I'm sorry that you felt the document viewing experience went backwards. If you're wiling to contact me directly I would definitely like to understand what is bothering you about the new experience and whether there is anything we can do to correct it.
Undoubtedly, from a PR standpoint we ended up timing the launch just right in the wake of the Steve Jobs fueled anti-Flash fervor. Total coincidence, though; I can't take credit for foreseeing that six months before it happened.
The press doesn't have anything to do with the user engagement (more specifically, "time on site") change, though. Only a tiny fraction of Scribd's users read TechCrunch or have any idea what HTML5 is. The majority really don't care and just unconsciously find the viewing experience less annoying, so they stay longer.
Exactly, and if you actually look at the numbers on Alexa:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/scribd.com
The Pageviews/User and Time on Site went down since they released it in May. It's all PR BS.
Once a site's above a gameable threshold, Alexa's a decent metric of how unsophisticated users interact with it. If that's an interesting demographic to you, you can probably get some value out of Alexa numbers.
I don't see much of a dip in time on site. Note also that Alexa is heavily biased (who exactly installs that toolbar?) and that time on site in Alexa is a blend of time on site for new and old style documents. I know nothing about scribd's metrics besides what I read on the internet, but my guess is they're discussing time on site for exclusively converted docs, which you will not be able to see on Alexa.
Comments
They rode a trend. They were in the right place when the press wanted to trump an anti-Flash story line. That PR is what tripled their engagement.
To me the document viewing experience went backwards and judging from the comments on TechCrunch I am not alone.
I'm sorry that you felt the document viewing experience went backwards. If you're wiling to contact me directly I would definitely like to understand what is bothering you about the new experience and whether there is anything we can do to correct it.
Undoubtedly, from a PR standpoint we ended up timing the launch just right in the wake of the Steve Jobs fueled anti-Flash fervor. Total coincidence, though; I can't take credit for foreseeing that six months before it happened.
The press doesn't have anything to do with the user engagement (more specifically, "time on site") change, though. Only a tiny fraction of Scribd's users read TechCrunch or have any idea what HTML5 is. The majority really don't care and just unconsciously find the viewing experience less annoying, so they stay longer.
Exactly, and if you actually look at the numbers on Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/scribd.com The Pageviews/User and Time on Site went down since they released it in May. It's all PR BS.
You really shouldn't trust Alexa's numbers for anything.
Once a site's above a gameable threshold, Alexa's a decent metric of how unsophisticated users interact with it. If that's an interesting demographic to you, you can probably get some value out of Alexa numbers.
I don't see much of a dip in time on site. Note also that Alexa is heavily biased (who exactly installs that toolbar?) and that time on site in Alexa is a blend of time on site for new and old style documents. I know nothing about scribd's metrics besides what I read on the internet, but my guess is they're discussing time on site for exclusively converted docs, which you will not be able to see on Alexa.