why are pageviews more important than visits, unique visitors or revenue?
As for revenue, I said that more pageviews and much faster growth from a much leaner organization was better. There were several variables in my statements.
Besides, it is not a small difference in pageviews. It's ~40%! Which pretty much certainly equates to more visits and more unique visitors than digg.
No matter how you slice it, though, digg is a 100+ person operation that is generating less value to consumers than a 6 person operation. Value to consumers is a reasonable proxy for the kind of revenue you can generate from a site. They just haven't found the formula for monetizing it yet. It doesn't mean the value isn't there.
So I'd say Revenue is the best metric to compare, but I'm skeptical Reddit will ever make much money - their users are spending all their cash on weed.
Just a friendly reminder, you referred to pageviews as "the most important metric", thus my question.
User engagement...
While pageviews can be used as a mediocre proxy for user engagement, I don't think it proves your thesis at all. Which is more valuable, 5x the uniques, or a smaller group who loads more pages? Depend on additional variables, no?
Which pretty much certainly equates to more visits and more unique visitors than digg.
As far as I can tell (using compete pro), pageviews is the only metric where reddit wins, with digg winning handily in the others. Digg seems to have 5x the uniques, and 50% more visits. This strikes me as accurate, since reddit is focused on comments, and digg seems to focus more on links.
that is generating less value to consumers
How are you measuring that?
Are you asserting that reddit creates more value than digg, but they fail to effectively monetize and capture it? Or are you asserting that reddit's value is non-monetary, but still worth paying for?