Stop Counting Page Views People
April 16th, 2008 | by Brad King |I love the Web. I just found out about bitchmeme, a great term to describe what happens on the weekends when there isn’t much news happening. Bloggers (or as we called them at Technology Review, the nutters) come out in force to discuss issues that bother them.
Or in this case, issue: should blogs get upset when aggregators allow comments to be posted on the aggregation site, thus stealing precious page views from the original source?
Not to go all McLaughlin on you, but the correct answer is no. And here’s why: the page view is a stupid way to make money.
I’ve talked about the dying banner ad, the foolishness of chasing page views and the insanity of creating more original content in hopes of building larger revenues.
Now, it’s not quite that simple, I realize, but for the purpose of our discussion here, those three facts are hard to argue. The banner is dying, regardless of the size of your organization, so chasing page views isn’t necessarily a smart way to go about your business.
Creating more content, well, that’s a different idea totally.
While it’s not great that aggregators are stealing conversations, the idea that you “own” a conversation is just as ridiculous. If people are talking about you, they will continue to find you. And if they don’t, they really weren’t talking about what you had to say anyway. In fact, having multiple conversations about you is great (if not a bit taxing to track down so you can participate).
Ideally, you become a launching point for the conversation, a central hub of ideas where communities can form.
Money is made off ancillary products (for me, it’s going to be the book and the speaking, I hope), not the content or discussion. The discussion makes me smarter, it helps me understand what people are looking for and it makes me think. Hopefully, the same happens in reverse. Once I launch the Wiki and the podcasts, this will be more participatory.
Comments aren’t my concern. Participation is. Page views are my concern. Voices are.
