. For some reason, the article on the Blingsider about my banning from the Blog was hugely popular lately — though there were many more interesting stories.
If you look at http://www.cleeker.com you’ll see very odd things — like Lordfly’s site leading — and by his own admission, he can’t get how that can be. Well, either Lordfly’s own obsessive clicks on http://www.cleeker.com or his little buddies clicks is enough to rocket it up.
And if I don’t say so myself, the way the Herald got up there this week (I’ve been following this site, puzzled, for ages) is due to my story “Other Worlds?” being clicked on from that site a lot.
But…this is all relative. I once saw the Herald’s story on Anshe go up, which should have many more readers, and then my little story, which definitely did NOT have any more traffic objectively speaking out there on the Internet, beat the Herald — for no good reason — except that some random SL fanboyz clicked it up for that hour — both were later buried. It’s very wierd, how it works.
Walker Spaight
Dec 18th, 2006
Conspiracy Theory Desk, that’s pretty lol
Prokofy Neva
Dec 18th, 2006
Also, Uri, can you try to explain what the signal-to-noise thing is? That is, I understand what “signal-to-noise” is, but how are they measuring this, except subjectively?
The Linden Blob of course trails behind all of us.
joe public
Dec 18th, 2006
>>Also, Uri, can you try to explain what the signal-to-noise thing is?
When Prok rants there is no signal and a lot of noise [ie: cue sound of wind rushing through old plastic shopping bags]?
Tateru Nino
Dec 18th, 2006
Actually according to SLI’s own traffic stats, several other stories in the same period got twice or three times as much traffic as the one on Prok’s blog-banning, so I’m disinclined to take Cleeker’s numbers at face value.
Jen
Dec 19th, 2006
At the risk of seeming humorless by posting a serious response to a question that maybe was not intended seriously … have you looked at Google Analytics? It is tag-based and free, so you may be able to put one tag across your multiple domains. Also, Feedburner just announced an integrated web analytics solution – and they have the best RSS stats. (I personally read SLH through RSS) Anyway, I work in web analytics (not with Google), and would be happy to chat with anyone on the subject. -Jen Daehlie
Prokofy Neva
Dec 19th, 2006
Jen, I looked at Google Analytics and got the widget from them for my own blog, but the problem is that Typepad does not have a capacity to take that widget as a segregated widget.
Only if you work your site completely as HTML, can you paste in the code. I don’t think that’s possible, once you’ve also opted to make the site one of the for-dummies sites that uses automatic options.
Walker should look into it, however.
Since Typepad *does* have a widget for Feed Burner, maybe we could get that to work.
Urizenus
Dec 19th, 2006
We’ll redo the blog from scratch after the first of the year so all options are open on that front.
Meanwhile, can we use the same feedburner tag for all three Herald domains?
So is there any value to the technorati numbers, or is that all (or some of it) tied to people with the Alexa toolbar?
marilyn murphy
Dec 19th, 2006
does this mean i get a raise??
evatal
Dec 19th, 2006
hilariously enough, as i was reading this article, an ad banner on the right side of the blog was advertising a real-time traffic estimator… har.
Kalo Division
Dec 19th, 2006
Is SomethingAwful’s Second Life Safari listed in those numbers?
Urizenus
Dec 19th, 2006
nope. You can go see the articles the guy is getting hits on. The story on Edelman seems to be the big one on his site.
Petey
Dec 19th, 2006
There’s no way the SLS can ever hope to overtake the profligate posting of Prokofy and Pixaleen.
Urizenus
Dec 19th, 2006
Petey, I felt that the SLS lagged a bit in its most recent effort. More like going to church than going on safari. But the Harry Potter did show a flash of something. I may link to it yet.
Nacon
Dec 20th, 2006
Conspiracy Theory, eh?
How’s that a infosphere when Prok screwed up so many times?… not forget to mention Prok’s crazy idea about (accusing) ESC using copybot seem to slip by like it was nothing, giving Prok’s job back without making any publication apologies?
Wow.
They just want to show off their faggy chart. To show a fact that people of SL like to hear made-up with extra flavor of conspiracy-gimmick SL reports. Yes, I’m sure SL Herald actually dominated fairly balanced info-”Truth”-sphere. (not)