Skip to main content

An experiment

Experiment: the testing of an idea.

This post follows from my post on stats and posting. I do observe a number of pageviews from countries other than my own, and often wonder, how many people are really that free to read up a seemingly random blog? How many actually end up reading more than the first few lines?

I have decided to create a blog which I shall not publicise in any way. I shall put up seemingly random posts there, but not post the URL on Buzz, Facebook or Twitter, in other words, not thrust the blog upon my friends.

What do I hope to see from this experiment. I suppose that it would give me some idea about the number of people who happen to visit my blog from various sources, those who do not have the blog thrust upon them.

As to the question about how many people end up reading more than the first few lines, checking that would be much difficult. Can someone suggest a good method?

Why do I wish to do this experiment? Because I am hopelessly jobless.

Will I share my findings with you? Sure, if there is anything to share (besides the obvious No one wants to read my blog, boo-hoo).

Comments

  1. KM27 October 2011 at 18:43

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KM27 October 2011 at 18:53

    i suggest, for the part where you want to count the people who actually do read more than 'the first few lines', setting up another webpage (which can keep a count of visits) with its hyperlink pasted in the main body of your posts. so, you have a number of people visiting your blog, and the number of people visiting your second blog/hyperlink. of course, there's always a number of stray visits if you choose another blog for the number of careful readers. but even that problem can be eliminated by averaging the number of stray visits to a blog (over a given time period), and subtracting it from the actual number you receive... also, ideally you can have a hyperlink for every line/sentence- but then that's why it is ideal, in the first place :P but 2-3 hyperlinks well placed should be good enough to serve the purpose of this 'experiment'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Skand Hurkat28 October 2011 at 01:03

    I would not really like to provide spurious links. It can be distracting for readers. Maybe I should rely on the quick feedback, and expect that people who have read the post in its entirety would take the pains to make one click to give feedback.

    ReplyDelete
  4. KM28 October 2011 at 13:24

    hey, but personal experience forces me to understand it this way- its easier to lure a reader into clicking a link than to get him writing a feedback (more so on a random post)... but ultimately, u ought to try it out. why not try 'An Experiment 1' and 'An Experiment 2'? then you can assign a way of counting based on ur results of above versions of 'An Experiment' and use it in the actual 'An Experiment' :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. KM28 October 2011 at 13:29

    btw, a major factor here will be to suitably camouflage the hyperlinks (no colours/highlights/explicit url's) to tempt the readers...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Skand Hurkat28 October 2011 at 14:34

    KM, what about just a one-click quick-feedback? It's rather like a vote: Did you or did you not like this article?

    ReplyDelete
  7. KM28 October 2011 at 15:01

    one needs a well concealed one-click feedback, such that only the patient readers are more likely to discover it... then it may work. but i can't help think- this experiment needs PATIENCE, certainly considerable amount of it!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Harry Potter and why I dislike the series

There could not be a better time for this post. There could not have been a worse time for this post. Now that the penultimate movie of the series is out, and my facebook wall filled with people who loved the movie. But this is something I really wanted to say, and I shall say it anyway. Harry Potter is pathetic literature. Now, you must be wondering why I say that. There are many reasons. Firstly, the storyline itself is flawed. When a writer sits down to write anything, he/she must set up some essential rules about what is happening. These rules must remain constant irrespective of how many times he/she changes his/her mind. This is so that the readers are allowed to have some sensibility in what they are reading. In the fourth book, Rowling goes ahead and kills Cedric. Then, at the end of the book, the horseless carriages are there again. Nothing special. We all knew that they are horseless. But then comes the fifth book, and BAM, the horses are actually winged beasts that only thos
18 comments
Read more

On the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

This is a post that I have been meaning to write from quite some time. Long hours spent typing code on my computer left my hands fatigued, and left me with a lot of pain in my wrists and fingers. That is when I decided to use the Dvorak. But I have got the same bad habit as Dr. Watson, to tell a story backwards. Of course, you must be wondering what the Dvorak is. The story of keyboards starts with the invention of the typewriter. Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, tried with a two row piano style keyboard. But then, he got into many difficulties with the design. Then he finally settled for a four row design. This was similar to the QWERTY layout that most computers and typewriters today possess. The engineers at Remington, to whom Sholes had presented his design modified the layout a little further, and then the QWERTY was born. As typewriters became popular, people got used to the layout, and started practising touch typing, i.e. typing without looking at the keys
Post a Comment
Read more

The paradox of government

I'm fascinated by the concept of government, and the paradoxes it presents. On one hand, governments grant us a certain set of rights or liberties. On the other hand, they work to strip us of the very liberties they promise. Now, I don't mean that all governments strip people of liberties, but there are liberal regimes, and there are sufficiently restrictive and dictatorial ones. Both models may have results to show, it does not mean that people in a restrictive regime are unhappy (refer to Dan Dennett's TED talk , where he states that ideas or memes can be dangerous when taken from one part of the world, where they are widespread, and, using the virus analogy, where people are immune to the memes; to a part of the world where they are foreign, where people may not be immune to the memes and where people may get infected). History has shown that people were sufficiently satisfied with autocratic governments with a benevolent dictator, and that people in other parts of the
Post a Comment
Read more