Views

[LargoKitt]

Something hard to gauge: It seems that my stories are getting substantially fewer views than they have in the past. I have stories going back about 20 years and of course the oldest tend to have the most views. I don't think its the categories I post in now. Anybody else get this feeling?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I noticed with my Song Challenge entry last month that the views seemed far less than I expected, then I recognized that this was a challenge and not a contest, so I adjusted my expectations.

Category still seems to be the largest driver of views in my opinion, at least in the short-term. Time on the new stories list is also a short-term contributor to views.

 

[SmilingLez]

IMO, the curious thing about view counts is how readily a trivial piece of telemetry gets promoted into evidence of human engagement. A counter records activity; our brains supply the audience. The former is data. The latter is often fiction. YMMV

 

[NotWise]

A lot of factors would go into showing that there were a decline in views. If you feel that way, then maybe you should just leave it at that.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes. View counts are down from 5 years ago. I believe the site is doing something to weed out "fake" views.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'm approaching 2 million views in less than four years. To me that's an astounding number and if even 25% actually finished my stories, it's more exposure than I every imagined. No complaints.

 

[StillStunned]

IMO, the curious thing about view counts is how readily a trivial piece of telemetry gets promoted into evidence of human engagement. A counter records activity; our brains supply the audience. The former is data. The latter is often fiction. YMMV

Mind if I ask why you stick around here? You started out just hating Lit and its management. Now you've moved on to mocking the forum posters - here and in other threads. You try to disguise it with fancy language, but it's clear what you're implying.

So, why? Why stick around if you can't stand the site and you can't stand the people? Do you derive some kind of satisfaction from being angry? Or are you just unable to walk away from something you've engaged with in the past?

 

[Bazzle]

Yes. View counts are down from 5 years ago. I believe the site is doing something to weed out "fake" views.

My assumption was that the data harvesting/bots are not hitting the site?

 

[BeechLeaf]

Or still hitting, but the script that counts views now knows to discount them.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I'm approaching 2 million views in less than four years.

I have barely over a million views for 35 stories over twelve years, so congratulations.

On a more positive note, the lower number of views brings a vote:view ratio of 1:47.

 

[Actingup]

IMO, the curious thing about view counts is how readily a trivial piece of telemetry gets promoted into evidence of human engagement. A counter records activity; our brains supply the audience. The former is data. The latter is often fiction. YMMV

 

[EmilyMiller]

To me, views are down. Maybe it’s the time of year. Maybe it’s too many stories being published. Maybe the site is now using the square root of views. Maybe it’s the alignment of Venus and Neptune. But - without having done the math - views seem to be not just down but significantly down.

And I think some people get confused between metrics that are a direct measure of engagement and metrics which are an indirect - though still somewhat interesting / useful - measure of engagement.

 

[TheLobster]

View attachment 2677091

2) Those who can interpolate within complete data…?

 

[anthrodisiac]

I was just wondering about this. It seems overall engagement (at least for me) has been lower over the last few months (fewer ratings, not just views). There are too many complicating factors (I think that non-human FPOV isn't as popular as MPOV or human FPOV monsterfucking), but I was wondering if maybe there was a lull in the summer months compared to the rest of the year because people are on vacation. At least now I know that other people are experiencing something like it too, so it's not totally all in my head/my own damn fault *

*Although probably a not-insignificant amount is my own damn fault.

 

[EmilyMiller]

if maybe there was a lull in the summer months

For sure. But it seems more than that to me. I suspect if you count how many Summer Lovin’ stories there are, part of the answer comes into focus.

Votes and comments also seem down. Comp stories now get the level of attention that non-comp ones used to. The non-comp stories have had their views and other stats decline as well (at least it seems that way without having done the analysis thoroughly).

Whether that’s to do with more people getting into writing or the illicit use of the technology that shall not be named…

 

[qidniz]

the lower number of views brings a vote:view ratio of 1:47

@ElectricBlue reported that this ratio for him was around 1:100. I'm led to wonder if 1:47 is exceptionally good for an average, aggregating across a number of categories. (My own work is too limited - not enough time has elapsed, and they're all part of a series in a single relatively high traffic category - to offer comparison, but it has been quite better than 1:100, and stable, for several months now.)

 

[PapaRomantic]

If Literotica publishes 40,000 new stories every year (which is 110 a day, a number I think is probably less than actual), the library is flooded with new stories which I believe is a big factor on our stories getting less views than in the past. I'm coming up on my 10th anniversary of my first published story and without any data to back me up, I believe I can tell a significant difference in views in those 10 years.

 

[ElectricBlue]

To me, views are down. Maybe it’s the time of year. Maybe it’s too many stories being published. Maybe the site is now using the square root of views. Maybe it’s the alignment of Venus and Neptune. But - without having done the math - views seem to be not just down but significantly down.

I was just wondering about this. It seems overall engagement (at least for me) has been lower over the last few months (fewer ratings, not just views).

Having been here for twelve years, my feeling is the US summer going into Halloween is always slower than the rest of the year for story activity - but traffic always depends on your own output rate, so there's that local distortion. If you're not releasing content regularly, you're getting lost in the mix.

I don't look at story release stats unless I've got something new myself, to see how it's going by comparison, so can't comment whether or not they're significantly down. They might be, i don't know and don't care, because my latest did okay. But I do need to get on and write something new.

