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The vast majority of Metafilter pageviews are people who lurk and just read the content. (The $5 barrier to entry and reasonably small community is a feature, n
by chrisamiller 12y ago
The vast majority of Metafilter pageviews are people who lurk and just read the content. (The $5 barrier to entry and reasonably small community is a feature, not a bug)
The vast majority of these lurkers originally hit the ask.metafilter site by searching for a specific question and landing on a thread where a MeFi member has asked the same thing. Those users were the ones being targeted by ads. So yes, it's pretty easy for a google algorithm change to reduce traffic by that much.
They aren't optimizing the site for search traffic or for growth. They're optimizing it for fantastic discussion and community. I realize that's a foreign concept here on HN, where growth and monetization are king, but I believe it's why Metafilter has remained a popular and influential site for over 15 years. (That's like 100 in internet-years...)
- dang 12y ago> here on HN, where growth and monetization are king There is no monetization, and HN hasn't pursued growth for years, if it ever did.
- chrisamiller 12y agoTo be clear, not HN itself, but the community in general is very much about monetizing their work, getting venture capital, making a quick buck, yadda yadda.
- dang 12y agoI still need to push back on this a bit. The mandate of the site is: intellectually interesting things. There's nothing intellectually interesting about "making a quick buck". It's true that HN has an entrepreneurial orientation, but it's also true that many more users aren't doing startups and come here to learn. Since I'm the lead optimizer, I know what we're optimizing HN for. The answer is intellectual curiosity. It's a hard problem, maybe even a lost cause, but people should at least know what we're trying for.