Can someone explain this graph to me?

[Old and In the Way]

<http://home.compete.com.edgesuite.net.nyud.net:8090/freerepublic.com+dailykos.com+democraticunderground.com_uv.png>

I cannot believe that FR gets 3X the daily views than dKos and DU combined.

http://snapshot.compete.com/freerepublic.com+dailykos.com+democraticunderground.com+

[Faux pas]

1. It's easy...just more right wing propaganda. n/t

[bluerum]

2. They may get more traffic, but they are losing it at a faster rate. Keep in

mind that they also have Faux news and Cnn and a publication to advertise in. AFAIK DU and Kos are strictly online.

[Jim__]

3. That must explain why their side did so well in the 2006 election.

But, wait a minute ...

[Gregorian]

4. Inflated self-worth.

Actually, I recall this question from a couple of years back. I think there is yet another explanation other than just people hits.

Just remember, if it's a right wing authoritarian entity, it's probably cheating in whatever way it can to create an image other than the true reality of the situation. Tricks, gimmicks.

[krispos42]

5. How do they count 'daily views'?

If it's total number of hits, well, their site is laid out so poorly that that fact alone might account for a good part of it

[Igel]

6. Seemingly not. They give monthly 'people counts'.

Clink on the link under "What is this?"

"People Counts are also known as unique visitors - they only count a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. People Counts are typically used to determine how popular a site is."

So not even unique people per day, summed over the month. Instead, unique people per month (ok, unique IPs).

[krispos42]

16. Thank you for the info n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

7. One can twist and turn statistics to say whatever you want them to say.

I learned that in a STAT class in college.

Especially if you see it on FR!!!!

Don't believe anything you read, and only half of what you see.
Someone famous said that..can't remember who.

[theoldman]

8. The intelligence curve is not a bell curve.

Apparently it is heaviest at the lower end.

[AlCzervik]

9. FR is a link at Cspan and many other places, it wouldn't surprise if that generated

many drive bys. Cspan has no link to DU.

[MonkeyFunk]

10. FR has been around a lot longer than DU

and the right-wing seems to have fewer discussion sites, thus concentrating more people on FR.

What else is there? Lucianne.com? (which was founded after a big split on FR)

[phaseolus]

11. The cynic in me wonders...

...well, you know how business owners often have interesting ways of siphoning money back into their pockets? Like owning a building or truck or machine or other asset and leasing it back to the company? If memory serves - this seems to come up whenever we make fun of their fundraising efforts - Free Repub pays outrageous, higher-than-market rates for internet access to some entity that's owned by RimJob. (I'll happily stand corrected if I'm getting this wrong. I'll be even happier if someone corroborates what I remember reading... ;-) )

Now, if this is in fact the case, and if the technology exists that can artificially inflate site visit counts, it would be in RimJob's financial interest to use that technology, wouldn't it? More unique visitors = more bandwidth that internet access seller can bill Free Republic = more cash in his pocket.

Of course, to be fair, I'm pulling all this out of my ass. I have no idea if that technology exists, although I'm guessing it wouldn't be too difficult to implement. I don't believe we'll ever discover if something like this actually is responsible for FR page views, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we do some day.

[mahina]

12. Couple reasons, if the numbers are correct.

1.FR has branded itself, but the majority of strong dems have have never heard of DU.

2.Freepers have to read everything three times till they get it?

3. Freepers are those assholes who forward everyone they know everything they get, and DU'ers are more civil and just discuss things with people. If we forward the great links just now and again that would build readership I think.

I read DU to find out what is really going on, beyond the bullshit posing as news that is CNN. I'm sure that's why they read FR too, feeling sure that all news is a leftist consipiracy. DU is not as utilitarian a news aggregate, it's developed into more of a community building thing. (Except in Hawaii. Jeez!)

My .02

[Old and In the Way]

13. Why I think this is bogus.

If you should wander over to FR's front page, you can get an idea of site traffic by looking at the topics and how many responses and how many views these OP's have. The views do not reflect the site counts suggested in the graph. If anything, they are a fraction of what I see going on here at DU.

I don't understand this tracking site's methodology, but I suspect that FR hit's itself by employing some kind of script bots. I just don't see the post/view counts they themselves track as supporting the data presented in this graph.

[phaseolus]

15. Script bots!!

So, the technology I was musing about in my crackpot theory posted above does exist...!

[Czolgosz]

14. Democrats are interested in both sides of the debate and so we visit all three sites. Repubs go only

to freeperville because they don't care what the other side says or believes.

We are fact based (and so go to various sources of all political tilts to gather facts); they are faith based and need only go to the source of the "received truth."

By the same reasoning, I suspect that a much smaller percentage of fundamentalist Christians have read the Koran as compared to the percentage of Universalist Christians who have read the Koran.

[Old and In the Way]

17. I'm sure we account for a % of their hits.

Always interesting to see how the other side views certain events.

But if you look at the general posts, they are very narrow and limited in their scope. Much of the news goes unreported over there. It's like a denialfest where they post only a small subset of stories that are framed positively for Republicans...and that seems to get smaller by the day.

So, unlike DU's LBN, I can't see where 100's of thousands of people go there every day to read....non news. They can't go there for the deep analysis, that's for certain.

[Greyhound]

18. In addition to the other explanations given, it could be the Howard Stern effect.

He became the King of the Airwaves because millions tuned in to "hear what he will say next". Outrageous attracts attention.

[On the Road]

19. They Invented the Practice of Freeping Polls

Maybe they invented the practice of freeping their own site.

Or who knows, maybe that many people really do visit that place. Despite all the verbosity on the Democratic side, progressives are more inclined their time on activism than surfing.

[unlawflcombatnt]

20. Very Interesting- Now look at PBS vs. Free Republic

This was a very interesting site. Though the combined total of DailyKos and DemocraticUnderground was less than that of Free Republic, PBS (Public Broadcasting) was 4 times as much as Free Republic.

http://home.compete.com.edgesuite.net/freerepublic.com+pbs.org_uv.png

Far more people are interested in the truth from PBS than the alternate reality of the "Free" Republic. (Does "Free" mean fact-free?)

Economic Populist Forum

[MissWaverly]

21. Must be all those who buy Ann Coulter's best sellers

I always see them on the dollar book tables, I have never seen anyone buying them for full price, but they continue to
be "best sellers"

[rurallib]

22. Strange - I always hear Kos referred to as the most visited blog

on the internet. Maybe FR is not classified as a blog. But I find it hard to believe that millions of people haunt that site when they can't even muster 10 people for a demonstration.

[rurallib]

23. 2nd reply - read the Compete explanation of calculation

Looks like they do some funky calculating. Also looks like they use Compete members as their basis. One could easily imagine that this base is weighted with FR members and that is extrapolated to the US population causing an out of whack number
http://www.compete.com/help#snp3