dreamwidth_meta | Google Analytics

Google Analytics

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?

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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).

I think people below me who mentioned URL obfuscators like TinyURL have the right idea.

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.

No, GA will definitely increase it. I really don't know of a way before this that you could get referral links to an LJ post you made. LJ Toys didn't do it. Lots of people talk backchannel about other people, and before it's been more of a space where you could link to others and vent about them without them without them necessarily knowing, unless there was an informant in your midst.

But yes, I agree that people who create content might like to see who is viewing their content from where. A side effect is that some people who didn't know before how much people were watching them might either feel disappointed (not enough people!) or creeped out (they were unaware of all of the silent watchers).

Or people could just say "I have this really annoying friend who does this and that and this other thing" without naming names. The people who know the person will probably know who is meant anyway.

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.

I think anonym.to would be the way to go. Disabling Google Analytics won't work to avoid giving referrers to a post you made with links in it--sure, you won't show up in their statistics. But all it takes is one person who hasn't disable Google Analytics JS to click on the link in your post for them to get a referral URL for it.

Oh yeah, you're right. I was thinking of it from the perspective of the individual reader, not of the poster.

I think besides "oooh, can you believe what so and so said!!!!???" posts, the innocuous "an interesting post" or "I don't agree w/ this person" or "here are some neat links" posts (which would be public, and there would be no reason to hide the link) may help smash the "only people who have me friended read me" perception, also.

"here are some neat links" posts (which would be public, and there would be no reason to hide the link)

Unless the poster is someone who posts friend-only by default; I have a number of those on my LiveJournal friends page. So even things which could be public aren't, because they don't go out of their way to make the entry public after it was posted.

I suppose so, but then, most sites you link to will have referrer tracking enabled. For example, all WP.com blogs have referrer tracking possible. In general, if you really want to keep your blog private in this sense, then, you need to not make links.

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

I think you're right--more people might start using services like TinyURL. In that case, somebody would get the TinyURL link as a referrer.

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

Well, except things can change. Somebody could not have it, you link to them, then they set it up the next day and people are clicking on that link.

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

No part of the friends locked post becomes public; only its existence is revealed. All the person who puts GA on their journal gets is:

* The URL that is linking to them.
* The page that is linked.

Note that anybody could have this ability if they were hosting content outside of LJ that gets linked. I know when my wikis get linked to, even when posts are friended/locked.

I don't really know if there is any good way to keep this from happening, as it's not Google Analytics on the friends post, it's the Google Analytics on the journal being linked to, and it would be very difficult to selectively disable it just for links coming from locked posts. Individuals can block Google Analytics pretty easily, but they can't rely on others having done so.

No part of the friends locked post becomes public; only its existence is revealed.

I disagree. Content is revealed even though it's only that the post contains a link. However, as you then go on to point out, this is already possible in some circumstances so the solution isn't to pretend it doesn't exist but, quite the opposite, give it as much publicity as possible (and adding it to dw as a feature would expedite that).

I'm biased though.

pingback_bot is my new boyfriend. ;-)

You're right--I was a bit shortsighted there. But, it won't necessarily mean that the link was in the post--it could be in the comments, as well.

Overall, though, I hope that the effects are good instead of bad. I love pingbacks, I love stats and graphs, I love seeing where I get linked to, and I generally don't get too overly concerned if people link to me in a post I can't see. I think this is going to give value to the silent lurkers to paid users, as well, as people realize their posts are read more than they thought.

it won't necessarily mean that the link was in the post--it could be in the comments

Interesting point.

I know that no overt part of the actual post becomes public. It's the revelation of its existence that gives me pause, and the fact that it reveals that a specific person was discussed, thereby revealing the tiniest bit of something contained in a locked post to someone who didn't have access to it. I've got loud scruples about that sort of thing.

I also do know about the issue of hosting content outside of LJ and linkage to it.

You're probably right about the feasibility (or lack thereof) of trying to selectively block Google Analytics in that way. I was afraid that was the case when I commented, even though I'm not a tech-head. This is one major reason I wish that Dreamwidth would rethink the whole idea.

All that said, though, if it only operates on links, then I'd assume that safe venting could still take place in a post that was text only, unless a more invasive version of it comes along. If this is true, and we're all aware of the presence and pitfalls of Google Analytics, maybe I shouldn't worry quite as much. I'm still not wild about it, though. Too much fodder for the rumor/whisper mill, if it gets used a lot 'intramurally', as it were.

Catherine

A more invasive version of it isn't coming and won't happen. This is only an artifact of link URL referrals and Google Analytics. Text only venting could take place just fine. And nonpaid users won't have Google Analytics, either, so the majority of people won't know when they're linked to, as I don't think the majority of people will pay. Of course, if people make links in the comments of your posts, then you might be back in the same boat, but.