I also suspect the current fuck ups around the world might have something to do with it this year, possibly more than previously years. There really are first world problems going on, and (without getting political except for a simple statement), more people might be directly affected than in previous years.

Although that being the case, you'd think more people would want to wank, to forget the bullshit outside. We writers have got a job to do, we need to get on and do our civic duty!

 

[SimonDoom]

One way you can tell is to look at the stories on the 12 month toplist. The top stories have less than one half the views that tge top stories had one year ago.

 

[PennyThompson]

I'm sure cyclical and seasonal effects are huge variables for audience engagement here, but...

I do have to wonder if AI chatbots aren't pulling the attention of some people that used to be more active consumers of erotica.

We fancy ourselves as writers of interesting stories and use of language, and plenty of people appreciate that as a form of art!

But some people come to Lit because they want to get off on very specific scenarios and acts and descriptions. They're happy when they find a story that hits their sweet spot, and unhappy when we don't precisely meet their desires.

LLMs, for all that they lack in surprise or inventiveness or creative spark, will do a good job of actualizing on a prompt. You can ask it to write an explicit interaction and describe the characters and the acts exactly they way you want them to be described, and it will do it.

I think that may (at least temporarily, in the moment of horny) be more gratifying for some users. They don't want to be surprised or challenged, they just want to be serviced, and those are the ones that aren't reading on Lit like they used to

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I don't know what the data is, but I would expect a drop in individual views because, for one, there are way more stories being published, and there's no reason to expect that readers would invest that much more time into reading on Lit. So even if the number of reader visits stayed the same, the clicks would be more spread out.
And for two, every other platform is being spammed by AI content, and a part of the readership is likely gorging themselves on that crap instead.

There was likely a golden age of Lit's popularity like ten years ago or so, but it's long past now. It's truly commendable that Lit is trying to stay AI-free, but I think they need to make further changes to their approach and try to use their image to become more exclusive, so to speak. And that means putting a stop to human-made slop. Just my thoughts.

 

[TheLobster]

Other than large volume of stories being submitted in the moment, it is also worth noting the cumulative effect of a quarter of century of preexisting works.

Those works are still out there. They are mostly still just as good (or bad) as they were when they were published. The kind of erotica that Lit full of doesn't age particularly fast; and despite the fact there have been a few technological changes in the meantime, as long as a plot (such as it is) isn't conspicuously missing mobile phones or text messages, it will work in 2026 just as well as it did in 2006.

So unless readers are looking for intentionally contemporary pieces, they are quite likely to be satisfied by something that had graced (or sullied) the New page more than a decade ago, and don't necessarily need to check what pops on it now.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There was likely a golden age of Lit's popularity like ten years ago or so, but it's long past now. It's truly commendable that Lit is trying to stay AI-free, but I think they need to make further changes to their approach and try to use their image to become more exclusive, so to speak. And that means putting a stop to human-made slop. Just my thoughts.

How do you define Golden Age though? Some ideal ratio between the number of authors, the number of stories they released, and the reader volumes?

The only metrics we seem to have are anecdotal memories of "what it was like when we joined"; what we're like now as a writer, having gathered a following; and for those who are obsessive, a detailed annual analysis of story stats. But so far as I know, only the site has the data to really carry out the latter, and does anyone keep a tally of the total traffic volumes, year by year? I doubt it.

Folk seem to have a lot of angst over "when it was better" gone missing, rather than thinking, "well, it could be a damn sight worse," and making the best of what we've got. I dunno, glass half full, glass half empty.

It's all excuses not to write, I reckon. I know I waste too much time here every morning, which is starting to bug me. I'm between stories, is my excuse, but I'm not always convincing myself.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I'm sure cyclical and seasonal effects are huge variables for audience engagement here, but...

I do have to wonder if AI chatbots aren't pulling the attention of some people that used to be more active consumers of erotica.

We fancy ourselves as writers of interesting stories and use of language, and plenty of people appreciate that as a form of art!

But some people come to Lit because they want to get off on very specific scenarios and acts and descriptions. They're happy when they find a story that hits their sweet spot, and unhappy when we don't precisely meet their desires.

LLMs, for all that they lack in surprise or inventiveness or creative spark, will do a good job of actualizing on a prompt. You can ask it to write an explicit interaction and describe the characters and the acts exactly they way you want them to be described, and it will do it.

I think that may (at least temporarily, in the moment of horny) be more gratifying for some users. They don't want to be surprised or challenged, they just want to be serviced, and those are the ones that aren't reading on Lit like they used to

I think you are right that in our AH bubble we often ascribe to readers attitudes and motivations different to what many (perhaps the majority) possess.

It’s like saying the acting in a porn vid is awful and the plot non-existent. But they are fucking!!!!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

How do you define Golden Age though? Some ideal ratio between the number of authors, the number of stories they released, and the reader volumes?

That's a part of it. But I'd also say that it was the time when Lit was THE place for erotic stories, for readers and writers both. A time when no decent smut writer could envision not writing on Lit, along with whatever commercial setup they had. Lit is definitely not that place anymore, and I think one of the reasons for that is Lit's refusal to change, to evolve in any meaningful way.

For some, the fact that Lit is exactly the same as it was twenty years ago is likely a sign of consistency. It might feel reassuring to some, but I don't see it as a good thing.