In the early days of blogs, companies and also some people who didn't know any better would

refer to hits like website hits.

How many hits does your website get?

This goes back quite a while, but you would hear that all the time.

Or if a website was promoting itself or they were talking about some website, it would be

like this website has so many hits, whatever the number is.

And eventually people figured out that this was a meaningless metric because it's very

imprecise, just saying a hit.

If one visitor goes to 10 different pages on your website, is that 10 hits.

Sometimes if you have images or other media or other content on your website, one visitor

to that page can register as a dozen hits or more, perhaps.

So in other words, very imprecise metric.

People eventually stop using it.

Well, I'm starting to think that engagement is the new hit, the new website hit because

everybody wants visitors and listeners, readers, etc.

Who will not only consume content, but also participate.

And all of the social media algorithms reward posts that get more comments, which is probably

like a well-meaning idea.

But it's also why now you can see all kinds of people trying to gain the system posting

on Instagram and saying, oh, tag a friend.

Tag a friend if you, whatever, kind of answering a question.

Tag a friend if you believe in puppies or whatever.

...