In any case, I definitely wanted to start having this kind of discussion with people and get this out into the open before Google Analytics was enabled, so people won't be surprised or feel like they were submarined.

Overall, this is a good feature for a lot of our userbase. People making creative content love to know there is an audience watching, and giving paid accounts Google Analytics helps with that. It just has this one particular social caveat.

I'm glad to know that a more invasive version won't be happening.

I'm also grateful to you for starting this discussion. I think it is very important to know what we're in for. I also hope that DW will make it very clear to everyone signing up that paid users will have Google Analytics, and that links in locked posts could become visible to those who use the tool.

I'm on the fence about the benefits of Google Analytics, in my case. I do make creative content, and I love an audience, being a performer in RL, but I also block my inclusion in search engines at LJ, and take almost as many steps as possible to minimize the appearance of my fan-works to a wider audience. (I don't lock my stories.) I harbor no illusion that I'm invisible, but I'm not as visible as many, despite having a not-tiny flist and a fair bit of work out there. I suppose that Google Analytics may do more good than harm, but it does raise concerns both on the social front, and about how easy it might make it for makers of fan-fiction and fan-art to get targeted by deep-pocketed entities.

Again, though, I'm just worrying out loud. I'd rather do that and prove an idiot than keep it to myself and come to more serious grief. ;)

Catherine

Oh and I should point out that GA isn't just a one-hit wonder. You still have to go to Google, sign up for a GA account, come back to DW, put in your GA codes, and then set it up.

This isn't an "every paid user has it" sort of thing. Although I expect a lot of people and communities to take advantage of it.

(Just mentioning this in case it wasn't clear.)

Thank you for letting me know what one has to do to get it to work.

I had thought that each paid user probably had to pursue it a bit more actively than just by giving Dreamwidth money, so it's good to have that confirmed. :)

Catherine

Worrying out loud is fine! It is better for people to work out these issues before they happen, I think.

Google Analytics doesn't help anybody actually find your content, it just lets you know where people are coming to your content from. I don't think it will do anything to let deep pocket entities target makers of fan fiction and fan art, as nobody else but you and Google can view your stats without your say so. And if you don't like the idea of Google knowing the stats to your website, you don't have to set it up.

Thank you for the tolerance of the worry and for more information about how GA actually works. I do apologize for making you explain it to me whilst I'm trying to work on something else I promised to do instead of doing my own homework on this issue. *rolls eyes at self*

Catherine

i'll remember that if i rant in a locked post, to rant in text only! :).

The thing is, the vast majority of linking is not going to be sekrit backstabbing or whatever people are afraid of.

Well, that depends. But even if it isn't the majority, I think it likely (having stepped carefully through various LJ minefields over the years) that there will be enough of that going on that this could become a background problem that might tinge the community atmosphere here. Mostly, I think it just sets up a perception that backstabbing is going on, whether or not it actually is.

In any event, if people don't want to risk being discovered talking behind the backs of others in locked posts, it should be possible to avoid that by using text or even initials. So schoolyard, though!

Catherine

I've found that listening to other people vent about people that I don't know well poisons any relationship I'm going to later have with them. There are people who are otherwise very good people that I can't manage to stop disliking and it all started with my friend Jane Doe who mentioned to me that she was fed up with Mary Smith always bumming rides off her. Early impressions of a person are a big deal, and I imagine I would currently have a much better relationship with Mary Smith if I could stop thinking of her as the bummer of rides who used to make Jane Doe leave parties earlier than she wanted to so that she could go home when she wanted. Petty, and ridiculous, but no matter how much I work on it, I just can't overcome it.

What's really best for relationships is discussing the problem with the person who is causing it. Or failing that, with people who will never ever meet that person. So it becomes "asking for advice/venting about my relative who doesn't use dreamwidth or LJ or whatever" to people who live so far away from the relative that it doesn't matter.

I agree with this, on the whole. The venting is necessary, I think, when one either has tried and failed to communicate with the person in question and must still resolve an untenable situation, or cannot figure out how to muster the courage or proper words to talk to a person who might be causing serious stress.

I make a distinction between venting and gossip. The former is necessary to relieve stress, typically amongst a group of people who either knows the person and can help come up with a constructive solution to the problem, or with (as you suggest) a group of people who will never meet the person under normal circumstances. Gossip, however, turns upon at least a whiff of malice that adds excitement and danger to the mix. I tend to have more of a problem with the gossiper than the gossipee, as I make a point of making up my own mind about each person I meet, but that's largely because I'm very keenly aware of the danger you mention here.

I'm far too tired to make any more sense than I already have (which may be pitiful), so I'll just thank you for the comment and your patience with my response, and then I'll be good and go away. :)

Catherine

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.

