What is the reason for some stories being read in the millions when many HOF stories are only ~500K reads.

[gunhilltrain]

I've heard it for years to describe Cooperstown or Canton. Or the Rock'n'Roll one.

I think I first saw it in print in the '90s sometime.

The one I depicted was the first one ever, in 1901. It is called the Hall of Fame for "Great Americans," and I knew it because I grew up about six blocks away. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson made it all the way to 2017 before they were evicted.

Then the "Hall of Fame" concept spread to other endeavors. I saw the one in Cooperstown once, but that was fifty years ago and I mostly forgot what it looked like.

 

[SimonDoom]

Hey, you are doing good. Most of my stories have a couple of hundred views even the hot ones! Personally I think the 10 million is bogus.

I don't think it's bogus. Take the number one story, for example, Sitting on My Mom's Lap. Publish in 2009, 14 years ago, and it has over 14 million views. I checked, and it's getting over 5500 views every single day, which is well over a million and a half per year. It gets that because a) its subject matter is popular, and b) it shows up at the top of the toplists, so it gets attention.

It's worth noting that the "most-viewed" and "top-rated" toplists are completely different. Many of the stories with the most views don't have especially high scores, and when you read them it's clear why.

 

[NotWise]

Stories that "go viral" and pull in really high viewing numbers also pull in a wide variety of readers. The rating that results generally won't be very high because the readers are such a diverse group.

 

[NoTalentHack]

It seems to me some stories are simple outliers in readership.

Even the extremely well known February Sucks is only like 170K after 3 years yet I saw one story yesterday at 10+ million.

February Sucks having a lower view count is easily understandable. Yes, it's incredibly influential within LW. However, it's also:

• 28K words long (8 Literotica pages)
• Has a sub-4 rating
• Is incredibly divisive (drives initial views, but fewer second readings), with a reconciliation many/most readers feel is unearned/demeaning to the MMC
• Has over 100 sequels/alternates (drawing off some people that might re-read) by various authors, including me

FS, as well as a lot of the stuff by great LW writers like GeorgeAnderson and RichardGerald (Another Love, another influential-but-divisive story, this one with 218K views and posted 7 years ago), is like Leonard Cohen's stuff: really well known by musicians, endlessly referenced by admirers, and rarely ever charted.

I'll offer one of my stories as a comparison, my most viewed story and one of my oldest: At the End of the Tour, 10 months old with ~175K views.

• 11K words (3 LitE pages)
• 4.5+ rating
• "Walk away" ending with retribution for the affair partner
• Has a single sequel, Funeral Dirge for a Fairytale, written by me

Worth noting is that Funeral Dirge is a long (9 pages) reconciliation story currently sitting at 82K views, even though it's only a month older than At the End of the Tour.

Other things to consider: the top two stories are short, only a single page. I don't know exactly how the view algorithm works, but "time in story" seems to be one of the metrics. My guess is that they have an estimate of how long it takes to read X words, and if a reader is on each page for significantly less time than that, it doesn't count. All the stories in the top 10 are old, too, at least 13 years old. And almost all the top 10 are in Incest, the most popular category in terms of views-per-story. The first time a LW story shows up is at spot 15, and it's a 14 year old story in the "classic" LW mold before that category's top performers moved away from the sharing/swapping stuff towards relationship/divorce drama.

 

[Tomh1966]

No talent hack... was going to argue but then went to your stats. Nevermind. Even you have a few with low reads.

BTW love most of your LW stuff. ( Other categories: I don't read BDSM and I just can't read a rape story etc.)

 

[MillieDynamite]

I'll tell you this: you fellers spend way too much time with your calculators.

 

[Voboy]

I'll tell you this: you fellers spend way too much time with your calculators.

Well... I mean, not really. The view count is right there on your homepage. Right at this moment, you're about two clicks away from finding your most-viewed story.

 

[MillieDynamite]

A list where I shall never be!

Well... I mean, not really. The view count is right there on your homepage. Right at this moment, you're about two clicks away from finding your most-viewed story.

 

[lovecraft68]

February Sucks having a lower view count is easily understandable. Yes, it's incredibly influential within LW. However, it's also:

• 
  
• Is incredibly divisive (drives initial views, but fewer second readings), with a reconciliation many/most readers feel is unearned/demeaning to the MMC

Which is why so many have rewritten it, it drives the male slugs crazy that a fictional man forgave his fictional wife for fictional cheating, like its real life.

The ultimate example of what a lot of whiny pissants exist over there

 

[8letters]

:
Nobody has ever done an analysis of how rapidly or slowly views go up over time, but it doesn't seem that fast.
:

Analysis? Did someone say "Analysis"?

