#behavior tracking

User behavior analysis helps you understand what visitors do on your website, why they stay or leave, and how you can optimize their experience to increase conversions. Understanding User Behavior Analysis User behavior analysis is the process of tracking, measuring, and interpreting how visitors interact with your website or app. It goes beyond surface metrics like page views to uncover deeper…

Tealium raises $96 million to automate customer tracking on the web

Tealium, a startup developing technology to track customer behavior on the web, has raised $96 million in a venture round.Read More

"Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’" - David White

Central issue: "We found that our students could not be usefully categorised as Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants. (...) students appropriation of online services (...) seemed to depend on if they saw the web as a ‘place to live’ or as a collection of useful tools."

Conceptualisation of:

Digital Residents "They often use the web in all aspects of the of their lives; professionally, for study and for recreation. In fact the resident considers that a certain portion of their social life is lived out online. The web has become a crucial aspect of how they present themselves and how they remain part of networks of friends or colleagues." "The web supports the projection of their identity and facilitates relationships. These are people who have an persona online which they regularly maintain. This persona is normally primarily in a social networking sites but it is also likely to be in evidence in blogs or comments, via image sharing services etc  (...) They are likely to see the web as a worthwhile place to put forward an opinion."  

Digital Visitors "(...) an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need arises." "(...) They always have an appropriate and focused need to use the web but don’t ‘reside’ there. They are sceptical of services that offer them the ability to put their identity online as don’t feel the need to express themselves by participating in online culture in the same manner as a Resident."

>> Fundamental difference: "In effect the Resident has a presence online which they are constantly developing; while the Visitor logs on, performs a specific task and then logs off."

>> Nuance: "This is of course not a polar distinction. There is a spectrum of which the Resident and the Visitor represent two extremes."

Remarks to this text:

Even though these concepts consider adoption of digital technologies less from generational perspective, it is doubtfull whether they are more useful than the terms 'Digital Natives' and 'Digital Immigrants'. All of them are based on dichotomous thinking (regardless of the mentioning of a 'continuum' between the extremes). This still makes it an either/or case when it comes to thinking and talking about peoples use of digital media. The highly questionable generational perspective just gets replaced by a participation perspective: users are either active participators (contributing to the action online by producing content) or passive participators (lurking at the activity of others and merely consuming content). Adopting this perspective is of little help when one wants to learn more about actual online activity and the occurrence of varying activity levels. It is of even less help when considering individuals chosen engagement and the meaning of this activity level for the individual and their surrounding. In effect, the distinction does nothing more than stating that the level of online activity varies. The distinction between the concepts is so superficial and vague that it does not even allow practical use for categorization, as White admits:

"It is not always easy to spot who is in each category as the level of sophistication with which a Visitor might use any single service might well be greater than that of a Resident."

Chances are, that - based on the conceptualisation above - very few or even no case studies could be presented to support the claim that their are persons to be categorized as 'Digital Visitors'. This, on the one hand, due to the fact that merely visiting/watching certain webpages/content leaves a trail of information which is used to construct profiles (going from general statics concerning certain products or services to profiles for advertisement based on behavior-tracking[1]). On the other hand, plenty of online services require a person to create an account in order to access the information/services offered. People might consider themselves to be Visitors, while actually owning accounts to several online services (such as online newspapers, newsgroups, e-banking, online shops, etc.) and consiously or unconsiously making use of their behavior-profile to shop on Amazon.com or search for books on GoogleBooks etc.

In short: The idea of talking about 'Digital Residents' has a few benefits which are not so very different from those held by the concept 'Digital Natives'[2]. Nonetheless, just like 'Digital Natives', the term 'Digital Residents' suffers form serious pragmatic flaws due to its oversimplified and narrow conceptualisation.

[1] User profiling based on behavior-tracking is a form of data mining.