I’m not sure why, but there’s a weird trend sweeping through the blogosphere that when you think about it, takes us right back to the Geocities style hit counters and spinning logos days.
Showing your site stats to visitors.
Apparently this is done in the name of transparency, and not for bragging purposes. Frankly, i can’t see any reason to be transparent for the sake of transparency.
I mean, what the fuck’s all that about then? It seems to me that to function well within this new environment, transparency is a good thing, and i practice it at Threadwatch in many ways – and im not against showing site stats to visitors, where’s the harm?
What annoys me, is the dressing up of silly “who’s got the biggest” contests as something other than they are.
Sitemeter
The apparently trendy, ethical, and transparent thing to do is use SiteMeter to show your visitors how many other visitors there may be on you website – It looks pretty neat, though i’ve no idea how accurate it is… You can see some bloggers stats here:
One thing i wonder about is the extra network connection, how much does that slow a site down?
The second thing i wonder, is if i should sign up get my tackle out with the rest of the bloggers in this who’s got the biggest contest? It might be fun, informative, inacurate, silly, but it wouldn’t be transparent…
Nick Wilson is the publisher and founder of Threadwatch.org.
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