The page view is dead.
July 17, 2007 – 4:53 pmI noticed a small, but perhaps significant, change in Facebook tonight. Usually when you add more friends to your Facebook account, you need to land on 3 separate pages for each friend: 1) the Requests page; 2) a Request Confirmation/Skip This Step page (I always click ‘Skip This Step’), and finally 3) back to the confirmation page. Three page views for each friend added. But tonight I noticed that the 2nd step has been Ajaxified - meaning you no longer need to land on a Request Confirmation/Skip This Step page. Instead it is an Ajax pop-up. Now, math has never been my strong point — but doesn’t this mean that the normal 3-page process has been whittled down to 1 page? Won’t that play havoc with Facebook’s precious page views? Weeell, maybe Facebook has realized that the Tyranny of the Page View is over.
When I envisioned CD V1.0, I knew that the site’s page views would go way down, especially when all you do is load 1 screen and then the rest of the site is entirely Ajax. Read/Write brings up the excellent point that the page view is dead. Sites should now be judged on first are foremost unique visitors and then time spent at the site.
One user running a bot can rack up 1000’s of page views an hour, and this fact alone should be the nail in the coffin. Ever wonder why sites like myspace have such low click through rates!?!? You guessed it… infested with bots.
Until sites like Alexa find a better way to track users, ad money, VC money, angel money, and on and on are going to continue to go to places that don’t deserve them. Compete is on the right track, now lets see if Alexa, hitwise, and comscore and some of the other relics come into the present.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
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