As anyone who’s been following my ramblings for a while knows, I’m a recent and still in progress convert away from LiveJournal. To this day, I still blog on that site as Arinoch, though now it’s more a duplication of the content you’d usually find on this site. One of my big reasons for skipping out on LJ is the lack of control over what you actually have the ability to do with your blog. But, a slightly more important one–to me, anyway–was the lack of an ability to actually see who bothers to read the thing. Until recently, they had absolutely no means of statistical tracking. Which, admittedly, isn’t the primary reason I do this, but sometimes it comes in handy. They tried to correct that minor malfunction with their own, internal analysiss tool, called “My stats”. It was barely useful for more than to see how many of your “friends” continued to check up on you every 20 minutes. So now, they’ve taken the next logical step and gone with the use of Google Analytics instead, giving you the option to get as detailed or not a look at your blog as you please.
I’ve been using the same service on this site, after trying several things to see who would provide me with the more interesting stats–and, after consulting with one well-known expert in the field, Toronto Mike. And all I can say is it’s about goddamn time. If I hadn’t already switched from LJ, I’d probably reconsider doing so now. Particularly if they opened up what you could actually do with the blog you’re optionally paying them to host. Offering this, plus options for advertising on your own–hey, why should LJ-sponsored ads be the only option available–is a good start, though. Now keep it going. I may be tempted to not hang up completely.
What I’d like to see next? StatCounter support, for the realtime stats analytics doesn’t touch. Dunno why they don’t touch it, but oh well. Now, allow me to go play with this for a little.