Three Statistics That Lie
I love the line about lies; “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”. You can use numbers to tell any story you want. — In the realm of web statistics, there are three numbers that are great to use if you want to tell lies. They are: — RSS subscriber numbers
Context & Ripple Effects
The story joins an existing debate over misleading claims by web startups and the need for better web statistics. Its focus on RSS matters because syndication is central to how online publishing is distributed, yet subscription counts can be framed to overstate audience scale.
First-order effects
- Publishers and startups using RSS subscriber totals to demonstrate reach face pressure to distinguish subscriptions from a more meaningful measure of audience engagement.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers, investors, and partners evaluating RSS-based publishers have less reason to treat a single reported subscriber figure as sufficient evidence of distribution strength.
Third-order effects
- If publishers adopt comparable engagement measures alongside subscription totals, online-media competition shifts away from the largest claimed audience number toward metrics that better reflect actual consumption.
The trend: Web publishing is moving toward greater scrutiny of headline audience metrics as syndication makes nominal reach easier to report than to interpret.