Using JavaScript For Web Syndication
RSS and analytics tips via Chris Pirillo:

Using JavaScript For Web Syndication. “If you are syndicating to websites that are not under your control, you don’t know that the webmaster will have the expertise to implement a syndication strategy using XML. You might be syndicating to a small company that used FrontPage to make the website; they certainly can’t set up a dynamic process to fetch an XML feed from your site, cache it, and integrate the data into their site.” By chris@pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo). [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips]

 

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Counting Web Site Visitors
More goodies from Phil Windley:

Counting Web Site Visitors. If your organization runs a Web site, you may think that the statistics you're getting from your log analysis software are presenting a pretty accurate picture of your site's traffic. Well, not so fast. A newspaper research and consulting firm named Belden Associates did a study that shows most site traffic numbers are way off base for a variety of reasons. For example, Belden estimates that half of the daily users of a newspaper website access it from more than one computer, resulting a lot of double counting. I couldn't find the report on the Belden site, but a write-up in the Christian Science Monitor gives some details. Even though the study was done for the newspaper industry, most of what's reported is not specific to newspaper Web sites. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

 

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Amy Gahran - Do Webfeeds Help or Hurt Site Traffic

Do Webfeeds Help or Hurt Site Traffic?. On June 3, Dave Winer (a key creator of the RSS technical standard wrote an article answering this question: Would a big media company lose traffic if they supported RSS?

This piece a good, timely complement to my June 4 article, How Many People Read Your Webfeed?

Winer's main point, with which I heartily agree, is this: "I don't think that providing [webeeds], if you do it right, lowers traffic, in fact I think you can gain traffic."

I both agree and disagree with Winer's other points...

(Full story, with links to Winer's article and other resources...)

[Contentious Weblog]

 

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Amy Gahran - How Many People Read Your Webfeed?

How Many People Read Your Webfeed?. From the perspective of many online publishers, webfeeds (whether RSS or Atom format) have one big shortcoming: In most cases, it's difficult or impossible to know how many people subscribe to your webfeed.

Circulation numbers have always been the cornerstone of the publishing world, and that hasn't changed in the online age. This is especially true if a site's business model hinges at all on advertising, or on leveraging relationships with readers to sell other products or services, or to promote a particular organization or issue. For those sites, offering a webfeed feels a bit dangerous – they don't necessarily fear losing readers, but rather losing track of how many readers they have.

Webfeed metrics is a complex issue that mainly boils down to technology. Most content and publishing people aren't technical specialists. However, this is one technical area that online publishers probably should understand (on at least a basic level) and follow major developments.

Here are a few good resources to get you started...

[Contentious Weblog]

 

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