In 2021, I pulled the stats for all of the Lesbian Sex stories. I posted my results here, but a forum upgrade killed tables and it's unreadable now. Here are the details on views by year:


Some more thoughts:
* Stand-alone I/T stories are the most read stories on Literotica, so it's no surprise that they dominate the Most Read list
* silkstockingslover is the most favorited author on Literotica by a wide-margin. Any story she submits gets lots and lots of views, even if the rating is nothing stellar. She's got the top story on the 30 Day Most Read list by a wide margin with a story that has a 4.5 rating. And she has the #4 story too. Her "Backseat Mommy: A Long Hard Ride" is #12 All-Time and is the most recently published of any story in the Top 25 of the All-Time Most Read

 

[lovecraft68]

I have a story with 3.35+ million views.

Its nine years old and has hung around the First time top list much of that time and is currently the #8 all time most favorited story(and top faved non incest story on the site). I imagine being constantly visible over the years has gotten it to that point. The story constantly surprises me because FT is not exactly IT when it comes to views and readership.

Also, in reference to a story that shut off voting being #1 on a top list, that needs to be reported because that's ridiculous.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Which is why so many have rewritten it, it drives the male slugs crazy that a fictional man forgave his fictional wife for fictional cheating, like its real life.

The ultimate example of what a lot of whiny pissants exist over there

https://media1.giphy.com/media/qmfpjpAT2fJRK/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e474z44t2edusfurct11ypmb6vqje0bihtlnoh0m0ey&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g

 

[mirafrida]

Things like score and category definitely matter. But i think another big part is signalling that you adhere to some common trope or kink that is popular.

If you convey that the story is squarely situated in that kink/trope, while also having acceptable quality and maybe just a bit of freshness, that gets people clicking.

(sadly I'm usually not too interested well-trodden in tropes, but oh well...)

 

[ElectricBlue]

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Mind you, the #2 story, same list, is a Literotica anniversary promo from 2018, but I guess that's not quite so bad, being the site. Same thing though, x.xx

Received a reply from Laurel overnight. It appears the Beta Most Popular lists (which are score based) have a glitch that allows x.xx (locked scores) to sit in a list. She's asked Manu to take a look.

The Beta Most Popular lists run differently to the Hall of Fame (Classic) criteria - which are biased towards older stories hauling in millions of Views. The Beta lists appear to run off a minimum 100 Votes, highest score. My latest story, with only 12k Views, made it to #4 Mature All Time list, with 4.91. It's two points lower today, so a bit further down.

I didn't know the Beta site runs different data algorithms. No wonder it's a nightmare to keep stable.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I didn't know the Beta site runs different data algorithms. No wonder it's a nightmare to keep stable.

Yeah, a lot of this site is kind of unusual. The hour(?)-long downtime around 7 a.m. EST, for example. I've never heard of a website with 96% downtime before. Usually, tech people seem to quote uptime in nines like you're discussing purity of a sample or something.

 

[NotWise]

Analysis? Did someone say "Analysis"?

In 2021, I pulled the stats for all of the Lesbian Sex stories. I posted my results here, but a forum upgrade killed tables and it's unreadable now. Here are the details on views by year:
View attachment 2271498

Some more thoughts:
* Stand-alone I/T stories are the most read stories on Literotica, so it's no surprise that they dominate the Most Read list
* silkstockingslover is the most favorited author on Literotica by a wide-margin. Any story she submits gets lots and lots of views, even if the rating is nothing stellar. She's got the top story on the 30 Day Most Read list by a wide margin with a story that has a 4.5 rating. And she has the #4 story too. Her "Backseat Mommy: A Long Hard Ride" is #12 All-Time and is the most recently published of any story in the Top 25 of the All-Time Most Read

My older stories pull in new views at rates ranging from 34 views/day down to 1.2 views/day. They average about 7 views/day. The viewing rates vary pretty systematically, with stories in I/T and Romance getting the most views. My least-viewed stories are in SF&F and NC/R.

 

[SimonDoom]

Received a reply from Laurel overnight. It appears the Beta Most Popular lists (which are score based) have a glitch that allows x.xx (locked scores) to sit in a list. She's asked Manu to take a look.

The Beta Most Popular lists run differently to the Hall of Fame (Classic) criteria - which are biased towards older stories hauling in millions of Views. The Beta lists appear to run off a minimum 100 Votes, highest score. My latest story, with only 12k Views, made it to #4 Mature All Time list, with 4.91. It's two points lower today, so a bit further down.

