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Call for Performancing Authors

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We’re in the process of revamping some of the site, mostly to make what you can actually do here more obvious. One of the things I think many miss is that each member has their own blog here. Subject matter is limited to the very broad subject of blogging, and things that affect bloggers, but it’s a great way to get some exposure for your ideas to a large audience.

We have a few good authors here regulary going to the homepage, but I’d love to see more. You can write a post for Performancing in three ways:

  1. Simply hit “create content” and choose “blog entry” and away you go..
  2. Use Performancing Firefox to post to your Performancing Blog
  3. Email me at [email protected] if you would like to have relevant posts from your blog syndicated here

    4. We’re pretty open to ideas, and would LOVE to see more women post, as well as a more diverse section of the membership in general.

    So do let me know if you’d like to be a featured author on Performancing.com, and feel free to ask any questions in this thread.

Google Desktop Meets Performancing Metrics

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We’ve spent all day today in a thread discussing a very cool new use of the Performancing Metrics API. A neat plugin for Google Desktop.

You can download and try gdPMetrics here courtesty of Performancing member geniosity. There’s also a whole bunch of screenshots on there aswell.

Do let us all know what you think, and if you create cool things with the Metrics API, be sure to let us know. Next week sometime we will put up a dedicated page that will point to all the things folks make!

Well done, and thanks geniosity!

Avoiding The Quick Fix Curse

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Last weekend some of you noticed we were having some issues with processing data — it was an embarrassing cock up on our part, the processing engine wasn’t restarted after a reboot of all the systems and we failed to notice for like 10hrs! 🙂 But, as I hope you also noticed, as soon as it became apparent that something was amiss, it was all hands on deck, and eventually we got the system fully functional again with no loss of data, and began back processing to catch up.

This went ok as a “quick fix”, but some longer term planning has been the top priority for some days now, as quick fixes only go so far, and the overall stability of the system is more important. At the end of the day, a quick fix here would be like most anywhere else, just the illusion of “fixed”, and not truly very helpful.

The optimization of queries, processes and several seriously heavy duty servers take a little time, so this post is just to let you guys know that if you’re seeing a few oddities in your reports over this week, it’s all in a good cause, and no data is being lost. While we have over eight million records being logged every single day though, the optimization process has to be handled very carefully, so will take a little time.

Optimization was always the plan, we just need to do it now, not later…

We always expected to have to optimize the system when we had real data running through it, and it was always part of the plan. We just didn’t expect to have to do it quite so soon after launch. With over 5000 blogs being tracked, we’re about 3x as far ahead as we expected to be at this stage which is cool on one hand, but a bit of a pain on the other as resources need to be moved around a reprioritized accordingly.

I hope that answers a few of the questions im seeing in the forums, and that you’ll bear with us for a few days while we get some long term solutions in place as opposed to quick fixes.

My apologies for any inconvenience, you will of course be the first to know when things change.

Performancing Metrics API Launches!

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The philosophy at Performancing has always been very community centered. We actively engage users of Performancing Firefox in beta development of releases, seek your input, bug reports and general wishes on Performancing Metrics, and now, we’re going to take it one step further: We want YOU to develop the things you want to see with PMetrics, using the Performancing Metrics Public API — Yay!

Chris has been working hard with some of the devs on the basic functionality, and whereas the API is relatively basic right now, it’s complex enough to do some cool things with for sure. The Handbook documentation is going up as I write, and I’m dying to see what clever Performancing bloggers can come up with using it!

Ready, Steady…..

We want all kinds of things ourselves of course, but it’s up to you what you do with the API, and I’m keen to see your ideas and applications. Please tell us about them and we will put the best ones on a dedicated page here at Performancing.com

Things I’d personally like to see would be plugins for WP, Drupal and MT, I’ve seen what can be done with it in the beta of PFF 1.2 and hope we’ll see some equally cool blog plugins.

API Developers Forum

So please play around, and see what you can come up with, mix the API into other tools and services and let your imaginations run wild. Discussion and help can be found the Metrics API forum though we’ll not be teaching basic programming 🙂

Have fun, and let us know what you come up with!

Now Tracking 5000 Blogs!

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In one week, Performancing Metrics has become the Blogosphere’s largest blog specific, free statistics service. Not bad going for a beta eh?

We’ve had our ups and downs, but largely thanks to the excellent feedback we’re getting in the Metrics forums from you, we’re slowly ironing out all those little things that you just can’t see untill you have a lot of users on a system.

Coming Soon…

Shortly, we’ll be rolling out and announcing the following on Performancing Metrics:

  • Public Stats
  • Public API

Both are taking time to test before they hit production, but both are worth waiting for, trust me 🙂

Please do not post support requests or bug reports in this thread, use the Metrics FAQ first, then the forums.

Thanks for all the feedback folks, please help us spread the word!

The Other Way to Launch in the Blogosphere

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There’s lots of talk about how to launch products in the blogosphere, particularly much conversation around 37Signals book, Getting Real which details how they do it. It’s a damn fine read by the way, but there are definately other ways of doing a product launch.

The Web2.0 Hype Launch

I see several product launches a day, I’m a true technophile, and love to follow all the cool stuff (and all the shit stuff too) that people are trying to get out there into the ‘sphere. The “established” way runs something like this:

  • Make a few hints
  • Invite a few mavens into the fold
  • Suck up to, or buy your way into “web2.0” sites hearts
  • Launch invite only
  • Pray that someone buys you before the app cripples under the weight of popularity

That’s a very generalistic list, but you get the point right?

