Disqus - Latest Comments for arctictony

Re: [ ]

arctictony — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 16:27:31 -0000

Hey Brian, Good post but I would like to point out that you've never seen a pageview measured in chartbeat because we never have. There is a longer post to be had (and I wrote one recently on PaidContent), but I'm not trying to kill pageviews just because they are an old thing, but because they are a ridiculous gameable metric of near zero marginal cost to create that measures the provocativeness of link copy and nothing else. If I can split an article and make three units of something where there once was one without harm; if I can write a linkbait headline and profit as much as if I wrote a great article then it's not unfair to say something is fundamentally wrong.

Why I'm arguing for the idea of actual consumption time (engaged time) is that it actually deals with these problems. It's a zero-sum metric of finite supply, if I spend engaged time in one place I can't spend it in another and there will never be more than 24 hours of it per person available. It can't be gamed with slideshows or linkbait. As importantly, it directly relates how we value a page to the ability of a page to hold our attention, which isn't a bad proxy for quality. If I write a 10,000 long-form story that people love it should be valued more widely than a piece on ehow thrown together without care or rigour.

So by all means, argue that as an industry we're not moving fast enough and that there are strides to be made before we get to where we need to be. I'll join you on that one. However, to suggest that we are apocalyptic doomsayers when we are trying to treat the cause instead of the symptoms is unfair and untrue. This debate is important (and probably better done over beer) but any time you want to come down to chartbeat and meet the people and see why we do what we do I'd be happy to have you.

Re: Selling ads by time, not space

arctictony — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:46:52 -0000

You're absolutely right that it doesn't guarantee you see it. What the data does suggest however is that there is a direct correlation between the amount of time an ad is in view while you are in an engaged state and your likelihood of recall etc. The implications thus are clear and somewhat intuitive, if you want to increase the chances of your ad actually being seen, then the more that ad is in front of someone's face the more likely that is. What that means is that advertisers choosing to advertise around quality content that captures people's attention are making a smart bet.

Re: Should I Believe Chartbeat’s Data?

arctictony — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:48:04 -0000

Me too! :) Btw, so jealous of your Pebble

Re: Should I Believe Chartbeat’s Data?

arctictony — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:05:45 -0000

Hi David,

I get how annoying it must be to see such a difference, but there's actually a simple explanation. Chartbeat didn't actually miss it, the reason it's not such an extreme bump is that you're comparing pageviews to concurrents, which are two fundamentally different measures of traffic. Pageviews just count pageloads; concurrents are a combination of two things: the number of people coming to your page and the amount of time they spend on your page (http://chartbeat.com/infogr.... It's a better measure of not just the amount of traffic but the quality of that traffic.

That spike was kicked off by twitter to your Bates Motel story and your concurrents immediately broke your 30 day max (see screenshot). However, the engaged time on that story was only 13 seconds, which suggests that while a lot of people were coming to your site they weren't staying for very long and thus while you had a huge spike in pageviews, the number of people concurrently on your site didn't spike to the same extent (you had more people visiting but that was counteracted by the fact that they stayed for less time). So yes, Google Analytics and Mint which only capture pageviews and nothing in between will show a huge spike, whereas if your visits are higher but time on site is lower your concurrents won't show such a large spike. Make sense?

Feel free to reach out to me at tony at the aforementioned company.com if you want me to talk this through.

Re: Why CrossFit is the Workout of Choice for Entrepreneurs

arctictony — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:13:39 -0000

It's interesting (as both a crossfit guy and ironman triathlete myself) that I actually find many more similarities between long endurance work and entrepreneurship than crossfit. A lot of people can push themselves for 25 minutes and be done, far fewer can do so for 12 hours. With endurance work, there's conservation of resources and knowing when to kick in to a higher gear; you can't go flat out on the swim and have nothing left for the run. There's the long mental game with your opponents and the fact that much of what you do won't happen with other people there to cheer you on or push you. If I had to invest in an ironman or a crossfit fanatic, I know which one I'd choose.

Re: http://tdevane.tumblr.com/post/16977420630

arctictony — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:07:01 -0000

I think a lot of what's written here is valid but I think that coming up with innovative ideas isn't helped by a free form space of infinite possibilities, rather it is constraints that are key here. As soon as you put constraints on a problem you have to find ways to manage those constraints that force you to innovate. Otherwise you end the day just staring at a bunch of shit you've thrown at the wall.

Re: Scripting News: The best tech city in the US

arctictony — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:06:08 -0000

Does TW have Wideband where you live? you get 50 down, 5 up and covers most of manhattan sub 70th I believe: https://skitch.com/arctict/...

Re: Why Betaworks Broke Up the Band

arctictony — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:42:45 -0000

Congratulations Fred, I've worked with Andy for the last two and a half years and he is one of the smartest guys with unquestionably the biggest heart in our industry. I'm sad I won't get to see my friend every day anymore, but I'm happy he's getting to take on such a huge opportunity.

Re: As Rummble’s CEO is ousted, the story of a European startup unravels

arctictony — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:36:28 -0000

Sorry to hear this, Andrew is a lovely guy and class act. I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next!