I didn't know the Beta site runs different data algorithms. No wonder it's a nightmare to keep stable.

What IS the "Beta Most Popular list"? I don't even know what that is or where I navigate to find it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well, I assume there is no point in Lit making up the entries in their Most Read list. Number four, "Accidents Happen!," with just over ten million views, has this prose:

"I can understand why my sister had so many boyfriends - she had the body of a Playboy bunny. At the age of 16, she was already a 36D with a small waist. Her waist only made her breasts look bigger than they were and her long blonde hair did not help . . . I am only human and have to admit that looking at my sister's hot body turned me on like any red blooded American boy, but I never forgot that she was my sister."

That's about as far as I could get with it. Also, he went around the Lit age limit rule, just barely.

Huh. Even if she doesn't have sex until 18, I've seen people grumbling here about stories getting rejected for content at the level of that quote.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What IS the "Beta Most Popular list"? I don't even know what that is or where I navigate to find it.

I get to it from here: Main Menu - Beta Format - the fourth grouping of topics.

It then clicks to the Old Style Lists. My story is currently #2 in the All Time Mature list - on the Old Style view.

But if you go down to Mature, and click on its All Time list, there's a different (Beta) format, and glitchy entries for #1 and #2. My story is lower down. So different data algorithms are being used, Classic vs Beta.

It's score based, not Views based, coz the story only has 12k Views, with around 160 something votes. A complete surprise, but shows New stories can compete against old.

 

[Trionyx]

If I spent half as much time writing as some do thinking about beta lists, all time favorites, popular categories, statistics, etc., I’d have written a masterpiece by now.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Huh. Even if she doesn't have sex until 18, I've seen people grumbling here about stories getting rejected for content at the level of that quote.

Actually, I think Lit's age restrictions are too strict, but we all know that there is nothing to be done about it and we have to accept it. I merely picked on that story - and I know this sounds like sour grapes - because it demonstrates that a story can be extremely popular even with, call it trite, writing. That's another thing that nothing can be done about. I'm sure there are many female characters here that look like Playboy bunnies (you'd think he'd at least update to Penthouse) with 36D breasts. Add some incest, and "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansas."

 

[SimonDoom]

Actually, I think Lit's age restrictions are too strict, but we all know that there is nothing to be done about it and we have to accept it. I merely picked on that story - and I know this sounds like sour grapes - because it demonstrates that a story can be extremely popular even with, call it trite, writing. That's another thing that nothing can be done about. I'm sure there are many female characters here that look like Playboy bunnies (you'd think he'd at least update to Penthouse) with 36D breasts. Add some incest, and "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansas."

I agree with you that they're too strict, but I also fully support Laurel and Manu's right to set whatever content rules they want. I also think there's no such thing as an ideal line; wherever the line is set, some people will try to cross it, and others will fret about exactly where the line is and complain about the caprice of its enforcement. They're not necessarily wrong, but it's not clear that there's a solution short of hiring a bigger staff to vet stories and ensure their compliance with the guidelines.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Lit’s algorithms for choosing stories to suggest to readers don’t seem to be very sophisticated. If it suggests a story to one person, it probably is suggesting the same story to thousands of other people every day. It’s not really a problem. Just consider it as Lit’s way of giving us all some shared experiences.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I agree with you that they're too strict, but I also fully support Laurel and Manu's right to set whatever content rules they want. I also think there's no such thing as an ideal line; wherever the line is set, some people will try to cross it, and others will fret about exactly where the line is and complain about the caprice of its enforcement. They're not necessarily wrong, but it's not clear that there's a solution short of hiring a bigger staff to vet stories and ensure their compliance with the guidelines.

My comment about the age limit was secondary. The point of the thread was to figure out why some stories are extremely popular (in the millions of views) while others are not. There is no one answer for that, but apparently picking certain categories and using the right tropes for it sometimes works. And having lots of big breasts bouncing around can help too!

I guess there is a tendency to have good-looking people in erotic stories. In story Number 7, "Mom Takes A Ride," it can't just be any frumpy, or even average looking mom. "At thirty-six, his mother had the body and looks of a high school senior. Although few high school girls had 36C boobs that were full, firm and had such prominent nipples, plus a number ten ass. Calling his attention to her body was not the best thing she could have done." Actually, to make the story work, it's the best thing she could have done. And only a 36C bosom for her!

 

[lovecraft68]

Huh. Even if she doesn't have sex until 18, I've seen people grumbling here about stories getting rejected for content at the level of that quote.

The story he's referencing is from 2009. Lit has become more and more ridiculous in regards to its underage references it will allow. Same story today its 50/50 it gets through.