The Visitor from Siloam Springs
22/07/09 14:11 Filed in: Publishing on the Web
Originally written on my previous site on November 9, 2007; still apropos.
The internet allows everyone to be an author. No more gate-keepers to be propitiated as long as you keep a civil tongue. If you have something to say, and a few bucks a month to put up a website, you can say it.
Unfortunately, my experience as a web author has been much the same as my experience as a software author: once published, the piece floats off into a fog, with barely a ripple of return. Sure, simple counters could tell me which pages were loaded how many times. But I was still in a broadcast modality: I wrote because I wanted to, not because anyone was reading. A visitor from Siloam Springs, Arkansas, has changed my perspective.
I started recently to use a free service called StatCounter, which makes available an astonishing amount of information about visitors to my site. In its data I found repeated visits from a person in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. (Really, repeated visits from a network address in Siloam Springs.) After a week or so, it became clear that the visitor must have read everything of interest to him or her on the site, and yet he or she kept coming back. Suddenly, astonishingly, it seemed I had a reader!
Believe me, this discovery has changed how I look at George's Place. Sure, most people come, read something or download something, and then go away, never to return. They've got what they wanted. But now a single person isn't satisfied. I suddenly have a responsibility, even if only to an audience of one.
To the Visitor from Siloam Springs: thanks for the encouragement! I'll try to write more interestingly, more often!
(11/14/07 Alas, I should have known it was too good to be true. The minute this note appeared on my site, the visitor from Siloam Springs took one look at it and vanished, never [?] to return. So I don't have any readers. Sniff.)
Unfortunately, my experience as a web author has been much the same as my experience as a software author: once published, the piece floats off into a fog, with barely a ripple of return. Sure, simple counters could tell me which pages were loaded how many times. But I was still in a broadcast modality: I wrote because I wanted to, not because anyone was reading. A visitor from Siloam Springs, Arkansas, has changed my perspective.
I started recently to use a free service called StatCounter, which makes available an astonishing amount of information about visitors to my site. In its data I found repeated visits from a person in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. (Really, repeated visits from a network address in Siloam Springs.) After a week or so, it became clear that the visitor must have read everything of interest to him or her on the site, and yet he or she kept coming back. Suddenly, astonishingly, it seemed I had a reader!
Believe me, this discovery has changed how I look at George's Place. Sure, most people come, read something or download something, and then go away, never to return. They've got what they wanted. But now a single person isn't satisfied. I suddenly have a responsibility, even if only to an audience of one.
To the Visitor from Siloam Springs: thanks for the encouragement! I'll try to write more interestingly, more often!
(11/14/07 Alas, I should have known it was too good to be true. The minute this note appeared on my site, the visitor from Siloam Springs took one look at it and vanished, never [?] to return. So I don't have any readers. Sniff.)