August 4th, 2007 at 9:25 am
I’d love to know if anyone actually uses the “share this” widget? Does Forrester? How about Om “Let A Thousand Widgets Bloom” Malik? There are loads of them. I used to have one on ver 1.2 of the DJI theme, using a Wordpress extension and I’m pretty sure no one used it (but it certainly was a broken CSS eye sore). Madkast is supposed to change that, as a widget which does the “share this” thing, *and* supposed to provide metrics. The problem, however, is that there is no actual login page to view said metrics, nor any confirmation (by email) that you’ve set something up at Madkast. Whoops.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:06 pm | Permalink
I will admit to using it. I am neither prominent nor an expert on CSS so maybe that’s why :-)
I use it because it offers an opportunity to interact with my writing without too much hassle or effort.
The reasoning behind my use of the option of rating the posts is the same.
Not everyone wants to write a comment and if all they want to communicate is that they like what they read I think those two options do the job.
Whether anyone uses them is another matter. Since I have few visitors (go figure) my blog is not the ideal testing ground.
Since your proposed alternative proves not really to be one, what would you suggest instead? And what do you think about my reasoning behind using it?
August 4th, 2007 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
As long as its done discretely and with taste, there’s no real downside to having it, I suppose.
Perhaps one day, sites like Madkast could aggregate their data (a la “2.0″, or say, Freshbooks) and actually provide this information … if it was beneficial to do so.
I can imagine how it wouldn’t be if their stats said, for example, that 0.01% of users share blog posts, and that their attrition rate was in the 90th percentile or there ’bouts.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:31 pm | Permalink
I think my general stats tell me just about what I want to know. Sure, you can measure everything, but you can also measure it too death or not?
I have no idea whether people use my “related links” or click through the navigation or something third to come from one page to another.
Still I offer all the opportunities for interaction that I can which doesn’t get in the way or annoy anyone. My discrete implementation can’t possibly do that I think.
The more opportunities people have the more they will use them or not? We will never have complete knowledge of how people use our blogs so we may as well learn how to fly blindfolded at least on one eye.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:46 pm | Permalink
Believe me, I like metrics, but more often than not, I’m too lazy to actually run through them. I run fully-blind folded at least 90% of the time, ;)
As for measuring things to death — that’s something that can be done, and is happily done by metrics guru’s. There’s something to be said for understanding what people are doing to improve their experiences and your outcomes.
But as I say — I’m just too lazy to do it most of the time. Or, put another way, judiciously use the time I have in the day to focus on high-yield activities.
Like “asides”. ;)
August 4th, 2007 at 1:02 pm | Permalink
I personally appreciate you using asides. I guess you can view them as twittering within the blog, but as in your case do they also enable posting quick thoughts that can be relevant enough, but couldn’t fill up an actual post or even an article. At least it bridges the articles when you are too busy with life in general.
Strangely enough I recently implemented asides myself. I tend to write rather lengthy article kind of stuff and needed a format to post site news and shorter notes about stuff relating to the blog or it’s subject without having to read a whole article about it. If it was completely unrelated would I rather post it on another blog I think.
Using the Sideblog plugin I implemented them in the sidebar instead of in the actual body of the page as that is how I see them. They are side notes that you can ignore or read depending on your preferences. That way people know what is what I think. Your implementation works as well, but I still find is less clean cut.
Speaking about asides you can consider this one (rules from above applying here as well): Did you ever get my mail about listing your own favorite articles and those of others with comments and send them to me? I appreciate you are a busy guy, but adding you to the list already including Valeria Maltoni, Chris Garrett and Daniel Scocco would be a treat I am sure. Lorelle will also be participating as soon as she finds the time. Perhaps you would too? :-)
August 4th, 2007 at 6:21 pm | Permalink
Yeah, I am still experimenting with Asides in the main post and its role in this blog. I quite like them, but I think they need some tweaking with respect to how they appear in feeds.
As for your email — yes, I got it and yes, I will be happy to participate. You did give me some homework to do, though, and I am tardy on that. ;)
August 5th, 2007 at 5:49 am | Permalink
Whenever you’re ready :-)
If you get the appearance of asides in feeds changed please post about it as I would be very interested. I usually come through your feed, but still I may miss it ;-)
August 6th, 2007 at 12:13 am | Permalink
[...] Korrection: Analytics To Kome! August 6th, 2007 at 12:13 am In response to my initial post on Madkast, the widget that is enabling me to “share” posts, Doug Ludlow the co-founder of Madkast [...]