{"id":1783,"date":"2007-10-10T08:52:10","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T12:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/10\/its-not-about-the-eyeballs-its-the-brains\/"},"modified":"2007-10-10T08:52:10","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T12:52:10","slug":"its-not-about-the-eyeballs-its-the-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/10\/its-not-about-the-eyeballs-its-the-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not the eyeballs, it&#8217;s the brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bobbie Johnson wrote a Techmeme leaderboard <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2007\/10\/09\/why_we_all_overestimate_techmemes_influence.html\">roundup post<\/a> in which he divulged that being on Techmeme &#8212; gasp! &#8212; doesn&#8217;t drive a whole pile of traffic, and both Robert Scoble and Nick Carr have jumped into the fray, talking about what Scobleizer calls the <a href=\"http:\/\/scobleizer.com\/2007\/10\/10\/the-truth-about-traffic-on-the-internet\/\">&#8220;dirty little truth&#8221;<\/a> about Techmeme. Carr says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/archives\/2007\/10\/techmemes_juice.php\">the site has<\/a> a &#8220;fairly modest, if rabid, audience.&#8221; Does this really come as news to anyone?<\/p>\n<p>I would have thought that by now we would be past the whole addiction to raw pageviews and hits and eyeballs, but apparently not. To me &#8212; and to others like Frederic at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lastpodcast.net\/2007\/10\/09\/techmemes-influence\/\">The Last Podcast<\/a> &#8212; the benefit of being on Techmeme.com is the kinds of readers I reach, and in most cases they are the ones who are passionate about the Web and technology, the ones who are thinking about things that others haven&#8217;t yet &#8212; the bleeding edge. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had Digg-storms and Reddit pile-ons and the traffic that they bring is usually fleeting. I&#8217;ll take a few thousand Techmeme readers over that any day (no offence intended to my many close friends on Digg and Reddit &#8212; you know I love you guys). Todd Ziegler at The Bivings Report says that Techmeme is like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bivingsreport.com\/2007\/is-techmeme-overrated\/\">one of those bands<\/a> that few people known about, but musicians and critics love. Loren Feldman at 1938media, meanwhile, argues (not surprisingly) that <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.1938media.com\/the-truth-about-traffic\/\">only he<\/a> is truly influential.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Bobbie Johnson responds in the comments below.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bobbie Johnson wrote a Techmeme leaderboard roundup post in which he divulged that being on Techmeme &#8212; gasp! &#8212; doesn&#8217;t drive a whole pile of traffic, and both Robert Scoble and Nick Carr have jumped into the fray, talking about what Scobleizer calls the &#8220;dirty little truth&#8221; about Techmeme. Carr says the site has a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/10\/its-not-about-the-eyeballs-its-the-brains\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;It&#8217;s not the eyeballs, it&#8217;s the brains&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}