Let's Talk About Paper.li

This morning, when I was busying myself with all of my various websites, I logged into Twitter and saw this under my "interactions" tab.

I've gotten these paper.li things before - this one is probably the 3rd or 4th one. And, up until today, I never really questioned them, though I did find it strange that so many people seemed to have their own daily newspaper (because really, who is going to read an entire newspaper run online by a nobody?). I've always just gone to the site, looked for what they used off my blog, and closed out of it. Nothing more.

I did the same exact thing with this paper.li notification that I've done with every other one - I went to the website and searched for what they used from me (usually entries off of this blog). In this case, this person had posted a link I randomly decided to post on Twitter yesterday, which was this old preview of Family History: Part 1.

In the past, most of these Paper.li papers were related to things like writing and self publishing, so I never questioned it.

This one, however, seemed geared towards genealogy.

Let's face it - even though Family History: Part 1 and Part 2 contain something of an extensive genealogy, the book itself is just a work of fiction. And when most of the articles on this particular "paper" seem more related to, say, actual genealogy (and not fictional families), then I started to wonder.

I took a look on Twitter, too - this guy and I were never following each other, nor did we have any similar followers. Suspicious!


So, naturally, I did what any "modern-day sleuth" would do, and I consulted Google. A quick search of just "paper.li" led me to this blog post - "Paper.li: Clever Curation or Spammy Automation" by Adam Toporek.

"The first time I was mentioned in a Paper.Li I didn’t understand what had happened. It showed up in my Mentions stream on Twitter that I and a few others had made “The ____ Daily” and were part of the “Top Stories.” I thought the person who had mentioned me had read something of mine and liked it enough to tweet about it. I promptly thanked him for the tweet, but little did I understand that the gentleman in question most likely had no idea who I was or what I had written."

So, you mean to tell me that I'm not actually special?

"I had been picked up by the automated service Paper.Li." 

Automated, you say? Well then, I guess that answers my first question.

"For those who are not familiar with Paper.Li, it is a content “curation” system that publishes multiple Twitter and Facebook feeds and makes a newspaper of sorts."

To be honest, I'm not quite sure I understand the point, taking stuff written by others and posting it all in a newspaper collage of some sorts, but to each his own, am I right? 

Posting to your Paper.Li whatever happens to be in the #smalllbusiness hashtag stream when the Paper.Li runs is not curation, it’s topical aggregation.

Oh, kind of like how this guy posted my months-old "Family History" preview post to his genealogy paper?

If you want to know more about Paper.li, I recommend not only reading the rest of Toporek's blog post, but also taking a look at the comments: where this particular writer is saying, "No, Paper.li has no value," others disagree and add in their two cents as to why.

Does anybody here have anything to say about Paper.li? If so, feel free to comment on this below - I want to know what other's experience has been with this particular website.

The Twitter Experiment, Part 6: Data and Numbers

I've decided that, rather than all of my posts about Twitter saying nothing more than "Tw1t3r suks stfu", I ought to write about something constructive.

I joined Twitter because everybody said that it was a great resource for authors, for advertising, connecting with authors, etc. The question is: has it worked?

First off, for the Twitter data itself: I joined Twitter on 1/20/2012. It is currently 2/7/2012. That means I've been "Tweeting" for 18 days.

In 18 days, I have gained 291 followers and have sent 360 tweets.

I know, I'm ashamed too. I've sent more tweets than gained followers.

Less "hard" data: because of Twitter, I'm scheduled for two upcoming guest blog posts on two different websites, so keep a lookout for those (although one isn't scheduled to occur until April 17th).

That said: let's look at something else. How has being on Twitter affected traffic to Predicted Hindsight?

Number of Page Views Prior to January 20th, 2012.

• January 15th: 8
• January 16th: 12
• January 17th: 13
• January 18th: 35
• January 19th: 28
• January 20th: 32

Now, keep this in mind: January 18th was SOPA blackout day. For whatever reason, my SOPA post attracted a lot of attention that I wasn't used to having. I was actually getting people getting to Predicted Hindsight via Google searches, mostly with terms containing "SOPA" in some form. The dates preceding January 18th are more representative of what I was used to.

Now, what about after January 20th?

(NOTE: I'm not including January 21st, 22nd, and 25th, because I think I might have posted a Reddit link that day, and those tend to skew the data pretty high. Since I'm not looking at "The Effect of Reddit on Data", there's no need to include them here.)

• January 23rd: 5
• January 24th: 7
• January 26th: 28
• January 27th: 28
• January 28th: 25
• January 29th: 49
• January 30th: 8
• January 31st: 13
• February 1st: 17
• February 2nd: 25
• February 3rd: 33
• February 4th: 48
• February 5th: 35
• February 6th: 31

But...What Does This Mean?

To be honest, this is not ALL Twitter. There are a few other things to consider. Like, first off, I established my Facebook Author Page just a few days before (I'm thinking it was about a day or two before SOPA blackout day). Also, I post most every blog post, at least the ones with substance, on the Kindle Boards blog thread. Despite having only 20 likes on Facebook and being relatively unknown on Kindle Boards, these seem to generate quite a bit of traffic themselves.

Also, with any statistic like this, we have to remember to keep this very important fact in mind: Correlation does NOT Equal Causation. 

So, what else, besides the factors mentioned above, might be contributing to the fact that this little blog does seem to be gaining some traction?

Well, first off, it is important to note that I've been working on this little project for more than 2 months now. The passing of time alone might be contributing as more and more people have the ability to run across this website.

Also, the blog also now has nine followers. Quickly: may I give a big THANK YOU to those who have followed? :D

That said, though - despite everything, I do think Twitter has a lot to do with the slow uptick in numbers, ESPECIALLY since my "Twitter" posts seemed to have gained "some" attention on their own. Quickly...

• Part 1: 7 Page Views
• Part 2: 6 Page Views
• Part 3: 22 Page Views
• Part 4: 6 Page Views
• Part 5: 9 Page Views

Also, keep in mind that these are just standalone page views - these don't even count the people who read these posts just be "scrolling down".

What Conclusions can be Drawn?

Really, it's pretty inconclusive. To REALLY gauge where I'm going, I should be ceasing all advertisement of posts on Twitter, but nowhere else. But am I going to do that? Maybe. Though what's the point of that? At this rate, I seem to be doing something right, something that seems to be working.

Also, something else of interest: I did a "secret" free download of Family History: Part 1 today. By secret, I mean I advertised NOWHERE - no Facebook, no Twitter, no Reddit or Kindle Boards. As of 9:27 pm MST, there are 15 U.S. downloads and 5 UK downloads. With some advertising on Twitter, Part 2 made it to 24 U.S. downloads and 1 UK download (also: 5 Germany Downloads).

So yeah, Twitter does seem to be doing something. 

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