Re: 2010 Resolutions for the New Year

arctictony — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:27:31 -0000

This post is a great reminder of why you are such an awesome dude to know. Might I suggest that visiting Argentina and talking to more girls is exponentially more fun when combined.

Also, while we are on the subject of quotes about gentlemen: 'An English gentleman is someone who knows exactly when to stop being one'

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

arctictony — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:55:57 -0000

I take your point Andy. However, I think the wider issue here is not specific to liberal arts but to the American university system as a whole. Despite what any lecturers of mine might recall, I did attend a highly-regarded British university (founded before your country was found ;)) and the cost of my liberal arts/social sciences education for four years was a percentage of what a term would cost at a similarly-ranked university in the US. In fact, the university student body was 25% American largely because of the perceived superior ROI here. That isn't an ROI problem for liberal arts, but for the economics of US study in general. It's got to be next on the list after healthcare.

Yes, if I was looking for a new developer (ie. someone with a specific skillset) I would look for someone trained in those skills. However, if I was looking to replace Steve Jobs, an industry-moulding destructive force of creativity (who lest we forget, has assigned much of the creative inspiration for the original Apple's to the various liberal arts courses, including calligraphy, that he dropped in on) I might look for someone with a broader range of study than the specialization undoubtedly so useful for other roles.

Finally, it's instructive to see how CEOs from various specific backgrounds react to challenges and setbacks. The former marketing guy looks to a marketing solution, the former product guy tries to solve the problem through new product strategy, the former biz dev guy through new deals and distribution channels. Being able to rely on people highly-skilled in a specific areas (with the skillz to pay the billz as you say) is useful, but an effective leader should be aware of the entire toolset and then exploit each of these different people's skillsets to derive advantage.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

arctictony — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:10:51 -0000

Totally agree with this. Another factor that I consider essential is the ability to cover a broad range of different domains, teasing out connections and applying them to new scenarios. I enjoyed Bill' Duggan's book on strategic intuition that goes into how we innovate. So often it is the application or combination of aspects from varied disciplines in a new area that can create huge innovation. For instance, at the moment when trying to think about where Chartbeat goes, I'm spending a fair amount of time (and deriving, for me, valuable insight from) reading military history and theory. I'm then applying what I learn to understand how real-time analytics differs from traditional. Would I think like that without a liberal arts education? I don't think so. It may end in a dead end but it provides me with the opportunity to potentially out-innovate someone who purely thinks down well-trodden paths.

Re: beta working

arctictony — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:30:13 -0000

excubator?

Re: betaworks - In the early stages of startup, focusing on...

arctictony — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:25:59 -0000

A fair point but, a fair number of startups suffer from too much 'learning' and not enough 'getting shit done'.

Re: A New Open Stack: Greater than the Sum of its Parts (Internet Identity Workshop 2008b)

arctictony — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:48:38 -0000

Joseph, Are you planning on uploading your talks to slideshare? Would be really helpful!

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

arctictony — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:10:05 -0000

The functionality is there but we need to work out the flow. We're going to be making that clear and easy in the next dev cycle so it should be fairly swift.

There is going to be a hell of a lot more user control over styling and even the different components of your public site as we go forward. At the moment we're looking at March as the first complete iteration of what chi.mp is, so you can imagine we're building an awful lot between now and then :)

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

arctictony — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:51:34 -0000

You absolutely can move your domain away from chi.mp if you want to. We're still working on the interaction design to make it easier, but if you want to use your .mp domain for a wordpress site or typepad or whomever, you can simply switch to a traditional registrar relationship and go do what you want with it.

You can also have chi.mp on any domain if you want to. The point here is not to give people who already have domains yet another one, you already have a domain that represents you. The .mp domains are really there for those who don't already have a domain, a single permanent portable identifier on the web.

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

arctictony — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:07:49 -0000

Hey Louis,

I won't add too much here, as hopefully over the next few months when we launch the meat of our service, what we build will talk for us. I just want to address one point.

When it comes to identity there is a vast difference between a domain name and service.com/louis. With service.com/louis you are tied to that particular service and in order to move elsewhere have to create a different identity and hemorrhage the old one. Your identity becomes fragmented and temporary. With a domain you can move it from service to service, one identity that's yours.

Remember how much it sucked when we couldn't move our cell number from AT&T to Verizon etc, now we can keep our cell number no matter what the service and it's a huge improvement. That's what domains do for identity online. It means you own who you are, not the service.

Tony Haile

Re: Chi.mp To Offer Free .MP URL’s

arctictony — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:19:46 -0000

I get the Plaxo/Friendfeed comparison, but for me the closest initial comparison is to what Chris Messina et al are doing with DiSo; using standards like OpenID, Oauth, Atom etc to create a network between domains rather than within one. This means that it will be able to interoperate with other independent sites that play well with others and create a system where you go beyond just data portability and have an identifier (your domain) that is transferrable between providers as well.

The 'centralised me' on a domain I control connected across the web to the 'centralised you' no matter what system you are on. You can read more about our thinking at http://ownyouridentity.com.

Tony
Chi.mp
Own. Don't be Owned.