Posted on 09/23/2006 3:53:22 PM PDT by NickatNite2003
Anyone notice that DU isn't even on there?
More than likely it's "unique visitors" to the sites.
Yeah....is that hits per second? or what?
Ooopsss.....me too.
Hey! If it wasn't for porn, there wouldn't be affordable high speed Internet or DVD players (or for that matter, even VCRs). Porn is the primary reason for the economy of scale in the development of the consumer versions of these products.
Say what you will about porn, it's driving consumer electronics today.
Mark
Hot Air made it to the top five. Excellent.
Exactly. The Internet is a warren of unvisited sites--I'm sure many of the political ones are leftist.
But isn't it interesting that witout porn, the "new media" would probably never have gotten off the ground, and conservatives (and libertarians) would probably never have gotten a voice... And who'd a thunk it that the bastion of "free speech," liberals, would be doing all they can to limit the free speech of those with whom they disagree! We never would have been able to see that before, certainly not in the "old media."
I just find it interesting.
Mark
I'd say the 'Net population is more conservative/libertarian than the population at large, because it skews affluent and educated -- and among the educated, it skews more toward tech and hard science than social "sciences" and humanities. It's a matter of percentages, because pretty much everyone is online these days, but that's my read of how it leans.
And it's not just a question of the number of people online, but of average time spent online and number of pages viewed. Even if poor folks can surf the Web at a public library or on a dial-up connection, they're not going to generate as many page views as someone who had a fast connection and spare hours to spend.
One of the key metrics advertisers look for in placing their pitches on the Web is "stickiness" -- not just how many users hit your site on a given day, but how long they linger and how many pages they view. FR has to be one of the stickiest sites around, because it's interactive and engaging; you don't just hit it to skim the headlines, but to drill down in the threads, comment, and read replies.
There's also a question of definitions -- if, as some FReepers do, you consider MSM outlets to be "liberal" sites, they're gonna add about three digits to the hit rate of any site in this survey.
"You are #6"
In the industry standard vernacular, "hits" refers to any http request -- if you have photos, ads, navigation buttons, includes to measure traffic, separate CSS files, java or javascript, and miscellaneous graphical doodads, you can easily reach 40 or 50 hits on one Web page. That's why almost no one uses hits as a measure of popularity.
These are terms used in measuring Web traffic. I don't expect TV reporters, or the folks who make their graphics, to know the finer points. So what they translate to "hits" I can only guess.
Page views is another metric -- one that measures only the number of main content pages users see. If you load one page with 27 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, it counts the same as loading one page with nothing but text. My best guess is that the Nielsen numbers are page views, but without seeing the original study I can't be sure.
Then there's unique users, the number of people who visit a given site on a given day. It's a useful number, but not the end-all of measuring reach. For example, a lot of people hit NYT.com or CNN.com or Foxnews.com and never click on a link -- they skim the headlines, see that nothing important to them has blown up in the last few hours, and then go on with their day. I suspect that very few FR users load the main headlines page and then don't go deeper.
Another measure is total usage minutes -- a measure of the "stickiness" I mentioned in my last post. Web sites, like broadcasters, don't just want folks to drop by. They want them to stick around. FR is a very sticky site (and I mean that in a good way -- no need to bust out the Lysol).
It's like that in TV, too. Fox News stomps CNN in the Nielsen ratings, but by another measure -- how many people check in however briefly, what TV people call the "cumulative" or "cume" -- CNN wins. More people watch CNN for some period of time on any given day than watch Fox. But Fox viewers stay tuned longer, so there are more of them at any given moment/minute/hour.
So what's the real measure of popularity and influence? Is it better to have ten thousand viewers for ten seconds or a thousand viewers for ten minutes? It's a philosophical question. And a financial one for the advertisers who have to choose their placements.
Is that you, Officer Obie?
That depends. Are you driving a red VW Microbus with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction?
Is that documented or an opinion? I wouldn't doubt it, but I'm interested in whether or not there is evidence of that.
Mark
Everyone to their own approach but I think that by not reading newspapers you might be missing things. I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, for example, and I pick up a lot in its features sections, particularly in medical advances and tax changes.
I just learned, for example, that President Bush has signed into law a provision allowing people 70 1/2 to donate to qualified charities and avoid paying federal taxes. There are details in this law that I don't want to spend too much time on but you get the idea. Not everything in the universe is covered on the Web. Read newspapers (just avoid their "news" stories and editorials (often they are one and the same) and look at some of the feature stories.
Was wondering if someone would have a screen capture of that. Thanks for posting.
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