Tracking Blog Tracking Systems - The Servants' Stairs

I want to write a review of MeasureMap, but the more I think about what weblog visitor monitoring systems should provide, the more I get distracted. For example, looking at the stats provided by TypePad, which, I might add, are far too narrow a window into what is going on, I saw a link to http://www.webstats4u.com/s?tab=1&link=4&id=3747494. Following this link, I realised that this was probably Scott Nowson tracking down who was coming to visit his page by looking at his web stats. This in turn made me think: hey, I should really be looking at his stats as well in order to find out other interesting stuff. In so doing, I found a link to Creepy Lesbo who had posted about Scott as she is mentioned in his thesis (I mean, who isn't going to follow a link with that name in the context of a PhD thesis on blogging?) This click-fest leads to two observations:

• Firstly, there is a lot of data out there about visitors that is unprotected.
• Secondly, wouldn't it be great if someone could provide a service that mined all this stuff - which is a sort of back-end data set to the front-end blogosphere - to provide insights about who is visiting your blog, who their visitors are and what the community of readers is (not just the community of blog writers which is what people mostly write about).

Comments

[Scott Nowson]

I don't know what you mean. :D

It is an interesting point though. There is much we can learn from other people, and this is an easy way of finding people with shared interests.

I might post more about this on my blog. Thanks for the idea and for your interest in my work (and links).

Scott