Friday, March 26, 2010

The shelf life of newspaper columns on the net

Over the years, I have written quite a bit in the media, and all of it is up on my MEDIA page. I recently looked at the logs of my website and it shows 2534 reads in 5 days, or 21 reads an hour. The top 25 articles are as follows:

1 What should the financial stability and development council (FSDC) do?, 16th March 2010 107
2 How to control inflation?, 2nd April, 2008 107
3 India in the great recession, 15th April, 2009 55
4 Finding the right IPO process, 3rd November, 1999 39
5 Innovations in financial products, 25th June, 1997 36
6 Understanding FII investment, 2nd January, 2008 29
7 Evolution of exchange traded derivatives, 1st June, 2009 27
8 Cost of capital: What can a firm do?, 1st November, 2000 27
9 Why forbid insider trading?, 25th March, 1998 25
10 ICICI Bank + Bank of Madura = ?, 13th December, 2000 24
11 Inflation control, 7th February, 2007 23
12 Credit constraints, 22nd March, 2000 22
13 What could go wrong if petroleum product prices are decontrolled?, 8th February, 2010 21
14 India's inflation problem, 2nd September 2008 21
15 Windows + Intel = Wintel?, 7th October, 1998 21
16 The case for equity investment, 17th December, 1997 18
17 A crisis? Or a mere recession?, 19th March, 2008 17
18 Globalisation and the brain drain, 2001 17
19 The price discovery mechanism, 17th June, 1998 17
20 Why index derivatives matter, 14th May, 1997 17
21 Implications of the Hang Seng ETF traded in India, 17th February, 2010 16
22 Rethink the role of OTC derivatives, 27th September, 2008 16
23 Currency futures now, 18th April, 2007 16
24 NSE vs. SGX vs. BSE, 4th October, 2000 16
25 Are Indian family businesses well run?, 20th January, 2010 15

Some of these were unsurprising. E.g. the recent column on the FSDC at #1 is to be expected, given the topicality of the subject. But some remarkably old stuff is high up - e.g. #4 (1999) and #5 (1997). So web dissemination does give shelf life to some of these.

After a sharp peak (over 100 reads in five days) it drops off rapidly to 20 reads at #15, and after that there is a long tail, giving the overall value of 2534 reads overall.

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. i would like to add one more interesting stuff that you would like to know, accidentally i have got to know some one from World Bank were browsing your Blog last night at 1 AM !!! i figured from sitemeter tab on your blog !!!

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  3. The United Nations Development Programme International Policy Center for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) will be hosting an Academic Forum on the 12th and 13th of April 2010 in correlation to the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) summit to be held in Brasilia, Brazil on the 15th of April 2010.

    The theme will be social development strategies for inclusive growth. Join IPC-IG in the debate on ID4Ds website!

    'Ideas for Development blog' http://www.ideas4development.org/

    Topics at the Academic Forum include role of cash transfers, role of employment programs/policies, health innovation, intellectual property rights and access to essential drugs. Specifically:

    How do conditional cash transfer programs improve life of millions living in extreme poverty?

    What are the most relevant experiences from other parts of the world that can be effectively applied to IBSA countries?

    How IBSA countries can cooperate and share experiences if they adopt different approaches for CCT programs?

    How can study findings on Intellectual property rights and health innovation from Brazil, India, and South Africa affect civil society in each country?

    What are the consequences of the creation of new groupings of emerging economies with a strong emphasis on South-South cooperation?

    How do we get civil society involved in high level political debates?

    We want to hear your opinion!

    Thanks,
    Adarsh.

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  4. I have been a silent observer of your posts for a year now,not regular but almost.. your post regarding anonymous comments made me realise I should put my views as well...for starters... your IPO price discovery post was very informative to say the least :)

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  5. In all the topics covered by you so far, what I have gathered is you always present a utopian world...where you say what is the ideal way of doing things in finance and economy as a whole.. I completely agree with you in almost all the aspects.. but I would be really happy to see if you could show us some direction as to how we bridge the gap between efficiency and inefficiency in markets and economy...it would be really great if you could through some light on the transition process. :)

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  6. Why did you change the look of the blog? Anyway, if you could make the font size smaller, it would be great for us readers because then we could read faster.

    I think a free-flowing and lightly moderated comment section helps increase traffic though nothing can beat thought-provoking articles.

    I tend to go off and on Indian blogs. American bloggers tend to be more responsive to comments and discussions. It could be because many have too much time on their hands and believe a little too much in "freedom of speech". Also many Indian blogs tend to ban commentators who are critical. This is not a comment on this blog because I was clearly in the wrong last time. But Americans tend to take criticism in their stride. I can't say the same about British blogs. A cultural study of blogs might turn out to be interesting.

    PS: I'm going to keep my Smart n' Witty name because I know I am neither.

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  7. Smart n' Witty,

    With a browser like Firefox or Chrome, it's one keystroke to shrink or enlarge the font. So if you want to make it smaller, it's easy.

    Many older readers of my blog (who are also often less computer literate) have requested me to use a big huge font so that they are able to read it. Hence the bias in favour of big fonts.

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