Specifically, editors at separate organizations asked us the same question: Can you share some of that data with us? You know, the topic data and the data on authors?
Begrudgingly, we agreed, and started to send out reports on a monthly basis.
Editors: “Hmm, this is great! Can we get this quicker?”
Parse.ly: “Uh, sure. We can give it to you weekly.”
Editors: “Awesome! Actually, it’d be great if we could get this daily.”
Parse.ly: “OK, what’s up here? Why do you care more about the data than the recommendations?”
Well, as it turns out, nobody had really showed them this data before, and the data was simply eye-opening for the editorial team. They were using it to go beyond monitoring individual articles to understanding what was resonating with their audience.
Queue the second Aha! moment in early 2011. We took a step back and did some research on analytics tools for online publishers. What we found was astounding. Almost no innovation had happened on the analytics side for online publishers. Most tools were one-size-fits-all systems that treated an e-commerce site the same as a content site, and obviously, that’s not the way to do it.
Content-based sites are dramatically different than an e-commerce property from both a data and business perspective.
It’s no wonder these publishers were clamoring for data that provided fresh insights on their property. Publishers need to know how their content breaks out by topic, what causes a post to go viral, why one author does better with search traffic than another, and a bevy of other key insights that are specific to their needs. We knew this was a big opportunity, and decided to dive head-first into the analytics space.
Sachin Kamdar — Hello Publishers, Meet Dash
