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37 signals line is genuinely horseshit though. They're quite clearly counting people who signup as "people who use our web-based apps". That's a truly false and
by staunch 17y ago
37 signals line is genuinely horseshit though. They're quite clearly counting people who signup as "people who use our web-based apps". That's a truly false and misleading claim. It's beneath them.
- Timothee 17y agoBut isn't everybody doing that? Or, at least a lot of people? If your database has 3 millions lines in the account table, it feels better to use that number than the number of accounts that, say, logged in in the past x months. Especially if that second number is way less. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I feel it's one of these games where since everyone is doing it, you have to catch up one way or the other.
- regularfry 17y agoIf you read "Rework", you'll come away with the impression that blindly mimicking the competition because "you have to catch up" is precisely not the 37signals way. I do not believe they need to be making inflated claims.
- blasdel 17y agoThey can be making inflated claims for their own fanciful reasons. They don't need to be copycats to be dumbasses.
- regularfry 17y agoThis is true.
- patio11 17y agoThe great thing about user numbers is that you have so many to choose from! There are straightforward, well-used definitions of "user" for which I have 60, 1.5k, 2.9k, 50.0k, and "well over a hundred thousand" users. They're all equally true and none of them singly or in combination tell you a thing about the health of my business unless you're intimately acquainted with it.
- mahmud 17y agomy favorite metric is: `wc /var/log/httpd/access_log` :-)
- wildmXranat 17y agoHey man, how did you know ?? My patented uniques metric: cat access.log | awk -F " " '{ print $1 }' | sort | uniq | wc -l
- lincolnq 17y agoDo you know about cut? You can replace awk here. cut -d ' ' -f 1
- inferno0069 17y agoAlong the lines of lincolnq's comment: |sort |uniq can be shrunk to |sort -u
- jarin 17y agoWell you know what they say: there are user counts, damned user counts, and Alexa rankings.
- staunch 17y agoThe problem is that 37 signals qualified the statement. They're claiming there are 3 million "people who use our web-based apps". That pretty explicitly means active and current users of their products. If they said they had 3 million registered users that'd be an entirely different thing, and, ya'know: true.
- run4yourlives 17y agoThat pretty explicitly means active and current users of their products It does? Says who? This is your definition of a user. That's fine, but it doesn't extend to being a common one. Unless of course you delete all the accounts of people that have registered for your service but aren't using it as often as you'd like.
- run4yourlives 17y agoSorry what? What else do you call people who sign-up if not "users"? They don't say that "2 million people use our apps and all of them signed in yesterday", they're just giving you an idea of the total number of accounts they have in their db. It's marketing, not horse shit.
- petercooper 17y agoSo if I take a note of all the people who've used the toilet in my house, I could say, perhaps, 80 people would be on the list. Is it now valid for me to say "Over 75 people use our toilet"? Perhaps, but the implication doesn't match the reality.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- run4yourlives 17y agoPerhaps, but the implication doesn't match the reality How so? Over 75 people have used your toilet. This is like suggesting that McDonalds' "over xx billion served" mantra is supposed to mean that there are over xx billion customers in their store at any given time. I'm not sure if that's how you read it, but I certainly don't take the statement that 37s makes to be misleading.
- petercooper 17y agoThis is like suggesting that McDonalds' "over xx billion served" mantra is supposed to mean that there are over xx billion customers in their store at any given time. Except that "served" is past tense and "use" is the simple present. If 37signals had said 3 million have "used" their software, this discussion probably wouldn't have kicked off. Instead, they used the present tense, implying that 3 million people routinely and currently use the software, which is highly unlikely.
- staunch 17y agoExactly. I can't tell if patio11 and run4yourlives are messing with me or not!