Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Think it: I hate numbers

Published on 05/05/08
by Zac Echola

Note: This post was inspired by a conversation on twitter between Dave Cohn and Will Sullivan. You can work your way backwards through the conversation here.

The Internet is full of numbers. We can spend all day talking about how many people we follow on twitter, how much time people spend on our sites, what the growth rates are for all of our online properties. But a number is just a number if you don’t give it context.

I spend my life in numbers. I think about Bayesian inferences to help determine my menu selections at restaurants. I think about expected value formulas whether at a poker table or talking business and content strategies. I can’t read a book without breaking down arguments into symbolic logic.

But these are just things. I don’t want to talk about numbers when I talk about the Web.

I despise numbers not because they are useless, but because all too often we misuse these numbers.

A number like 30,000 absolute unique visitors per month means nothing to some people. It means dollars to others. Some think of it as audience. These may be truths, but they fail to accurately represent The Truth As I See It.

When you’re spouting off statistics like how many people subscribe to your YouTube channel or traffic your site gets, you should only think about one thing: There is a real human on the other side of the number.

Now, I don’t mean that you should go out and have lunch with the person on the other side of the network. I don’t even think anyone should expect you to respond to every email you get. I do, however, expect you to think about how you’ve made a human connection.

This Internet thing isn’t a broadcast machine. It looks like that on the surface, but that idea isn’t The Truth Of The Matter. The Internet is a phalanx of humans and human knowledge; It is big ideas and small ones at the same time. It is an extension of ourselves. For the most part we interact with Wikipedia as if it were a part of our own memory. We watch low production YouTube videos as if we were watching home movies.

Nearly every person that joins your network, that visits your site, that adds another notch on whatever metric you’re following is a real person trying to make a real connection. Don’t forget that.

When you see a number online, realize you made some kind of human connection. They interacted with you in some small way (the computer was just a conduit). Often in business, it is cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new customer. That value applies to the Web more than anywhere else in business, I think.

Content itself isn’t valuable. What gives content value is the connection between the producer and the audience.

So what is more important; Is it the total number or the strength of the connections? If you have too many connections does that make each less valuable? I don’t know the answer. But it’s something to think about.

The end. Or is it?

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