Tim BrayWas wondering about the surge in my server logs…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/opinion/blockchains-what-are-they-good-for.html
There was a brief mention of, and link to, my piece on AWS & Blockchain by Paul Krugman in the NY Times yesterday. So, here's a guessing game. How many hits to my blog do you think that kind of link generates?
0-100
100-1,000
1,000-10,000
Poll ended at .
When I posted that yesterday, the count was: 14.
As of now, it's 48.
Factors:
- NYT is paywalled.
- It was a pretty long piece and the link was well below the fold
- I've repeatedly heard it said that less than 10% of links are followed.
- By reading Krugman's sentence you knew pretty well what the blog piece was going to say.
Still, not a big number.
Methodology: zcat ../log/access_log.* | cat - ../log/access_log | egrep 'GET /ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Blockchain.*nytimes' | wc -l
Steve Wart
Brian Kung@timbray nice, I was off by several orders of magnitude 🤦♂️
json@timbray and these media companies are trying to force payment for their low value links. jcpa in the us, c-18 in canada, the news bargaining code in australia... old media protectionism.
David Wheeler@timbray I admit to being one of the 48, pleased to recognize a name and super interested in the topic! Great, post appreciate your perspective.
Dan Sugalski@timbray oh, that’s very interesting. I wonder if there’s some amount of https referer-scrubbing going on.
Hello57visIf you have expertise in any area, it is a constant struggle to remind yourself how little 99.99% of people care about details
and how much info there is out there, and how truly extra ordinary you have to be - Rihanna level - to get a lot of attn paid to you
just life
BirderScott@timbray that’s crazy, I had guessed the highest bucket! I clicked through from the times iOS app after the first 14, but had not seen your poll yet. Surprised by your report.
jlapoutre@timbray thanks so much! Read both NY times and your article, great work and so completely aligned with my gut feeling about the whole blockchain biz. Oh and thanks for the term “proof of waste” - will start using that exclusively!
@jlapoutre Careful with that, it's a surefire way to get the crypto rabble really mad at you.
Dan Cross@timbray huh. I honestly find that surprising.
Karl Auerbach@timbray - I also find paywalls annoying. But decent journalism takes $$, so for those of us who can, we should cheerfully subscribe and pay the monthly fees.
leemeade@karlauerbach @timbray not for the nytimes. nope.
@leemeade @timbray - We subscribe (and pay) for Guardian, The Atlantic, NYT, WaPo, San Jose Mercury, and a couple of others.
Yes, many journalists and editors have fallen into a "fair and balanced" trap that requires correction. But if we don't provide support, even for those who may wobble a bit, all we will have left are partisan hacks.
@karlauerbach @timbray I do ChiTrib, ChiSunTimes, ChicagoReader, NewYorker, Vanity Fair, Atlantic. Guardian has gotten some money in the past and will again.
Brian 
@timbray Interesting. I guessed it would be *significantly* higher.
Sue@timbray querying logs is a lot easier and accurate w/ awk. Also every hit doesn’t necessarily send referer so I’d run it again w/o the ny times part and add start date from publish date.
Rei@timbray I knew it! Any prize for the winner(s)? Kidding 😉 Thanks for sharing the insights! 🙏🏼 👌
Geoff@timbray I'm an OG and read it before krug linked to it. 😎
Golda@timbray so what do we win who got it right? 🙂
@gvelez17 you have my permission to glow in satisfaction
@timbray seriously, this is an interesting phenomenon. and one thing it means, is that you often can follow up with the subject of a piece - they may not be overwhelmed with attention
So when its a subject that should be followed up on, I am hoping more citizen journalists do that and second-interview a bit later
Heath Borders@timbray welp. That's very surprising. I thought 100-1000 was a very safe bet.
Paul Kedrosky@timbray I guessed around 1,000. What's the correct answer?
@pkedrosky Hey, I just posted the poll, not gonna spill the beans just yet.
Evan Prodromou
touch fluffy tail
pretty please!
Dave Winer ☕️@timbray -- that piece was very good tim.
i could relate about the doors being easier to get through when you had the right business card.
i found i could get anyone to come to my conferences at harvard. go figure. ;-)
@davew I've heard people there refer to a Harvard business card as the H-bomb.
Tim Carmody
Médecine Libre Jérôme Pinguet
Arve@timbray Those numbers seem incredibly low. I remember getting slashdotted back in the day, ending up with well in excess of 100k hits in a day, and this was like 20 years ago
@arve Yeah, there's nothing today with the relative power that /. had back in the day. Closest is Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) which can generate *incredible* floods.
@timbray During the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, I made what was a one-line blog post as it was happening, and it received similar traffic, mostly though Google search. That one was harrowing, as it kept receiving comments for a long time, and the "cooldown tail" was so long, because the post filled a need of those who did not know.
.It's one of those things that have been lost in things like Twitter, Facebook and big news.
Phillip Hallam-BakerThat might change if Twitter and Facebook collapse. Its not just Musk taking some weird pills, the Zuck is spending billions to enable people to take VR tours of his office like that is a place they want to go. Its not even an interesting office, certainly not Bond villain lair level interesting.
Slashdot and the other blogs were slammed by the rise of Twitter and Facebook. They might well return to relevance.
Shannon DeMaria@timbray I medium-balled my guess based at least in part on the assumption that the article is paywalled, but I'm subscribed to nyt so might be wrong about that.
Eric A. Meyer
Mike Johnson@timbray I pessimistically assume that few people read the linked sources. I am hoping to be wrong though
Charles Roper@timbray I'm going for the "surprisingly low" option because I've always found surprisingly few people actually click on hyperlinks. The amount of things I've written where the included links received NO clicks is amazing.
𝔸𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕝@charlesroper @timbray
I assume there will be MANY bots following links from NYT articles and derivatives.
I assume there will be MANY bots following links from NYT articles and derivatives.
Noah Liebman@timbray iirc when I was #fireballed it resulted in ~3000 hits, so I’d venture NYT is more
Jeanie@timbray not everyone is a paid subscriber. I clicked on it but can’t read it.
Avi Rappoport (avirr)@timbray I guessed high because you noticed it in your logs
Dave W Smith@timbray Guessing more generated indirectly through people mentioning that your post was mentioned (and then including a URL)
Steve Scotten@timbray Won't that number be very different when the poll ends?
@splicer I'll disclose what was at beginning and end
rajesh bilimoria@timbray Interestingly, I wonder how many went the other direction, as I did. Saw your post and then read the Krugman piece!
Catherine Berry@rajeshbilimoria , that was my path.
Justin Searls@timbray nice! It was a great post, Tim. Thanks for writing it.
jwz@timbray "HUH! Absolutely nothin'! Good god y'all"
epw@timbray it was neat to be catching up on my RSS feeds and when I got to that article go "oh hey I recognize that link!"
@timbray I’m part of the problem; that’s how I found you - and then made the jump to Mastadon. Super interesting post! Thanks.