Tracking the Life of Your PDF Files
One of the great things about the Web is that Web analytics can help you see who is viewing your Web site, what they're looking at, and how much time they're spending doing it. Well now, thanks to a heads-up from my good buddy Thad McIlroy at the excellent blog The Future of Publishing, Doc is aware of a company that is pioneering the new field of docmetrics, which tracks the life cycle of a PDF document. Here's what Thad had to say, along with a link to the company Web site:
"For several years Vitrium Systems, Inc., has sold an SaaS [Software as a Service] offering called docmetrics. The docmetrics site contains video and online documentation about the product, including a comprehensive white paper explaining the features of the technology.
"Docmetrics changes the value proposition for the dissemination of PDF documents.
"Publishers can uncover a plethora of data about the PDF documents they make so freely available on their web sites, including answers to the questions: Does the downloader actually open the document? How many people read each PDF, how many print the document, and how many view the content more than once? Which pages do readers view and which parts of the content do they spend most time on? Do they pass any documents along to colleagues? What are the email addresses of those who receive the documents?"
Doc says to stay tuned, because the recent acquisition by Adobe of the Web-analytics firm Omniture certainly points to an interesting future for the idea of docmetrics and what it will mean to be able to track PDFs and other documents in ways similar on the Web.