The Community First Approach

The way we launched both Performancing Firefox and Performancing Metrics was somewhat of the reverse. We knew who are target audience was, so we decided that rather than risk not being able to buy or slime our way into the right crowd to get coverage of our launches, we’d develop our own crowd, first.

It runs something like this:

  • Pinpoint the audience and start writing for them
  • Do all the normal things you do to promote a blog, including a little strategic advertising to kick start if you can.
  • Develop the community, put them above all else.
  • Invite key members of the community into alpha’s, beta’s etc. Develop a sense of ownership before launching
  • Launch and let your community be the first evangelists for your product

Again it’s generalistic, and much detail and caveats are missing, but it’s an approach that’s working well for us.

It’s not without it’s downsides. What if you spend all that time and money developing a community only to find that you’ve called it wrong, and they hate your products? How about time frame? It’s certainly slower this way…. One major caveat is that aswell as all of the above, we still send out traditional press releases, and email folks outside of the community we think our stuff will be interesting too.

But for me, and for Performancing in general, the community has always been central to success. And you know what? I don’t want to have to suck up to various folks in the web2.0 crowd to get them to write about our products. Fuck ’em. I’d rather stick my head in a bucket of cold sick.

I’m much more comfortable letting the people that help us shape our products, help us get the word out. Launching to a ready made audience that YOU identified, and that YOU targeted in every blog post that you wrote, is a lot nicer than spinning the wheel and hoping that a few folks like you enough to help you build the buzz you need to gain critical mass.

So far so good…

2500 Blogs Cant Be Wrong!

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24hrs after launching Performancing Metrics, we are now tracking more than 2500 blogs. We’re a long way from where we want to be, but I think that we’re doing pretty well, and with your help and feedback, we’ll only get better!

On the last update, at 500 blogs tracked, I posted a whole bunch of great quotes from feedback. This time round, though the overwhelmingly positive reviews continue to pour in, I’d like to do something different.

A Few Facts About Performancing Metrics

  • We now track over 2500 blogs
  • We’re making public stats available later today
  • Sometime soon, “Performancing Rank” will be unveiled
  • The whole concept of PMetrics has been managed by just 3 people, from 3 different countries
  • Web2.0 hype, can kiss my arse. PMetrics was released without any silly invitatoin nonsense, and it “just works”.
  • We read every bit of feedback, and have already incorporated some of it into the next release scheduled for later today
  • Our Javascript code is not obfuscated for a reason: We’ll be making it Open Source, and available for all to use as they see fit
  • Yes, we WILL be incorporating Metrics into Performancing Firefox
  • We’re having a lot of fun, and hope you are too 🙂

Please Help Us Spread the Word

In order for this to be successful, we need to get the word out, please help us do that. Blog about it, link to it, tell your friends and later today, share your public stats!

Feedback Welcomed!

YOU are the people we built this for, and we want you to help us shape the way Metrics develops, so please use the Metrics forum, your own blogs or your Performancing blogs to tell us what you think, how you would improve, and what you want.

We read all of it.

Support Requests will be moved out of this post into the forums, thanks!

Now Tracking 500+ Blogs!

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Just a few short hours after launching, Performancing Metrics, is now tracking OVER 500 BLOGS! Woohoo! In way of celebration, I’d like to share a few of my favorite quotes from this site and others….


I’ve only been using this package for an hour and I can already tell you I love it…the seriously speedy response makes Google’s Analytics look like a dinosaur, and the blogcentric approach is exactly what was needed.”

“It’s awesome. It’s cool that it’s catered specifically towards blogs, so the data is actually useful.”

“Love the new Metrics. I especially like the ability to use it on multiple blogs.” ~Various folks from the Performancing announcement thread


“It’s Blog-centric – While there are a number of free statistics packages out there I don’t know of too many comprehensive ones that are tailored specifically for blogs. This one is designed with bloggers as the primary user.”
 ~Darren Rowse, Problogger.net review of PMetrics

“Even while Performancing Metrics is still in beta, it is fast becoming one of our favorite stats packages. It allows us to analyze how blogs are actually doing in real time, which is critical when we often have spikes that last only a few hours, Getting stats in real-time lets us react to incoming traffic in ways that our other stats packages simply can’t.” ~Jeremy Wright, Ensight, B5Media


“I put it up on test this morning. It looks good. It already provides much more useful information that does Google (Urchin) but as has been pointed out, it is available to all. I’ll be adding it to more blogs in the next few days, I highly Digg it.” ~Dave Star, Amusingly titled Digg.com thread…

“Performancing Metrics is essentially the blog alternative to analytics programs like AWStats or Google Analytics which are geared more for traditional web sites. Performancing takes into account the everyday behind the scenes functions of a blogger and what is important to that’s blog’s statistics including comment and blog reading activity.” Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal

“Performancing Metrics really stands out as a blog metrics application for blogging pros.” ~Lee Odden, Marketing Blog

I hope to add a few more good quotes when we get to 1000, for now though, we’re all busy quaffing ale and frightening the neighbors in the Wilson household, and I hear Chris and Patrick are having a small tipple on Performancing Metrics launch awell!