I'm a curious person. I think of that of a virtue. I need to know things. For example, I need to know how many people visit my website. Numerous times a day I check if someone has been visiting. I also want to know how many people download my software. And then I wanted to know *who* was downloading my software, so I added a little registration to the website before people can download the software. It's all optional, so not a restriction....but still my curiousity isn't satisfied.
People keep asking me how many people actually use pVoice. I keep saying "well, according to the downloadlogs, there are some 100 people a month who download pVoice". But I don't know if they are actually using it. Or I say "Well, according to the number of subscriptions on the mailinglists, there are some 120 people in total"...but I know I don't subscribe to mailinglists of every piece of software I use. So I guess that the truth is somewhere in between those 100 a month (which should now be some 1200 since the last release) and those 120 that have subscribed to the mailinglist. But this remains guess-work.
In an attempt to clarify this point, I added a small question to the download-registration page, where I ask people which of the downloadable software they are actually already using. With the release of pVoice 2.2 approaching (yes, I said that before), I hope that from the release date, I'll get a bit more insight in the actual userbase.
I even thought of adding the optional "send anonymous useage statistics" you see in lots of software these days to pVoice. But that wouldn't make much sense. If you're actually using pVoice, you're probably using it on a standalone PC, because you need to have it with you all day...
If anyone has a better idea on how to get some insight in this, let me know...
This would satisfy your curiosity, but it might be a little difficult to use as a talking point, since it's essentially voodoo statistics.
Re:Fake it
pudge on 2005-04-26T23:22:34
There are generally accepted return rates for any surveys. If you find out what the usual response rate for voluntary "I use this software" registration is, you can extrapolate a rough number of probable users.
But no one knows the usual response rate... how could they?
Re:Fake it
chaoticset on 2005-04-27T01:31:33
They take surveys to determine it.:) Re:Fake it
drhyde on 2005-04-27T09:12:06
By including both a voluntary registration and some spyware!
