Out of Egypt:

the seduction of stats

Stats (say, Google Analytics, for example) are deceptive. Because they're so easily quantified, they can give you a false sense of success...or failure. Go up a few thousand hits per month and you feel on top of the world.

But if you want to know whether people are really paying attention to what you're producing, you have to dig a little deeper. Search is a great way to discover new content (or for new users to discover you), but users who come from search have no inherent loyalty - here today, gone tomorrow.

If I had to choose between running a destination site for a few hundred loyal users who create and contribute content or running a site that thousands discover through Google and then promptly forget, I would choose the former every time. Maybe it's because of my interest in the conventional publishing world, but I don't believe that "Web 2.0" has changed all the rules.

Quality will still trump quantity in the end. Wikipedia didn't become #1 because of its SEO, but because of its community. And as that community dies (a victim of its own popularity - Usenet all over again), I predict that Wikipedia itself will become a relic of the past. Not overnight, of course, since it's gotten so entrenched in people's minds (established as a brand, even - largely through word of mouth), but over time, as people discover other, more specialized communities that meet their needs better.

So, in closing, I would echo Copyblogger: "Getting someone to voluntarily pay attention to you over time is the greatest gift you can get as an online publisher. Do everything you can to get more subscribers, and quit trying to please Google."

So psyched about having my own domain. Now I just need to figure out how to get it linked to my webhost, and, possibly, to get Drupal working. Or at least pmWiki.