Well, many see how useful they are. They can help you improve your blog or sites. I also think it's a trend like you said. if someone uses something, others will soon follow, that's how stuff works online.

Others see it your way, they feel it's unnecessary and obnoxious. If you don't like this rising trend, I wouldn't recommend ignoring which is almost impossible. The best thing you can do is try to wait it out.
Permalink | Report

I'm a web developer who runs his own servers, so I have easy access to the log files, and I happened to know enough about statistics and programming to build my own analysis tools, so for me I get way more of the kind of information I want when and how I want it, but if I didn't know how to do that, what other choice would I have?

In a similar vein, I was lucky to know enough to see how to write my own cgi development library and my own database engine, so I don't get hamstrung by third-party syntax rules like would have to happen if I had to use PHP for cgi's and mySQL for a database engine, plus I can fix bugs in the tools if I find any, *and* I can add new features whenever I want without having to go through a third-party process, so I get a definite competetive edge that way, but if I didn't know how to do that, what choice would I have other than to use PHP/Java/Perl for cgis and mySQL/Oracle/PostgreSQL for the database engine?

The way I see your point is: *You* can see how it's so much more immediately useful and handy to be doing that kinda stuff yourself instead of using a third-party service, therefore why would anyone want to, and I totally understand, but all it's telling me is that *you know how*, and I think the problem you're seeing is a consequence of so many people entering web development who *don't* know how to do that kinda stuff but who *do* want to be able to get stats, such that they have no choice but to get it from one of those third-parties..

In other words, when you see trends of web developers moving out to build up the fortunes of third-party traffic-analysis services, it just means that more people from backgrounds in graphics/design/adcopy-writing are getting into the web development game per the number from a technical background who would know how to do that for themselves.

Don't stress about it too much. I found that by me being able to do it myself, I can always offer custom analysis (and custom cgi/database development) for graphics/design/adcopy-text hosting clients at 30% right off the top of what big third-party analysis services would have to charge for custom work, and sometimes even up to 60% off, while maintaining the same margin.
Permalink | Report

It's the beauty and the beast of an open system. Despite what most people may think, the Internet is an open system.

It would be far too expensive, impractical, and closed to create all these tools yourself.

You do hit on a great point though when you talk about availability. If the service every one of your pages relies on is down (like you mention, think Twitter) your site is then also down. For a lot of these services, the cloud is the answer. If these services are deployed out to the Internet in a distributed, co-located, homogeneous way, unless the entire Internet is down you will be able to connect to the service.

Another potential long-term solution is "offline" transactions - something similar to Google Gears. You could then essentially cache/queue each request you would have made to that service until such time that it becomes available again.
Source(s):
http://tools.google.com/gears/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Permalink | Report