What to get your blogger dad for Father's Day (Jack Bog's Blog)

Just about everyone who has a blog has at least one traffic tracker -- a program or service that keeps an eye on who's showing up to read the blog, and from where. For our entire six years in the blogosphere, we've been using SiteMeter, which is probably as close to an industry standard as you can get when you're talking about an unruly herd of cats like the bloggers.

But about a month ago, an alert reader turned us on to a much more fun service called Clicky, which at least in its premium edition provides all sorts of data about readers that we didn't even know you could get. Here's the gadget that you get to put on your page:

If you play around on there, you'll see many interesting categories of information about who's been visiting the site. And as the account holder, we can get to a "dashboard" that has other features as well. It translates IP addresses into real-world company names, for example, which can make for some interesting reading. But probably the coolest button is a feature called "Spy," where the blog owner can watch readers come, go, and move around within the blog in something that closely approximates real time.

Who cares, right? On one level, we agree. But whatever urge drives people to blog is sublimely satisfied when they can watch readers that way. We've tried all sorts of blogger gadgets over the years, but this thing has a hook like no other we've encountered.

Now, Clicky ain't free. They give you a month's free trial, where you get to play with the whole system, but after that, you lose most of the fancier stuff unless you pay a fee. They do make deals off their list prices from time to time, though, and so a year of the full magilla probably won't break the bank.

Who the heck is Clicky? They don't say much about that on their own site, but it appears that at least one of the main Clicksters is right here in the Rose City, which makes it even more appealing to buy-local types like ourselves. Anyway, we're not getting paid anything to say nice things about their product, but we like it. A lot.

Comments (6)

[i]"But probably the coolest button is a feature called "Spy," where the blog owner can watch readers come, go, and move around within the blog in something that closely approximates real time."[/i]

Umm, hello? This is creepy. Now another place to avoid on the internet ...

Posted by Nick | June 13, 2008 1:21 PM

Promise?

Posted by Jack Bog | June 13, 2008 1:39 PM

The widget's dragging down your page in a serious way, though - everything else below the widget hangs while you wait at least a minute for the widget to download (and I'm on a fairly fast connection here.)

I've got a similar WordPress plugin I've downloaded, but haven't yet installed - Wassup. It provides a lot of the same information - or it did when I saw the demo a month or so ago.

Posted by Betsy | June 13, 2008 1:53 PM

Thanks for the heads-up, Betsy. It's loading nicely where I'm sitting -- but that might have to do with all the memory my new computer is sporting.

8c)

Anyway, the gadget usually sits at the very end of the page, where if it's loading slowly, it doesn't hang anything else up.

Posted by Jack Bog | June 13, 2008 1:56 PM

I'm the one who originally posted a link to Clicky, I'm glad you tried it out.

Wow, you really have no clue how the internet works do you? You do realize every webpage you visit is passes through probably dozens of servers any of which could log your visit?

Posted by JHB | June 13, 2008 4:50 PM

You're assumption about my knowledge of "how the internet works" is quite the leap.

The primary difference between what you're describing about passing through random servers and what Clicky does is the relative anonymity.

Any given server has a less than .00001% chance of capturing any information about an individual. As described, the "Spy" feature enables the blog owner to watch individuals as they read the blog, probably capturing their information with accuracy approaching 100%. It is not a leap to see that the blog owner is only a fews steps from being able to ID specific individuals.

That, dear Sir, is not so random ...

Posted by Nick | June 17, 2008 8:52 AM

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Friday, June 13, 2008

What to get your blogger dad for Father's Day

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