4 ms·

The Death of the Pageview

37 points by suhail 17y ago

prodigal_erik 17y ago
> The dot-com crash showed us that the eyeball-based business model was a failure. That would be more convincing if it weren't hosted in a web page supported by an ad about half an inch away. The only failure was the market's ridiculous valuations for startups that would have been viable businesses if kept smaller. As for on-page interactions vs. pageviews, yeah, that's one of many drawbacks to releasing a crippled javascript-only application instead of semantic resources that have URLs and actually become part of the web.
- RoboTeddy 17y ago
  > that's one of many drawbacks to releasing a crippled javascript-only application instead of semantic resources that have URLs and actually become part of the web. yeah, crippled applications, just like gmail?
  - prodigal_erik 17y ago
    Gmail can be forgiven for not contributing useful content to the web at large. Everyone expects email to be private and not really available for repurposing. Anyway, gmail was written competently and it works well without scripting turned on, though its URLs aren't as RESTful as they could be. But something like a public blog with content thoroughly entombed in a gmail-like interface would suck. Which doesn't stop people from doing it.
fnid2 17y ago
I know I'm paranoid, but why on earth does this page load a hidden java applet? It took forever to display, i was like wtf, and then I see the java console application appear and then I was like, even more wtf?? There's been an increasingly aggressive trend toward tracking user behavior and it's disturbing. I don't know what that java applet was for, but it was invisible, which makes me feel uncomfortable with rww.
- chaosmachine 17y ago
  They're also running some javascript that pings a tracking server every 10 seconds you're on the site. If you have Firebug installed, you can watch it go on the net tab.
  - gridspy 17y ago
    Sounds like you guys need to install ghostery (a Firefox anti-tracking plugin) http://news.ghostery.com/ http://news.ghostery.com/ Though it blocked 6 of the 7 different tracking scripts on that page, it didn't seem to kill the Javascript one. (I have whitelisted Google Analytics)
    - Dbug 17y ago
      If the reviews are to be believed, Ghostery has been sold to an advertising company and may be functioning as spyware https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 From the Ghostery/Better Advertising Privacy Policy- "We collect user traffic patterns"; "we track click-through information, including IP addresses"; "We may place a text file called a 'cookie' in the browser files of your computer."; "We may provide personal information to or permit access to personal information by our vendors and service providers"; "If Better Advertising should ever file for bankruptcy or have its assets sold to or merged with another entity, information Better Advertising receives from you, from this website, is a Better Advertising asset and may be transferred."
      - fnid2 17y ago
        I just add them all to my hosts file I don't see the need for anything additional. I think I may have adblockplus installed. I was reading the top article now the one about firefox and h.264 and saw a lot of net hits for disqus, so I added that to my hosts file too and wow, does the page ever load faster.
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      is this needed even with adblockplus? [edit - adblock doesn't stop the js pings with the default us subscription] [edit2 - or with an explicit listing; i ended up blocking them via dns] [edit3 - no i didn't; firefox is ignoring my dns?! confused...]
aresant 17y ago
That article read like a "Special Advertising Insert": sensational headline, junk data, fluff, and then a "oh by the way, we've got the solution" pitch tossed in. Death of the pageview? Really? Facebook has an ARMY using analytics & tools as he suggests to do ONE THING and that is boost pageviews.

37 points by suhail 17y ago

> The dot-com crash showed us that the eyeball-based business model was a failure. That would be more convincing if it weren't hosted in a web page supported by an ad about half an inch away. The only failure was the market's ridiculous valuations for startups that would have been viable businesses if kept smaller. As for on-page interactions vs. pageviews, yeah, that's one of many drawbacks to releasing a crippled javascript-only application instead of semantic resources that have URLs and actually become part of the web.

RoboTeddy 17y ago
> that's one of many drawbacks to releasing a crippled javascript-only application instead of semantic resources that have URLs and actually become part of the web. yeah, crippled applications, just like gmail?
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  Gmail can be forgiven for not contributing useful content to the web at large. Everyone expects email to be private and not really available for repurposing. Anyway, gmail was written competently and it works well without scripting turned on, though its URLs aren't as RESTful as they could be. But something like a public blog with content thoroughly entombed in a gmail-like interface would suck. Which doesn't stop people from doing it.

fnid2 17y ago

I know I'm paranoid, but why on earth does this page load a hidden java applet? It took forever to display, i was like wtf, and then I see the java console application appear and then I was like, even more wtf?? There's been an increasingly aggressive trend toward tracking user behavior and it's disturbing. I don't know what that java applet was for, but it was invisible, which makes me feel uncomfortable with rww.

chaosmachine 17y ago
They're also running some javascript that pings a tracking server every 10 seconds you're on the site. If you have Firebug installed, you can watch it go on the net tab.
- gridspy 17y ago
  Sounds like you guys need to install ghostery (a Firefox anti-tracking plugin) http://news.ghostery.com/ http://news.ghostery.com/ Though it blocked 6 of the 7 different tracking scripts on that page, it didn't seem to kill the Javascript one. (I have whitelisted Google Analytics)
  - Dbug 17y ago
    If the reviews are to be believed, Ghostery has been sold to an advertising company and may be functioning as spyware https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 From the Ghostery/Better Advertising Privacy Policy- "We collect user traffic patterns"; "we track click-through information, including IP addresses"; "We may place a text file called a 'cookie' in the browser files of your computer."; "We may provide personal information to or permit access to personal information by our vendors and service providers"; "If Better Advertising should ever file for bankruptcy or have its assets sold to or merged with another entity, information Better Advertising receives from you, from this website, is a Better Advertising asset and may be transferred."
    - fnid2 17y ago
      I just add them all to my hosts file I don't see the need for anything additional. I think I may have adblockplus installed. I was reading the top article now the one about firefox and h.264 and saw a lot of net hits for disqus, so I added that to my hosts file too and wow, does the page ever load faster.
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    is this needed even with adblockplus? [edit - adblock doesn't stop the js pings with the default us subscription] [edit2 - or with an explicit listing; i ended up blocking them via dns] [edit3 - no i didn't; firefox is ignoring my dns?! confused...]

aresant 17y ago

That article read like a "Special Advertising Insert": sensational headline, junk data, fluff, and then a "oh by the way, we've got the solution" pitch tossed in. Death of the pageview? Really? Facebook has an ARMY using analytics & tools as he suggests to do ONE THING and that is boost pageviews.