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Roll Your Own Analytics

pcmaffey.com

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71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#71

Post by exolymph »

lostapathy wrote: post #59
fbelzile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. Part of respecting user privacy is accepting the fact my tracking scripts will be blocked by most privacy extensions. I feel Matomo does privacy correctly. By default it continues to use the well known piwik.js filename that extensions block and also respects the DNT (do not tr…

> I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. What users DO want to be tracked????

It's not that they want to be tracked, it's that they don't realize or don't care, sometimes both.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#72

Post by laythea »

jimmaswell wrote: post #69
laythea wrote: post #67

I hate all these user spying tools, whether home grown or bought in. Please, if you write software, don't do it. Just let us buy the software and run it. Like in the good old days.

I don't see anything wrong with keeping track of how users interact with your site in aggregate. It helps you improve it.

Where is the distinction between spying on a user using a piece of traditional software and a web site. At the end of the day, you are spying on users to better yourself and sometimes at the cost of the user, who mostly is not aware of the manipulation that goes on. Sorry for the cynicism, but that is the reality.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#73

Post by pcmaffey »

mejakethomas wrote: post #55

(Data engineer here) Nice article! I did something very similar to this for my blog but used Snowplow's javascript tracker ( https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow-javascript-tracker ), a cloudfront distribution with s3 log forwarding, a couple lambda functions (with s3 "put" triggers), S3 as the post-processed storage layer, and AWS athena as the query layer. The system costs under $1 per month, is very scalable, and…

Thanks! Not a data engineer, but I used to work at a data engineering company, and can attest to the complexity and rawness of the industry. Your setup looks solid!

As a frontend engineer having seen under the hood of data pipelines at scale, I wanted to reverse engineer the parts of it that I care about (product analytics via event logging), and package it up for my little side projects.

It's awesome that this is inspiring to people. If people get anything from what I wrote, it'd be this: While large companies all roll their own data pipelines, it's _not that difficult_ for a startup / smaller co / individual to do product analytics on a level that makes sense for them, without just automatically reaching for GA or whatever.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#74

Post by dcbadacd »

lostapathy wrote: post #59
fbelzile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. Part of respecting user privacy is accepting the fact my tracking scripts will be blocked by most privacy extensions. I feel Matomo does privacy correctly. By default it continues to use the well known piwik.js filename that extensions block and also respects the DNT (do not tr…

> I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. What users DO want to be tracked????

Stop being so hysteric, if you want to avoid first-party analytics then don't use the service, if someone reads my blog I have the full right to find out how long my articles are read. Protesting against first-party tracking is like protesting against visitor counters in shops and security cameras, luddism.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#75

Post by dcbadacd »

laythea wrote: post #72
jimmaswell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything wrong with keeping track of how users interact with your site in aggregate. It helps you improve it.

Where is the distinction between spying on a user using a piece of traditional software and a web site. At the end of the day, you are spying on users to better yourself and sometimes at the cost of the user, who mostly is not aware of the manipulation that goes on. Sorry for the cynicism, but that is the reality.

First-party analytics is like blocking people in face masks entering a store, using security cameras or counting daily visitors. Your "cynicism" is more Luddide-ism.

As with physical venues that employ analytics, you can easily just not visit those sites that want to know a bit more about how people consume content than seeing "GET /page.html" in HTTP logs.

I'm writing this text to you as a huge free-software proponent so I'm not a "corporate shill" when I say analytics are really useful even to the most privacy-respecting pieces of software, it allows to spend resources much more effectively than making blind decisions about what users want - the vocal users opening GH issues about things are the 0.01% and those people shouldn't be the ones people building webpages, -services make decisions upon.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#77

Post by elbac »

It looks as if in the next several months Firefox will become all but invisible from most 3rd party trackers as Firefox ”will strip cookies and block storage access from third-party tracking content, based on lists of tracking domains by Disconnect.” [1]

The full list of trackers that will be blocked by default is substantial. [2]

1 https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/20/enhanced-...

2 https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti...

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#78

Post by elbac »

derekdahmer wrote: post #51
lukethomas wrote: post #34

At the past 3 places I've worked, we've setup Snowplow Analytics ( https://snowplowanalytics.com/ ) and would strongly recommend it over GA, Segment, and other third-party systems. If you're looking for a first-party system, Snowplow is an amazing setup.

I looked into Snowplow but was intimidated by their Trackers/Collectors/Enrich/Storage/Data Modeling/Analytics flow. How hard is it to setup? Does it come with a UI to easily view, sort and filter these events into graphs like Mixpanel or Amplitude?

@derekdahmer

Try Indicative https://www.indicative.com. (I’m the CEO) Our platform is a customer analytics platform, similar to the ones mentioned, but has a one-click integration for Snowplow based data warehouses. It is designed for product and marketing teams, to easily perform customer behavioral analysis without the direct need for data teams or coding skills.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#79

Post by droobles »

This is awesome! I'm still an analytics noob with a tiny bit of GA experience. I have my own site I'm launching but it's totally DIY, for the DIY punk/hardcore scene. Some of the first party suggestions in this thread have been great!

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#80

Post by mejakethomas »

pcmaffey wrote: post #73
mejakethomas wrote: post #55

(Data engineer here) Nice article! I did something very similar to this for my blog but used Snowplow's javascript tracker ( https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow-javascript-tracker ), a cloudfront distribution with s3 log forwarding, a couple lambda functions (with s3 "put" triggers), S3 as the post-processed storage layer, and AWS athena as the query layer. The system costs under $1 per month, is very scalable, and…

Thanks! Not a data engineer, but I used to work at a data engineering company, and can attest to the complexity and rawness of the industry. Your setup looks solid! As a frontend engineer having seen under the hood of data pipelines at scale, I wanted to reverse engineer the parts of it that I care about (product analytics via event logging), and package it up for my little side projects. It's awesome that this is in…

I totally agree
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