LJToys is gone, snif!

[chanaleh]

For several years there has been a little-known private utility known as LJToys (see also ljtoys), which I think I learned about from chaiya initially? Like any site counter, it plants a little bug in the mood icons of your posts and then reports the hits to you -- but specially calibrating the results in LJ-specific ways, to produce a ballpark estimate of which LJ user was reading that post, display the hit record from a given IP address so you could make educated guesses from patterns (regardless of whether it appeared to be an actual LJ user), and let you apply labels that were public within the system so that all LJToys users could see who you thought mapped to a particular IP address.

It's quite a slick little toy in its way. And I have been totally addicted to it -- I don't think a day's gone by in years that I haven't checked my reader stats page.

Unfortunately, about a year ago, the guy who wrote and hosted it, Alex (mock2), decided he'd had enough and would be phasing out the service over 2011.

This past Monday, I tried logging in from work, and it told me "free accounts no longer exist" (I'd had a paid account, of course, but apparently it ran out this week, and there is no more option to renew). Amazingly, though, since my home browser still had an authenticated login session open, it was still letting me view there when I got home. Oh please oh please stay open. But no, of course, last night my computer rebooted itself, and my last session is dead. Dead. Forever. SIGH.

Yes, I know LJ now lets you participate in tracking your readership with its My Guests feature, but it's really just not the same. Not least because it's opt-in -- which not only means you have to consent to being trackable yourself in order to track, but that the majority of users (at least among my crowd!) are nohow going to do it. And LJToys let you view and analyze hits from any IP address, not just logged-in LJ users. And, and... I know it was indulging my own stalkerish tendencies in the first place, you guys, but I just really will miss it arrrrgh. It's made me happy much more often than it's made me sad. Because it's nice to know that people are reading, even when they're not commenting.

Someone here recommends StatCounter as an alternative (citing its improvements over Google Analytics):
http://ljtoys.livejournal.com/68047.html?thread=376015#t376015

But I think someone should buy off the code from mock2 and start hosting their own subscription service. cos, I nominate you. :-D There's a small but determined audience who would definitely continue to pay for it. (And it can't be that small, because part of the unsustainability he complains about is the sheer bandwidth required.)

In the meantime... waaaaah!

Comments

[cycon.livejournal.com]

LiveJounal just ain't what it used to be. *dons Nostalgia Goggles*

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

When Mock first announced I couldn't figure out how to reach him to say that I absototally would be willing to pay a higher premium than I do to keep it going. And the lj community wasn't any help either.

I logged in last night and could still look. The biggest thing for me right now is that there are SO many people who read but neither post nor comment, and it's nice to realize they're still out there. A false sense of community perhaps, and I suppose I need to just look for them on G+ or something, but still.

And the LJ Guests feature is in no way a substitute.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

You can add Google Analytics to your LJ account to track visitors.

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=307

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

BTW, you must be a Permanent or Paid user to use Google Analytics.