Reading through what SpotPlex, a “better Digg”, is I was once again reminded that we need shared website statistics.
Putting yet another bit of JavaScript into your site is not the answer. I already have Google Analytics plus a few widgets and it slows my pages down. If Spotplex were to have a bad day and I had their JavaScript I may get errors and long waits as URI requests timeout. Plus it is one more vector of attack into my website.
We can go two ways on this sharing idea. Each website can expose a statistics API that allows callers to request certain statistical data or we can setup a central hub that receives stats and shares them out to parties you allow. The central hub can use a stats standard and be open for anyone to run and federate.
