Google Analytics

[foxfirefey]

LiveJournal has never allowed any real web analytics to be added to personal journals, although sponsored communities were able to get them. Sure, you could add stat counters or web bugs from LJ Toys. But I'm unaware of any way on LiveJournal to get the referral URL of people who were linking to your post, save for the recently implemented and entirely optional pingbacks.

Dreamwidth, however, is going to give paid users Google Analytics as a feature. This means that paid users will be able to know who in DW is linking to them, leading to some interesting changes from the way things used to be. I think this has the potential to surprise and upset people.

For instance, let's say you link to someone's post in a friends only post in your journal or use <user name="user"> to link to their journal in a locked post. Some of your access given subscribers click on that link, and if the user you linked to is paid and using Google Analytics, they'll know you were talking about them in a post they don't have access to, and if you linked to a specific post, they'll know which post you're talking about. Stealth talking about people has become that much harder and unreliable.

There's a limited ability to avoid this. URLs are automatically turned into links; you can do formatting to make it unlinked, so people have to copy and paste, but some people have browser extensions that will autolink anything that looks close to a URL, so you can't always depend on that. You'll have to go above and beyond to obfuscate the link to make sure that doesn't happen and not use user tags to link to someone--but if you don't do that, someone is bound to make a Greasemonkey script that could go to a highlighted name, and they'll still get the referral. Edit: charmian and kaki point out that URL obfuscators might get used more, like TinyURL and anonym.to. I agree with this! However, there are even browse add ons that resolve those services to their actual URLs, so even that is not a failsafe.

What effects do you think this is going to have on social interactions on Dreamwidth? What other effects will Google Analytics have on users?

Comments

[principia]

If you're that concerned about it, just enter the person's journal name as text, and obfuscate any web links. That serves to obscure when you might be talking about someone where you don't want them to know about it (benign example: planning a surprise party for a friend).

[zorkian]

That's an interesting point!

Personally, I agree that it will have an effect, but I'm not particularly sure how much of one it would have to the average user. I think that the kind of person who is going to actively run this sort of analysis to determine who is reading their content and from where is going to be doing it anyway, so the effect is already in place and adding GA won't increase it by any significant fraction.

As to other byproducts of having this feature... I'm hoping that it will help motivate people to create interesting content because they want to see more people reading what they're saying. I'd love to see DW be a home for 'famous blogs' and people who are aspiring to become pundits or activists or what-have-you. Do I think that's our target market or anything? No, we're a community first and foremost, but I think the feature definitely helps us.

[charmian]

Yes, indeed. This has been the feature I've wished that LJ had. (Hoping DW rolls it out soon!)

Indeed, it will. Although, you can just disable Google Analytics Javascript, though? Or use anonym.to. You can just also well, not link and talk about 'that person.'

Well, not only locked posts, but public ones too. I'm not sure about what the exact social impact will be.

[kaki]

That's an interesting point you have there ...

Personally, I'd rather not have that feature implemented at all, neither for myself nor anyone else, but of course I understand that there are lots of people who want it.

To avoid it, I think there are a few services out there that allow you to direct links via their URL/server in some way so the referrer cannot be guessed by the person whose site was linked to. (I'm just trying to remember the adress of that one I heard of once ...) Though many people won't want to bother with this all the time.
And I don't know what for example tinyurl does with referrers.

My suggestion would be to at least display it in some way if a user/journal has Google Analytics enabled/implemented on their journal. On the profile page might be best. So people who are concerned about it can check before they might risk getting into trouble

[blackbird_song]

Hmm... Just my opinion, but seems like this could set up kind of a nasty atmosphere, actually. Part of what's necessary in a community is the ability to vent safely about other people. It's infinitely healthier to do that than it is to either let things fester or to commit various acts of vengeance. It's also true that, in general, people become more able to cope with this idea as they get older and more secure in themselves. I rather hate the idea of someone discovering they've been talked about in a locked post and thinking the worst, possibly ruining friendships before discovering that the post in question was about planning a lovely surprise for them.

I'd be interested in knowing if, in all honesty, there is anyone who absolutely wouldn't experience any anxiety at all if they discovered they'd been discussed, and had no access to that discussion or ability to speak up for themselves. Hasn't that sort of thing been at the root of uncounted thousands of dramas and rifts through the millennia? Personally, I've never been any sort of fan of Big Brother, but Little Brother can be even worse, especially when fueled by tech produced by a conglomerate that basically wants to enable everyone to peer into each other's pores without permission.

I hope that Dreamwidth rethinks this, or at least gives everyone the ability to block GA's usefulness in finding their journals and posts. Making any part of a friends-locked post public against the will of the OP, even as indirectly as this, poses a serious ethical issue for me.

Catherine

[livrelibre]

Do you know if the default will be to have it on? If so, then I think this will be a bigger deal. If it's something that people (meaning journal users on their own journal) can opt into and there's some automatic way to mark that they are using it (like the IP logging notification, giving linkers, readers and commenters a potential opt out) then with proper awareness and workarounds (like this post; thanks!) hopefully it wouldn't change too much. I think giving people options and information on what exactly happens with GA will go a long way. Of course, there is wank potential in everything:)

I think the key is partly technological choice and transparency, partly adjusting social norms (those who are used to blogs will probably be less freaked out by this change, esp. when you consider those widgets that display on the front of blogs where visitors are coming from are much more public), and partly individual management (people knowing what they are comfortable knowing or having known about them and how to manage that).

[damned_colonial]

You know, I'm more worried about what GA will do to the content of what people post. In the past I've followed various blogs-about-blogging and the sort of traffic whoring that goes on in that world is phenomenal. Journal sites like DW have, til now, been somewhat immune to that. I mean, there's comment whoring, but GA will make it worse. Will people start posting stuff designed just to get them traffic so they can get all excited over their GA stats? Will we see people spreading articles across multiple entries to increase their page views? Will we see people obsessing over their bounce rate, trying to get people to stay on their own journal and not link off to others?

[alittlebirdy]

I hope this isn't too much of a noob question, but I am unfamiliar with GA, particularly in this context. I am just wondering, who will have access to the GA data? If I have a paid account and I am using GA, is the data restricted to just my eyes? does DW as a company have access to that data? is it available to the public?

I'm not too worried about people talking about me behind my back, but I think having it turned on when you write fanfic, or make icons or layouts or post photos will be great. You'll be able to see who is hotlinking (once DW have their version of scrapbook running) who is reading your fic (or at least how many people are), how many people are looking at your photos/art even if they aren't commenting. I know on LJ I had a photo blog for a brief period, but rarely got comments. Would have been nice to know if people were looking at least, would have been so much more motivating, pushing me to add more content.