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Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

usefathom.com

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Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#61

Post by plttn »

jessaustin wrote: post #46
Karunamon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product. The reason this is naive and oversimplified is that, say, Google, does not sell your data . Your data is their competitive advantage and they have every reason to not sell it. There is no service Google provides where someone can go in and request your data or access it. Advertisers are g…

If my attention is the product, let's just simplify that to "I am the product".

If I use an adblock on desktop platforms, have YouTube premium to block ads, do I really have attention being focused on ads more than a passing glance as I scroll through the internet on my phone?

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#62

Post by dvko »

Uw7yTcf36gTc wrote: post #22

This doesn't come even close to the type of data you can get from Google Analytics. It's nice as a free/open source service, but the power just isn't there. Even piwik/matomo is vastly inferior to what kind of data you can track and visualize in Google Analytics.

You're right - but that is also kind of the point. Personally I run an online business and I don't even come close to needing (or using) all the data that Google Analytics provides.

I think that for your average "offline" business, just throwing Google Analytics at it is major overkill. It may even cause the website owner to simply not look at their stats just because they don't know what to look for exactly.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#64

Post by dvko »

fmajid wrote: post #49
vanderZwan wrote: post #26

Out of curiosity, and as someone who has never used website analytics: why do we need a third party for this? Couldn't a bit of client side code + server side code do all the work these days?

You can self-host Fathom, I do. It's very basic compared to Piwik, but it runs on PostgreSQL, my DB of choice, and it's written in Go, not PHP, which means it has higher performance and is more secure.

Hey, good to see you already running Fathom!

Just wanted to add that you can also use Fathom with MySQL or SQLite if that's more your cup of tea. It supports those 3 database engines right now.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#65

Post by onion2k »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #58
fmajid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can self-host Fathom, I do. It's very basic compared to Piwik, but it runs on PostgreSQL, my DB of choice, and it's written in Go, not PHP, which means it has higher performance and is more secure.

Go is not inherently more secure than PHP.

There's nothing stopping you deliberately writing unsecure Go code but it's harder to make errors that open up security holes in Go. For example, Go's shell exec is better than PHPs equivalent by default. https://golang.org/pkg/os/exec/

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#67

Post by jessaustin »

plttn wrote: post #61
jessaustin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my attention is the product, let's just simplify that to "I am the product".

If I use an adblock on desktop platforms, have YouTube premium to block ads, do I really have attention being focused on ads more than a passing glance as I scroll through the internet on my phone?

I just repeated the parent comment's premise. If that premise doesn't hold, congratulations. You are paying for YT premium: that makes you the customer.

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#68

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

dvko wrote: post #59

Hey, author here (one of 2). Whoa, I did not expect to see Fathom show up on Hacker News. It's very early but our plan is indeed to go down a similar road as Matomo, albeit more opinionated. Hopefully resulting in a simpler product in the long run. I feel it's important to point out out that with Fathom, no personal information is tracked (or stored), at all. Only daily and hourly aggregates are stored on the server.…

I love where you are going with this, I think this would be useful for a lot of people in marketing where Google Analytics is too much.

But are you concerned that GA will come out with an "overview panel" for dummies, that cuts into your appeal? Or do you have a plan to stay ahead if GA comes out with a view like this?

Re: Fathom – Simple, trustworthy website analytics

#70

Post by miles »

dvko wrote: post #59

Hey, author here (one of 2). Whoa, I did not expect to see Fathom show up on Hacker News. It's very early but our plan is indeed to go down a similar road as Matomo, albeit more opinionated. Hopefully resulting in a simpler product in the long run. I feel it's important to point out out that with Fathom, no personal information is tracked (or stored), at all. Only daily and hourly aggregates are stored on the server.…

> And yes, the demo should not require you to enter credentials. The simple reason is that I haven't gotten to polishing that experience just yet.

So long as credentials are required, it may be wise to change demo@demo.com to demo@example.com:

https://developers.google.com/style/examples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com

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