Standards and Suu Kyi

Its been a slow day today, no media companies brought to their knees, no foul-mouthed bloggers, not even any newspaper death knells. ABC is changing the way they measure traffic for UK newspapers and, while it is clearly big news and will change these sites do business, it is also something less than a surprise.  The debate about the best way to measure popularity and traffic on the web is far from over and has been brewing since I made my first website in 1995 (a genius school project on Aung San Suu Kyi since you asked [even though no one but me and the geeky system administrator who helped me make it would ever know it existed, I still wanted detailed analytics–if you had seen the amazing moving javascript portrait you would understood my pride]).

Its a crucial debate.  I think we are all a little tired of hearing arguments about who gets what audience from where.  There needs to be a standard that spreads across distribution mechanisms so people who access sites via RSS readers or iTunes, etc, can easily accounted for.  Its not going to get easier, more and more people are accessing information away from their main browser, especially as mobile internet options start to really catch on.  So bravo to ABC for making the first step towards transparency and standards.

Add comment December 6th, 2006