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[dead] marktangotango
A service that relies on google analytics to function? History indicates this approach can be problematic ie what could go wrong?

Edit apparently the same ring that’s up voting this and promoting it are also down voting everyone else? Great!

duiker101
> A service

It's a bookmarklet not some kind of monolithic SaaS business

dbbk
No, I think you're being downvoted because you're being hysterical over a browser bookmarklet.
duncan-donuts
This is fun! Reminds me of the visit counter everyone had back in the 90s.
freeelncer
Same nostalgic feelings here. Only this time you’re the only one that gets to see it. Its fun when launching a new project and wanting to celebrate every visitor that you gain.
duncan-donuts
Yeah, totally! I'd love to throw it on my blog so I can see when I actually get _a single user_ (and then hear the crushing blow as they leave)
flexie
Why would you want to be disturbed every few seconds? It's bad enough with interruptions from emails, chats, skype, calls, messages, coworkers walking in etc. This might actually have the potential to kill your remaining few productive spells.
karimf
I guess when you've spent weeks developing an interesting project, it's so satisfying to see when it gains tractions, even just one visitor. Then you turn the chirps off later when things get better.
anonytrary
Auditory feedback can be useful in certain circumstances.
nickjj
Hearing a "cha ching" sound is really gratifying if you sell a product. That's probably why cash registers make that noise.
digi_owl
All manner of non-visual feedback is highly undervalued these days for some reason.
anonytrary
I feel that web users have made it very taboo to use auditory feedback.
michaelmcmillan
Nothing is like the dopamine rush you get when a customer checks out a product you have launced.
duiker101
Why would you want to have fun at all? Fun really takes away time from all the productivity I could do.

Apart from that. Personally I keep a tab with real time because I like to look if there is a surge of users(I mostly have max 5 concurrent users) because it might mean someone mentioned the site somewhere so I like to go and maybe try to participate in the conversation.

beejiu
Maybe because you are early stage and wish to pay close attention to how people use your product. A sales agent might want to keep an eye on their hot prospect as they browse the website. There are lots of possibilities.
nsgi
If you get disturbed an average of every five seconds then you have around 6 million visits per year. Usually something worth celebrating for a new site, and you don't have to keep it on indefinitely :)
fiatjaf
I don't like the fact that you silently assume everybody has Google Analytics installed on their site. You don't even consider telling people that they need that.
oh_sigh
Step 2 begins with "Open Google Analytics"
amelius
Yes, so let's assume the reader isn't aware they have to integrate GA (or perhaps they don't even know what it's for).

1. They perform step 1, ok.

2. They open GA (what for? well let's just open it)

3. Click the bookmark, ok.

4. Strange, nothing seems to happen.

5. Fiddle a bit. Maybe it's my website, let's restart the server.

6. Reaction, eventually: this sucks.

geekamongus
> (or perhaps they don't even know what it's for)

Then they are not likely going to need this service in the first place.

lemagedurage
Seems far fetched. I bet the amount of people who - own a site - are unaware of GA - execute step 1 without reading 2 ... and... - know how to restart their server ... is exactly 0.
Doctor_Fegg
Let's put this in a more positive way.

This is great! Have you considered adding a Piwik-compatible option?

fiatjaf
Piwik? I don't want a Piwik-compatible option. I'm not even complaining about Google Analytics, I'm just saying it doesn't sound well to just tell people to open Google Analytics.

I would complain the same way if a website promised a guide to calculate interest rates and started the article with "Open Excel...".

Adding a "For this to work you'll need Google Analytics installed in your site" notice would solve everything.

nsgi
Why is that necessary? The "open Google Analytics" part makes it clear enough. It's not as if they're an interpreter that is going to crash when they see something they can't logically do ;)
digi_owl
I find myself thinking about JWZs diary from the Netscape days, where on launch day someone in the office had rigged up a script that played a cannon shot whenever a download completed successfully.
pixelHD
I'd love to use this if it works with Piwik.
rhuehn
I spun up a pageview notifier just for fun by creating a webtask to ping a service on my home automation system. This enables the usual stuff - real time UI, audio alerts, webpush notifications, history, etc.

The webtask keeps the HA connection secrets but also works on static sites. On the HA side, the custom service pulses a binary sensor device created from {title, pathname}.

https://github.com/theatersoft/test-device/blob/master/webta...

simonhamp
This looks cool. The title of this post is a little (scary) ambiguous - ‘see’ and ‘hear’ people who visit your site!?

Glad it’s not what I thought :D

Will give it a go soon!

CM30
Neat concept, though I do wonder whether you'd go nuts if your site turned out to be extremely popular. I can imagine the sound being something like a machine gun firing if you tried this on say, Hacker News.

Still, seems like it could be fun to play around with none the less.

greenleafjacob
I believe Netscape or Mozilla did this - every download triggered a sound, and release day was like a machine gun of downloads.