"Totally outrageous celebrity news" experiment a complete failure!

I am pleased to report that my blog took a big hit in daily page views after I posted a headline via Twitter, hyping "Totally outrageous news about today's most vapid celebrities."

According to Google Analytics, posting that "celebrities" headline apparently was the digital equivalent of blasting Dateline: Oblivion with a nuclear torpedo. Page views sank sharply, rather than increasing as I had hypothesized.

So the effort to trick new readers into rushing to my blog was an utter failure.

Apparently, many fewer Twitter-ers are enthralled by celebrity news than I had thought and feared. Excellent.

However, I did gain a number of new followers, most of them wanting to sell me something and none of them commenting on anything I have written.

Seems to be a lot of that going on these days. We're all trying to sell something to each other on Twitter: soap, world views, sensibilities, our souls, ourselves.

Thanks to all who participated in this test, and even bigger thanks to all who did not. I'm glad almost nobody really wants to read celebrity "news" from some random blog in Texas. It gives me a bit more hope for the digital world.

May the farce be with you...and also with you.

--Si Dunn


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