FirefoxSummit/2006/ProposedSessions/StalkingElusiveFirefoxUsers

Session Title

Stalking Elusive Firefox Users: How big is our herd?

Session Leader

K Lars Lohn

Summary

Figuring out how many active Firefox users there are is not as simple as just summing the numbers of unique ids we see in the server logs. Have our estimates been over inflated by naive counting? How can we get an accurate count when our users, in protecting their own privacy, are armed to deceive us?

Agenda

* Review: our current technique
** the AUS cookie
** the formal definition of Active Users
** summing over a range of days
** the consequences of "doing the right thing"
* Research: mining 178G of server logs
** tracking individuals
** who are these obsessive cookie clearers?
** unique ids, average gap size, average run length
* where do we go from here?
** a formal definition for a new metric
** is this accurate?

Interested Attendees

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