It looks like Santa Claus was kind to Nick Wilson and the team behind Performancing, with news that the metrics arm of Performancing has been sold off to PayPerPost. Naturally it would be remiss of me not to offer congratulations to Nick and the team on the sale, I have little doubt that the money offered was good, and in all honesty in a similar situation (presuming that the money was good as a given) I would have also sold. However, I can’t help that think a little that this has a little touch evil about it. My first thoughts were to state that this is not dissimilar to selling a child care centre to a group of paedophiles, but that is probably too harsh, because as much as I’m not personally a fan of PayPerPost (although I note positively they’ve been forced by law to force disclosure) what they do is legal, even if many do not like it. The question I suppose is what exactly are PayPerPost’s intentions for Performaning Metrics. Numbers, and the control of them is a powerful position to be in. As we know with the toolbar download occasionally lumped into a P2P or other package company comScore, knowing numbers = money. Certainly the numbers behind visitors to blogs are a more limited market, but surely knowing who visits various types of blogs, how often, and when provides some sort of positive to the PayPerPost people. I’ve not gone through all my Bloglines feeds for the past week yet, nor my 3000 unread emails, but it will be interesting to see what the reaction is amongst the Performancing Metrics user base is. I think it’s a given to say some will stop using the service, but as we know apathy is the norm in current day society, even amongst bloggers.
Tags: Performancing, PayPerPost
