Akkam’s Razor

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There seemed to be a point at BlogPhiladelphia where everyone seemed to be grasping for what should be the obvious - what is the business model?  How do I make money?  How do I convince my boss that we should be blogging? What is blogging worth?  Typically, the value of a web site was dependent on it's number of PageViews, at least as far as advertising was concerned.  All of that is about to change.

One of the subjects briefly mentioned at this month's BlogPhiladelphia unconference was the death of the PageView (wiki) as the prime page metric for internet sites.  As explained by Mel "Toxic" Taylor, the metric, which is based on the amount of times a page is viewed, is being replaced by another existing metric, the time-spent-on-site, a move initiated by A.C. Nielsen - an Old Media company. This presents a challenge to scores of existing internet properties as well as new opportunities for sites that are still in the planning stages.  Simply put, this recalculation changes everything, and throws the most prominent business model, that of pay-per-click advertising into doubt.  At the same time, the move to mobile platforms, geolocation, the presence of AJAX and client-side refreshes versus server-side reloads, social networking, widgetized (syndicated) content, and the increasing utilization of RSS makes the PageView largely obsolete, as detailed by Evan Williams (aka evhead). For scores more on the topic, see this del.icio.us search for "PageViews".

It's humorous that this conversation occurs as Time Magazine contemplates pulling the plug on "Business 2.0" and as Businessweek showcases the LOLCATS meme (as in ICANHASCHEEZEBURGER), as well as a slideshow on what other bloggers make (which I first saw this morning on Mashable).  As Joe Sweeney joked at BlogPhilly, "What is it with these cats and the internet?"

There will be changes based on this refocus, some bad, some good, with the changes on balance being mostly neutral.  As Jakob Nielsen (no relation, I think) said, bloggers should write articles, not blog posts.  If the goal was to deliver timely and relavent content, to deliver increased page views, than yes, shorter posts would be appropriate.  However, if the goal is to engage the reader and get them to spend more time on your site, spend more money (if you sell goods or services), or to build relationships of trust, then longer articles would be ideal, buttressed by social networks and embedded media.

A renewed focus on writing and editing, a sharpening of writing skills, and the cultivation of an audience have always been the goals of many bloggers.  But now, the business environment has changed, de-emphasizing SEO, ad placement, text ads, pop-ups and -unders, embedded ads and towards the amount of attention someone pays to your site.  A cynic might say that Old Media is trying to drive a stake through the heart of the new media, as the core competencies of blogs, such as external links and blogrolls, will all be disincentives to the generation of revenue.  This may be another artifact of Western Societies post-Enlightenment obsession with Reductionism and Time-Studies, the trying to make Old-World measurements work with New Media properties.

Although this change will most seriously impact the phenomenom-based sites where short bursts of traffic generate the revenue, the big sites have certainly taken notice and are looking at ways to make their sites properties and destinations as opposed to landing pages from search hits. 

For example, Facebook has replaced a 3-page process for befriending with an AJAX process where everything is done sans page reload.

One of the benefactors of the change to time-spent-on-site will be social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, the resurgence of the internet portal (like Yahoo), and embedded/streaming media portals such as YouTube.  Any sites that are dependent on sticky relationships with viewers are "teh win", including flash games, audio, video, feed readers, and the like.  Site valuations are also very-much in jeopardy - analysts and VCs take the pulse of a site, and assign the valuation based on PageViews…what happens now?  Does the "worth" of the property decline preciptously?  Even Google's own model, the search engine, will be in jeopardy.  Does this maybe even show promise of a revenue model for Second Life and in-game advertising?

For sites still in the planning stages, building-in code, processes, and layouts that maximize time-spent-on-site will be essential.  This might include sidebar territory typically reserved for advertising being repurposed for the highlighting of popular content, recent content, tags, or recent comments, taking advantage of the F-shaped eye-tracking patterns inherent to web usage.  Although a morally gray are, SEO-folk may want to move away from pagination as we know it (with each page view resulting in a higher total view count) towards content being displayed, scrolled, and refreshed inside of an AJAX (or Flash) window.  Any changes that are made need to focus on one thing - the changing of your site from a destination to a property.  It also places a premium on the relationship between writer and reader, creator and consumer, and the connections between the two and the attendant ad hoc networks that can develop based on those interactions.  Once again, the value is in the network.

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