A recent article in Mediaweek is one of many talking about how emerging technologies like Flash and Ajax are rendering constant page requests–and hence the standard of page view metrics–obsolete. While the majority of sites still aren’t so hi-tech (yet), they hopefully will be soon. Just check out cool sites like Justin.tv (a great example of Lifecasting), which doesn’t require any page refreshing.
Then there are widgets, which will take over the web in the coming year. While they may drive users to websites in the short term, they will ultimately preclude the need altogether. That’s a good thing! They are making the web a more convenient, RSS-driven environment.
That said, the communications industry needs to come up with a new way to measure web impressions. It’s no longer about gross impressions; what counts is 1:1. When you reach someone on a targeted, niche site, that impression is infinitely more valuable than one page view on Yahoo! or a print ad in GQ. But how to truly measure those impressions is still an imperfect science. Perhaps we should look to social ranking tools like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, delicious, or even StumbleUpon for our cues. Now that the user is in control, it’s their experience that matters!
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment