techmeme vs hacker news traffic (one data point)

This is neither here nor there and just one data point, but I have always found traffic patterns on the web interesting, so I'm posting this mostly for my own self interest.  

I always just assumed it would be better to get a link on Techmeme over Hacker News but for this blog at least, it's not the case.

Looking at one post that got one of the "related links" on Techmeme and a post on Hacker News, Hacker News provided over 100X more traffic than the link on Techmeme.  Remember your Calculus 101 - the total traffic is the area under the curve of these graphs, not the max(y).

micro view

Even if you zoom it out and look at two separate posts spanned out over a period of months, the first one which was a "first class" link from Techmeme, versus an entry in Hacker News, you see the same pattern.   It's almost fractal.

macro view

What most non-Google employees don't understand about Steve Yegge's post

Steve Yegge of Google accidentally posted a great rant on Google not forcing its product teams to encapsulate functionality and expose all data and actions as APIs...essentially that Google internally does not use a Service Oriented Architecture.

This is totally true and while I agree it would have actually been a heck of a lot easier to integrate products in Google if they did (something I know a thing or two about) - having one big codebase and database also had the benefit of allowing engineers to really understand what was going on in other parts of Google and forced them to work in a distributed environment across offices.

The web will make a big deal about his post, but I think what most people don't get about his post is that you see posts like this almost every day at Google.  At least once a week.  I enjoyed seeking out the engineers, PMs, and the occasional sales person, who would take the time to write a well thought out, lucid essay on something that could be changed, made better, or simply challenging a management decision like de-staffing certain projects.

Generally, the Google culture would hash this out, and at times, when appropriate, the exec team would address it.   Eric, Larry and Sergey were almost always aware of these things because they would get asked about them in TGIF (company wide weekly update meetings) and they'd usually have a reasonable response.

So enjoy reading this, as it will give you a peek into the Google culture from a freedom of expression point of view, but it's otherwise not a big deal.

It's still all about building a loyal audience

Recently, I've enjoyed reading Dan Frommer's SplatF, a somewhat self proclaimed experiment in self publishing.  I enjoy reading Dan more on SplatF than I did at Business Insider (née SAI, which he helped create)  because it's more stripped down and not quite as blatant in its page generation schemes such as those "Top 10" articles that force you to step through page by page (and thus generating 10 page views).

Stripped from this SAI framework, Dan's a really good writer and seems really efficient at coming up with  thoughtful analysis of what's going on in tech - and recently he published a quarterly report, in which he details some observations of how it's going to far.

Will his experiment succeed?  I'm not sure what the parameters are, but for me the question is really "can he succeed without resorting to backpedaling to all the revenue generation techniques of SAI".   That is, can he succeed with catchy headlines, quality writing, and perhaps by inventing a new combination of techniques for how to monetize a blog.

I think the thing that grabbed me the most from his month-after and quarterly report is that in this post-RSS reading, social media world, he's still really concerned with building a long lasting audience.

Why?

Because a transient audience doesn't pay the bills.

Witness, he ditched Google AdSense after a couple months for Say Media placements because it didn't generate enough revenue. Well of course.  AdSense has never been a great fit for the "intermediate blogger" that doesn't do product reviews or otherwise create content that's also good for search ads OR be really really large scale like Techcrunch or SAI.   The Google Display tools for buyers are great at selling audience ads for large traffic pubs - not so good for small ones.  

His traffic spikes are still coming from link-love from Daring Fireball and a few others, but with each of these spikes comes more Twitter followers.  More Twitter followers means more clicks from Twitter and more importantly from repeat users.  With 140 characters to work with, users have to click through, and I've already found myself clicking through from Twitter multiple times per day.

Repeat users means a loyal audience to understand and monetize by CPM.  If he keeps it up, he will hit an infection point where these numbers all accelerate.

So maybe it's only surprising to me, but it's still about building a loyal audience.