
Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it - saleemkce
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/22/your-time-on-facebook/
======
saleemkce
This is what we revealed a couple of months ago on hackernews
[https://saleemkce.github.io/timeonsite](https://saleemkce.github.io/timeonsite)
and the web analytics tool based on it. [https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-
time-on-site-analytics-f...](https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site-
analytics-for-businesses-and-high-end-applications-be4943fc320d)

~~~
reificator
> _It may take from 1 week to 10 days for us to generate and send your licence
> key. But you could start using the software from the moment you made the
> purchase._

Sorry, that's a guaranteed dealbreaker.

~~~
eropple
It's an odd way of selling software in 2018. I sell a product written for
developers and in JavaScript, too--and I effectively sell access to an NPM
registry, I don't fearmonger at people like "it's illegal!"; practically
there's no serious way for a developer to get even business-level pirates to
actually respond. Instead, I don't _give_ people access to Pro-tier features
and I open-source the application because it's still useful to people even
without those Pro-tier features, rather than freeloading on GitHub's servers?

(Also, the turnaround time is under 24 hours, rather than a week...and that's
just because I haven't yet wired up a webhook to create a user in my SSO
solution yet.)

But that relies on actual features and not a timer with some local storage.
$38 is too expensive for that given the time a developer would have to spend
vetting the software to make sure it's any good rather than writing
functionally similar code that syncs with existing infrastructure rather than
having some separate dashboard.

~~~
saleemkce
"$38 is too expensive for that given the time a developer would have to spend
vetting the software". If so, do you point out a web tracker that captures
time on site metric (ignores inactive tab time, multi-tab precise time
computing, both real-time and offline time-on-site data feed and so on) so
effectively that provides all these great features along with free timeonsite
analytics tool
[https://github.com/saleemkce/timeonsite_analytics](https://github.com/saleemkce/timeonsite_analytics).
Given all these critical metrics, $38 is not a big cost/per year for a company
that likes to take intelligent decisions out of product usage & user
behaviour. That's why big companies like Facebook and Instagram invest time on
building this time metrics feature.

~~~
eropple
Facebook and Instagram spend time building this stuff _because buying it off-
the-rack would cost more_. That tends to be true for a lot of stuff at
Facebook scale, but that's also true for much smaller companies that need
(note: not "think they need") the feature, too. It's neither complicated nor
complex as a feature--the hard part, and the meaningful part, is
contextualizing that timer with regards to the application and the decisions
being made with that application. Your "free" analytics tool actually costs
them a lot of money (because developer time _isn 't_ free) and there's an
inflection point at which building a tool, bringing the knowledge and ability
to maintain it in-house, makes a lot more sense than buying.

It's not that the feature isn't good, or the feature isn't worth $38 in a
vacuum. It's that that $38 buys _negative value_ for teams working on products
that would derive value from the feature. You're trying to sidestep an
existing metrics ingest pipeline and existing analytics tools. But the people
who have metrics don't want you to sidestep it and the people who don't aren't
the people who would materially benefit from this feature.

~~~
saleemkce
> "It's that that $38 buys negative value for teams working on products that
> would derive value from the feature. You're trying to sidestep an existing
> metrics ingest pipeline and existing analytics tools."

How do you say that it buys negative value? Additionally, We're not trying to
sidestep an existing metrics; yes, this metrics is already available but with
poor accuracy and implementation issues. Check the numerous issues with Google
Analytics here:
[https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN777IN782&ei=Gb...](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN777IN782&ei=GbIzW7O0KIWuvwS5oq24DQ&q=session+duration+issues+in++google+analytics&oq=session+duration+issues+in++google+analytics&gs_l=psy-
ab.3...45679.51221.0.51586.27.24.0.0.0.0.270.2430.1j14j2.17.0....0...1.1.64.psy-
ab..11.11.1686...0j0i7i30k1j0i13k1j0i8i7i30k1j0i30k1j0i7i5i30k1j0i5i30k1j0i8i30k1.0.pJ-
nXmMuHbI) So, we try to fix & improve the well-known metrics so that our
products benefit straight away with accuracy and metrics-reliability.

#analytics #GA #timeonsite

~~~
eropple
Oh. Okay. Where's your Influx backend? Where's your CloudWatch Metrics
backend? How do I get your measurements in Graphite? Is it going to take
longer to write it myself to use those pipelines? If it takes more work to
hammer what you have into the metrics tooling and pipelines everybody who
actually needs this product already has, _you present negative value_.

Jimbo's PHP Site doesn't need this, they can't materially act on the
information it provides and don't know how to read it meaningfully anyway. The
companies that benefit from this are already actively metrics-oriented. And
you are sidestepping existing metrics _pipelines_. It's easier to build over
the fairly trivial feature set you present and integrate it with the kinds of
monitoring you get out of the box with AWS et al. than to bend somebody else's
questionable code--and don't take that personally, everyone who isn't me's
code is questionable until proven otherwise, but your "you need a license for
this code that talks to a webservice you have to host and puts it into a MySQL
database you _also_ have to host" stuff sure doesn't help--into acting right.

And, uh. You should really, really stop with the hashtags nonsense. Don't be
gross.

------
abhiminator
Intrigued to see Facebook following Apple and Google's footsteps[0] in
deploying a tool for its users to keep track of their application/website
usage time.

Wonder how much of an impact this tool will have in bringing more internet-IRL
balance to millions glued to their screen, given that this move is a complete
180º from Facebook core business model.

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-
hea...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-health-vs-
google-wellbeing-time-well-spent-wwdc-2018)

~~~
saleemkce
yes, you are right. This data is formidable.
[https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site-
analytics-f...](https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site-analytics-
for-businesses-and-high-end-applications-be4943fc320d) Look at the post
images(time metrics) by various measures, I wrote about time-on-site metrics
on just 100K records in Mysql DB. The results were curious and compelling.
Imagine what if we apply this solution over 10M, 100M, 1B or more records.
It's definitely worth finding analytics and usage patterns.

------
JoshMnem
It seems like a tobacco company making a tool that tells you how many
cigarettes you smoke per day, and the results are displayed on the pack of
cigarettes.

~~~
saleemkce
yes, sometimes you don't need real-time data. Offline works well in many cases
to help you take decisions consciously.

------
drb91
All this is ridiculously silly compared to making it a useful site in the
first place, notably by removing ads and using a chronological timeline. To
make myself a broken record, I would certainly pay for such a useful social
network. Facebook is not that, and had shown little inclination in providing
this value to their users.

~~~
saleemkce
yes, useful site needs analytics/precise metrics to make it even better and
user-focused, right?

