Showing posts with label analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label analysis. Show all posts

Monday, June 04, 2007

I has thesis!

I defended my thesis on Friday....

i-can-haz-thesis


And I passed. I can, indeed, has thesis. (Click here if you do not get it. Well, that might not help, but maybe you'll get the idea.)

I wasn't given any revisions, just a few grammatical errors were pointed out. It was excellent. What was really gratifying to see is that it sparked discussion. The Q&A went on for nearly as long as my talk. I got really interesting questions on the topics of branding/institutional voice, calling blogs by other names (virtual exhibits?), and policy issues. There seemed to be a lot of concern about control.

In my opinion, things are much more interesting when you relinquish control. Some of the comment threads on Buzz Blog are very cool - especially when you can feel that school groups are really getting into it from the kiosks. And I don't know what sort of institutional control is exerted over the Exploratorium Explainers, but they voices in the posts are so genuine and spontaneous - they sounds like people just writing a blog. WHICH IS WHAT A BLOG SHOULD BE. Often I feel some blogs are written far too much in the style of an article; it's what keeps me from fully embracing the Burke Museum Blog (sorry Rebecca).

But maybe different things appeal to different people.

The point of this post was to let you know that I don't have my document for you now, but I should have it soon. I know you're waiting on pins and needles. Maybe tomorrow. :)

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Statistics

One of the few objective metrics I have when attempting to determine the reach of a particular blog is to look at its stats. What stats?

Blogline stats. Bloglines, while a nice and usable aggragator, doesn't give a lot of stats about the blogs. Of course that's not its function. It does tell you how many people are subscribed to a particular blog through the service. It tells me that no one subscribes to this blog. But 47 people subscribe to The Food Museum Blog.

Technorati. Technorati offers a few interesting things. It offers a ranking system, but more importantly , it offers a way to see how one blog is connected to others. For example, The Food Museum Blog is linked 54 times from 31 blogs. Unfortunately, this metric isn't current. It hasn't been updated with Technorati for 16 days, and the site actually lists 110 links to the blog when you click a little further. This blog has two links from one site. That site is my personal journal, so.... that's not a good stat. That would be an example of a blog with a very limited reach. ;)

The only other service I've checked for metrics so far is Google Reader. Google Reader doesn't have anything I can see.

This comes to mind, because I'm using Google Analytics to see what kind of attention this blog is getting. Not much, but it's getting a little. That is, there are more folks than just me and my friends checking it out. Not many. But. Hi!

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