We had a conversation recently with a prospect who was hoping to boost ad revenue by building page views — at the possible expense of a meaningful user experience. We recommended against it, arguing from the altruistic viewpoint that building a meaningful experience would be far more beneficial in the long run. Plus, we had concerns about the viability of a page view strategy in the face of increasing use of AJAX, whereby results are given to a user without the page reloading at all.

Recently, Nielsen has noted the same thing and has begun adjusting its method of measurement. According to this AP article, Nielsen “will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.”

Now we’re getting somewhere… Time spent is an interesting and important analytic because it suggests engagement. But, ultimately, I think we’re going to need a tool that can actually measure engagement. After all, if I load up your web site and get distracted (or if I use tabbed browsing and it’s open all day in a tab), I may look heavily engaged when, in fact, I’m not paying any particular attention at all.

I recently wrote an article for the Indianapolis Business Journal about one of my favorite sites, Charity Navigator. In the most recent issue of their newsletter, they’ve highlighted five myths about charitable giving. They are:

Myth 1: Charity executives are overpaid.
Myth 2: After a natural disaster, charities need old clothes.
Myth 3: You can judge a local charity based on a national name.
Myth 4: Excellent charities spend 100% of their budgets on program services.
Myth 5: A good way to support charity is to participate in a special event or buy a special product.

[Read the article, “Five Charity Myths Dispelled”]
[Visit Charity Navigator]
[Read my review of Charity Navigator at Rare Bird, Inc.]

The next issue of Time magazine sports a graphical representation of what is on Paris’ mind having just been released from the pokey. In her hour-long interview with Larry King, Paris recalled her 23-day incarceration and gave the world great insight into what she’s really thinking about.

To illustrate, Time compiled all the words she used in the interview, noted how many times each was used, and then graphically represented the results.

The finished product isn’t all that surprising, but it does initiate a nice “Aha!” moment: the creativity behind such a simple idea is clear and communicates the concept flawlessly.

[See what’s on Paris Hilton’s mind]

John and Nancy, two of our friends from Cincy, have just taken their brood to Spain. Normally, this would be little or no cause for excitement. But this is John, crafter of Christmas letter messages so tightly woven that they’re gladly shared amongst people who don’t even know them. I’m not even certain if you can fathom the thought, since so many Christmas letters are filled with items like, “Peg broke her leg again when she was computing in the sectional finals of extreme hula-hoop and Bobby finally got his wisdom teeth… left side, uppers.”

The Evans’s letters, on the other hand, contain tidbits that (while possibly just as mundane) have a flair that is rarely seen outside of… well, it’s just rarely seen. Anyway, you can know get a small sample of a classic Evans tale by visiting their blog and reading a few short postings on their trip to Spain. Seriously, if you’re in need of a good chuckle, this is a good place to start.

[Visit the Evans’s Blog]

For the life of me, I can’t understand what’s happening in American politics. Who is advising these people? Yesterday I was dumbfounded that Mike Gravel released two “campaign” videos that were metaphors for… something. The first was three minutes of Gravel staring into the camera before he walked over and lobbed a stone into a pond and walked away. The second was nearly seven minutes of a small, smoldering camp fire.

Today we find out that Hillary has finally selected her campaign theme song (after a dramatic, breathless internet vote!). The winner? Celine Dion’s “You and I.” Maybe they’ll elect her Prime Minister of Canada, instead. (One can only hope.)

So I guess the next item was an attempt to re-connect with America. And what is America talking about? No, not the war. No, not illegal immigration. No, not taxes or Congress or terrorism. Give up? The Sopranos. That’s right… Hillary and Bill have created their own spoof of the Soprano’s season finale.

I suppose it can only get worse. At the Caucus blog at www.nytimes.com, Kate Phillps quickly judged that it “by far, represents the best campaign spot we’ve seen this season.”

Geesh. Cut to black, already.

[See the Hillary Soprano Spoof (Or not; you’re not missing anything.)]