My answer, in all honesty, is yes. People are likely to talk about you in arenas you have no access to all the time, particularly if you bother to do something publicly, like post in an online journal. My family does it, my friends do it, my work colleagues do it. I do it. It's human to talk about what is in our lives.

Websites that are not LJ have been using programs like Google Analytics for years. LJ, along with other blogging sites, showed up in the referrer logs for websites on my last two jobs. Anytime you link to an actor on IMDB, or to something on an official website, and someone clicks on your link, the linked website has been getting a referrer link from your journal.

I think you're right, it's going to be a culture change for some LJ/DW users, particularly those who see their journal site home as a closed environment and, as with anything that humans have a hand in, wank may ensue, but no more or less often than happens now.

Thanks for posting,

foxfirefey.

I agree. I think this will significantly influence the culture of Dwdth, and not in a necessarily positive way.

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).

No, only paid users (since it's paid users who get this feature) who have explicitly linked their journal to a Google Analytics account (which they have to set up separately) will have this on.

To be honest, I think that clearly identifying who at the current time has GA on is deceptive. Somebody could set up or lose Google Analytics at any point in time. There's no good way to warn people of who has GA enabled *before* they go to their journal, either. The best way would be to put a notification on the profile, but I think the profile itself gets to have Google Analytics on it (could be wrong) and so that kind of defeats the whole purpose. But, we do know at the very least that only paid users can, and they won't be a majority of users.

Google Analytics is easy for an individual to block--that is, somebody who doesn't want to be counted in someone else's stats can easily install AdBlockPlus and block Google Analytics.

Edited 2009-04-21 00:33 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot about paid users having to *get* the Google Analytics account *facepalm*

And I see what you mean about identifying who has GA or not. I put LJ Toys on my posts for about a week once and then took it off again (except my profile, oops! *fixes*). Besides the weirdness of adjusting to knowing who was hitting what (except those who had it blocked), it was eye-opening how much general info I got. I felt weird about not letting people know but after that week any autonotification that I had LJ Toys would have been wrong.

And it's good to know AdBlockPlus can take care of that.

Just an FYI, but sometimes blocking GA can break a page you're trying to visit. I have that problem on Zazzle. It's probably crappy coding on their part but it's something to be aware of.

Yeah, it's crappy coding on their part. But scripting surrogates can take care of that.

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?

This is a good point.

I think the answer is yes, people will post stuff to get traffic they can feel good about.

I don't think they'll spread articles across multiple entries to increase their page views. The main reason places do that seem to be to increase ad views, and there aren't ads on DW posts. They might do it for another reason I can think of, though, and that's to see how many people are actually reading to the end of a long epic, instead of just loading the page and leaving quickly.

I don't think anybody's going to obsess much over bounce rate, which I wager is always going to be pretty high. Bounce rate doesn't mean as much is this instance, as it's a metric designed mostly to determine whether people who clicked your ad later went on to "convert", ie perform some particular goal, like fill out a survey or purchase a product. If you have a high bounce rate, your landing page isn't compelling and you should improve it to increase your ROI, yadda yadda. On DW, return on investment is mostly in the attention itself, not whether somebody leaves your journal right after they read an entry.

I dunno. I can imagine conversion goals for my DW. For instance, how many people who came to my journal's "recent entries" went on to read my older fic? How many people read my WIP from end to end? Does this vary depending on whether I crosspost my fics to journal X or journal Y?

I don't know if DW will support it (I suspect not) but from the GA perspective I could set up specific "campaigns" to follow things like this.

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.

It is not too much of a noob question!

Only Google and the person who has the Google Analytics account can view GA data. You can, however, give other people access to your Google Analytics account, but that's something you set up on your own. (I imagine this would be the kind of thing communities would do.) This data is not available to the public.

I don't think it will let you know who is hotlinking, because hotlinks don't load the JavaScript Google Analytics uses to keep its statistics.

But it will let you see how many people are reading your fic, although it won't be able to match up users with their accounts or anything. (The closest it comes is that you can generally assume a referral link from an account's reading list probably comes from that account, but even that isn't certain in many cases, as public posts on your reading list can be viewed by others.)

It won't let you know if someone is just reading your post on their friends list, but it will let you know if they go view something under the cut. But yes, it would let you know that people were looking at your journal.

DW as a company doesn't have access to Google Analytics data--they can't log into your account or anything--but they have access to any data Google Analytics could make just because they're hosting the servers and anybody running servers has access to logs like that if they so choose and that's true across the whole internet. LiveJournal keeps track of that kind of stuff too, for instance. And it's important to the service for DW and LJ to have those kinds of statistics--there's certain things you can tell, like if you have User Interface problems that are causing people to abandon tasks halfway through.

In addition to what Fey said above, I should point out that while DW uses Google Analytics for the main site, there's a hardcoded block in place that prevents it from showing on any journal pages, so even DW's own GA account won't show them that information.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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