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Interesting blog post. I personally believe analytics are bad. Optimizing for analytics means: (a) Taking the path of least resistance instead of trying to gau
by vouaobrasil 3y ago
Interesting blog post. I personally believe analytics are bad. Optimizing for analytics means:
(a) Taking the path of least resistance instead of trying to gauge engagement in other ways. Yes, you can still use other ways but most people don't.
(b) Optimizing for analytics means optimizing for an immedaite return rather than following your gut on what you like. The ultimate reason for analytics is so that you optimize for ad views for Google, rather than increasing quality. Google would never do anything unless it is in its own self-interest. They have zero social responsibility.
(c) I have disabled analytics on my blogs and now I find I write just what I want and what I find interesting and I don't bother with which posts get the most views.
What do you want? Views from interesting poeple or an interesting number of views?
- lloydatkinson 3y ago> What do you want? I want to know which pages and posts people find the most interesting and which remain popular over time. Just because I’m curious, that’s all. It leads to interesting surprises, for example I wrote a pretty small post on my blog weighing the pros and cons of merging vs squashing first and for some reason it’s one of the top Google results and I get consistent views for something I felt was only minor.
- vouaobrasil 3y agoMy thesis is that at one point, people knew this about their creations through direct interaction. Analytics are a poor substitute, especially since they do not show the subtle aspects of engagement. Our natural instinct for curiosity as you put it is precisely the tool used by big-tech to subvert our natural human instincts into becoming replaceable cogs of their technological kingdom.
- surprisetalk 3y agoLovely site, btw :) And congrats on your marriage! [0] https://www.lloydatkinson.net https://www.lloydatkinson.net I feel the same way! I pour out my heart for pieces like this[1] and all my traffic comes from stuff like this[2]. [1] https://taylor.town/pardon-2023 https://taylor.town/pardon-2023 [2] https://taylor.town/chatgpt-custom https://taylor.town/chatgpt-custom I've pretty much given up trying to please the various algorithms. Lately, I write about things that make me feel the biggest feelings, plus things I think others would find helpful. But making things is hard without instant feedback.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoThank you! Given I made it, it's hard for me to perceive how it really looks to someone else. Yours is good too! Thank you for the congrats! Indeed, I have no idea why some topics gain so much interest vs others.
- pantulis 3y ago> Optimizing for analytics means optimizing for an immedaite return rather than following your gut on what you like. You don't "optimize for analytics", you optimize for an objective that you are measuring through analytics. If you are simply following your gut then you simply don't have a quantitative objective. Note that Im not saying that not having a strategy is not a valid strategy per se, I'm just pointing out that analytics is a means to an end.
- cwillu 3y agoThe point though is that the tail wags the dog: I don't believe for a second that most objectives aren't, in fact, being selected for being measurable via the available analytics (or even merely the appearance of being measurable via those metrics).
- jrumbut 3y agoThere are things that are worth knowing and there are things that are easy to measure and the overlap is disappointingly small.