Ilya Grigorik's dashboard

A comment on the idea "AideRSS support in FeedDemon" in PostRank:

Awesome. Now all that's left to do is to convince Nick of the same! :-) – Ilya Grigorik, on November 10, 2009 23:41

Ilya Grigorik replied on November 10, 2009 23:24 to the idea "AideRSS support in FeedDemon" in PostRank:

Nick, Richard, I think integrating directly against the PostRank API is the best route to go. As Jim pointed out, having quick visual feedback is important, and overall it requires a minimal amount of integration.

Our Google Reader plugin is actually a very good example of this in action (http://gr.postrank.com). To power that, we don't synchronize the postrank and google reader subscriptions at all - we use the user's existing google reader subscriptions and bring in the postrank data on the fly.

Take a look at this screenshot of the plugin in my account:
http://skitch.com/igrigorik/ng69m/goo...

We expose two options: by default stories below a certain threshold are hidden from view. However, you can also enable a view where the stories below the threshold are lower in opacity -- it comes down to personal preference between the two. Personally, I like the lower opacity version because it still allows me to see the stories, but at the same time, I can quickly skip past them.

In terms of the actual nuts and bolts: all the PostRank data is pulled in real-time as the stories are loaded. We scan for new URL's and then send them directly against our PostRank API (collection of URL's in, a hash-map of urls and their ratings back).

I would _love_ to see this functionality in FeedDemon. I'm obviously biased, but the PR plugin is what keeps me within Google Reader. And in fact, with a native interface integration I think you could deliver a much better experience than what we have with the GR plugin.

Ilya Grigorik set one of Ilya Grigorik's replies as an official response to "Firefox extension compatibility with Prism" in PostRank

Ilya Grigorik replied on October 21, 2009 17:24 to the idea "Firefox extension compatibility with Prism" in PostRank:

It works! Download the greasemonkey for Prism plugin and you can install our plugin. Works just fine.

Ilya Grigorik replied on October 01, 2009 04:37 to the problem "No Login?" in PostRank:

MAF, do you by any chance see an "overview" link in top right navigation menu? If that's the case, then you're already logged in and you can click there to be taken to your dashboard.

Otherwise, can you try: https://analytics.postrank.com/login

We're working on updating the UI to address this.

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 29, 2009 16:41 to the question "Page Views" in PostRank:

Greg, the pageview numbers you get on PostRank Analytics come directly from your Google Analytics account. As you will see when you signup, we do not require that you add any special javascript or serverside code such that we track your pageviews.

Hence, the numbers should be exactly as reported by Google Analytics. Hope that answers your question?

A comment on the problem "Disparities in your numbers." in PostRank:

Francis, we're working on a fix for this. We have a different strategy which will avoid this problem all together. Stay tuned! – Ilya Grigorik, on September 28, 2009 14:49

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 25, 2009 18:03 to the problem "The comment count almost always reads 4, even when we have none" in PostRank:

Hi Seth, thanks for reporting the issue. Can you please give us the URL for your blog? Would be happy to look into it.

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 25, 2009 16:01 to the problem "Disparities in your numbers." in PostRank:

Francis, the twitter followers count appears to be slightly out of sync on twittercounter API. It periodically syncs -- we'll look to see if we can make those numbers sync up faster.

For pageviews, the reason you see fewer pageviews is because Google Analytics does not show real-time data. Rather, it usually lags by a few hours. The numbers will catch up once Google processes the data.

So in both of those cases the discrepancy is due to the third party API's which are not real-time.

For the engagement metrics (twitter mentions, etc) the data is real-time as it comes from the PostRank system itself.

Hope that makes sense, and let us know if you have any other questions!

A comment on the question "What are the orange analyze numbers?" in PostRank:

Paul, no wonder that's confusing you! There must be an inconsistency in our data to cause that. Let us look into it. – Ilya Grigorik, on September 25, 2009 12:10

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 25, 2009 04:30 to the question "What are the orange analyze numbers?" in PostRank:

Paul, those are the PostRank scores for each story. The score is a rank on a 1 to 10 scale, where a 10 represents a highly engaging story (based on the engagement metrics PostRank gathers from all of the social networks). The intent is to quickly show you an at a glance view to help you find the posts with most & least engagement.

You can learn more about how PostRank works here: http://www.postrank.com/postrank

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 25, 2009 04:09 to the problem "Safari user? No login for you!" in PostRank:

Alan, that's a UI mishap on our part! The reason you don't see the login button is because you already logged in -- the login button is replaced by "Overview" which will take you to the dashboard.

We'll make sure to fix this as I'm sure you're not the only one asking the same question.

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 24, 2009 21:35 to the question "What in the world are Engagement Points?" in PostRank:

Jonathan, digging into the data here... I think I see what's happening!

The peaks do not line up because the bulk of the engagement for each of those stories did not come immediately after you published it. The graph events (letters) show you when the story was made public, and the engagement / pageviews always trail that event.

Depending on how quickly and wide the story spread, your engagement & pageviews may come in the first day, or in the following days (your case).

Hope that makes sense?

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 24, 2009 18:34 to the problem "analytics url not recognize" in PostRank:

Jerome, thank you for reporting this! Appears to have been an inconsistency in our data, which should be resolved now. Please give it a try and let us know if anything else comes up.

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 24, 2009 18:05 to the question "Why do I need to enter my Credit card to sign up?" in PostRank:

Thanks for the suggestion Oscar!

A comment on the question "Can greasemonkey script autoupdate?" in PostRank:

Hmm! Seems like our version numbers got out of sync. The script you have is the latest version. I'll update the site to reflect this. – Ilya Grigorik, on September 20, 2009 01:57

A comment on the question "Can greasemonkey script autoupdate?" in PostRank:

Yep! Just uploaded to: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5... – Ilya Grigorik, on September 19, 2009 22:56

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 08, 2009 15:23 to the question "Page not found, 404 errors since installing PostRank" in PostRank:

Des, does webmaster tools provide the referrer or the user agent that generated the 404's?

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 07, 2009 01:32 to the problem "Postrank not showing" in PostRank:

Hi Jack, we did have an intermittent problem with our API earlier this problem, but everything should be back to normal as of ~11AM EST. I wonder if that's when you were having trouble with our Google Reader script, because that would certainly affect it.

Let us know if you're still seeing the same behavior.

Ilya Grigorik replied on September 04, 2009 14:17 to the question "PostRank fetch error" in PostRank:

You have the PostRank Firefox extension installed, correct?