Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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I note that ffunnel claims to have an audience of 1.3 million unique browsers/month. There are a bunch of ways to read this claim, but to take it at face value it seems to say that 1.3 million people are reading New Zealand blogs which is absurd. I guess they arrived at the number by taking audiences for scoop, geekzone, PA etc and adding them together, when obviously there's going to be a large crossover between them.
Presumably the audience size is based on the Nielson Net Ratings - I was interested to see that Nielson have 4.6 million 'unique browsers' visiting TradeMe every month.
So either a lot of overseas people (like, millions) are using an online auction site for the most geographically isolated country in the world or there's something wrong with Nielson's ratings. I'm not a fancy big city internet expert but I gather 'unique browser' is a highly flawed and misleading metric. I chatted about this with someone who works on the web site at my university - he candidly admitted that 'number of unique browers' tends to overstate visitor numbers by a factor of about 20.
(I also wonder whether outfits like Nielson track whether my unique browser is running ad-blocking software and pass that information onto their customers.)
I wish companies like ffunnel the best of luck, but I find the statistics currently being thrown around about online audience size in New Zealand to be literally unbelievable.
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The issue of the relationship between his eventful private life and the Families Commission role is tricky: so much so that a story by Colin Espiner was amended after publication. The deleted section is still there on Kiwiblog. It refers to the suicide of the former wife of her new husband, six months ago. A comment under the original post claims that the suicide "was in part brought about by the discovery of the affair" between Rankin and the husband. It does sound messy.
Both TV news shows went out of their way to show footage of Rankin and her new husband Kim MacIntyre partying together at the National Party HQ on election night - an event that took place a few days after MacIntyre's wife's suicide. Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot more of that footage.
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Seriously, though, I'm still surprised that Plunket didn't take his chance and jump ship from Radio NZ last November. He would have made an excellent press secretary for John Key.
Key already has some pretty formidible press secretaries - and the qualities that make Sean Plunkett a good interviewer would have made him a disaster as a comms advisor. I think the Nats made the right call there.
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And is there a word for the sin of pride in one's own comprehensive ignorance? Michael Laws' column on swine flu would take it.
Lhauteur?
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I object to the portrayal by Norman and others of Shearer as being to the right of the party. David Farrar's mischief-making of last week has been swallowed by the media without any analysis.
The reality is it's been established in the media because Labour haven't been doing anything to counter it; the media can't fight Labour's battles for them. Being an opposition party is more than just lying on the ground crying about how 'unfair' everything is.
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It probably make senses for Labour to help gift the Greens an electorate to try and get the latter an insurance policy akin to Act's Epsom. Perhaps Rongotai when Annette King retires?
That can be a bit of a poisoned chalice - ACT are basically Key's to command, he can wipe them out at the next election if they displease him. I doubt the Greens would want to be so constrained.
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Slater is the muck racker, DPF is the moderate commentator on the muck, his wingnut followers then frame the debate back in the terms Slater and the National Party filth unit want and all the journalists in town interview kiwiblog for their stories - voila - topic de jour?
Labour did use an identical tactic to disseminate the H-Fee smear against Key using their proxies at The Standard so they're in no position to complain about how unfair it all is, and it's hardly the fault of the media or the Nats if they're simply more competent at executing these strategies.
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This seems like a pretty easy hit for Labour to knock out of the ball park - David Shearer supports the use of private sector solutions in conflict zones and disaster areas in which there is no available government infrastructure; that is not a description of New Zealand although after a few more years of the National government it may well be.
Instead we get them crying about dirty tricks and smear campaigns. Weak.
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Why is it that whenever the story of the internet in New Zealand is told, it never seems to involve women?
Because you're all terrible at reading maps.
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The things you miss with Adblock.
I see DPF is running IQ test ads on his site. Some of his readers might get a rude awakening.
Have you ever met anyone who did an IQ test and scored lower than 140? Seems to me that 100% of the population have IQ's in the genius, top 1% range. I'm not quite smart enough to spot the exact flaw with that math but it definitely doesn't smell right.