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...enablement.

A thought I've meditated on lately: are you a gatekeeper, or a key-maker?

I know how sycophantic this sounds, but the reason I've remained at Parse.ly for the last five and a half years is that the "knowledge is power" cadence underscores the entire business. The way we work with organizations, the way we collaborate between teams-heck, the product itself is built as an antithesis to gatekeeping. But what do you know, what insights do you have, that make you a key-maker? Enablement is one way to differentiate audience analytics from audience development.

A few weeks ago, our CEO Sachin Kamdar wrangled a bunch of us together-myself included-to help onboard a bunch of new nonprofit organizations free of charge. More on that here:

Direct support for nonprofit organizations fighting racial injustice

"Parse.ly condemns all forms of systemic racism ingrained in our society. We condemn institutions that murder, harm, or oppress Black people.

While words are important, it's actions that define us.

We are offering the Parse.ly content analytics dashboard for free to U.S.-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations whose primary mission is achieving racial justice for the oppressed."

If you work for an organization like this, or if you know someone who does, send this along. Not sure if you meet the criteria? Reach out anyway, and we can figure it out. Several organizations are up and running with new audience insights already.

Anyway, if not this, consider something that you can share with others, something that you can pay forward. Create a key, if you will.

I've rounded up some explainers and new features below. Give them a look, and if one opens a door for you, pass it along, will you?

Paid media is advertising, owned media is your website, earned media is your following...almost. Sometimes, it's more than that. And other times, it's a combination of these. A guide to where and how you can reach wider audiences.

Reposting an article within a network of sites may seem like common sense if you wish to multiply its reach. But measuring the impact of reposting, even gaining visibility into what has or hasn't been syndicated, can be tricky. But not anymore! Syndication is available for free to all of our customers who operate a network of sites.

Google is nuking third-party cookies, which will break a lot of cross-site tracking. So how does this affect Parse.ly Analytics? In short, not one bit. Our CTO Keith Bourgoin breaks down everything you need to know about why and how internet browsers are cracking down on third-party tracking.

"If real-time analytics are the speedometer in a car, letting you know what's happening right now so you can adapt on the fly, then historical analytics are the GPS-they can tell you where you need to go."

I respect that there's a time and a place for real-time analytics. But now, they don't have to be center-stage. We''ve added support for this in our product by making it possible to switch our main "overview" screen to weekly and monthly views by default, and we''ve also added weekly and monthly reporting views throughout the dashboard.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite features we've ever built. Basically, a Tag Group makes use of your pre-existing CMS tags and clusters them into something more comprehensive, based on specificity and frequency of use. You can see what content contributes to a tag's traffic, what tags get used widely, and which tags frequently appear together. It's a whole new way to see narratives and themes that you might have missed otherwise.

...shadow traffic.

A product manager at Parse.ly asked me, "What if I told you we're missing 20% of our traffic?"

I was skeptical. Define missing? Is it miscategorized? Not configured properly?

"No no," he said, "real visits, from real people, that never get processed to begin with." People behind adblockers, or who use certain browsers or apps. The problem isn't new, but he gave it a name.

Shadow Traffic: Why Your Traffic Numbers Are Off By 20% ?

The intersection of privacy and analytics presents a problem that turns technical, and ethical, very quickly.

Consider this offline analogy:

Say you visit a small brick-and-mortar shop in your neighborhood. The players in this story include you, the store owner, and a kid in a sandwich board outside the shop.

There is nothing wrong with you "just browsing." There is nothing wrong with the owner pushing a sale going on, or weighing in when you linger on a product for a few seconds longer. There's arguably nothing wrong with you saying, "Ok thanks!" and putting your headphones in while you shop. (Rude where I come from, but not a punishable offense.)

In real life, the kid in the sandwich board can shout about sales and specials, but is not allowed to follow you home. In real life, you can put in your headphones, but you are not allowed to forcefully blindfold the shop owner.

A dramatic analogy, yes, yet many overzealous analytics blockers do exactly that. In an effort to prevent third-party trackers from stalking us around the internet, they also blind first-party providers from seeing who is on their property. Certainly there's a middle ground to be had, isn''t there?

We''re always working to make Parse.ly''s resources better to help everyone be data-informed with their content. We''ve developed a short survey, and we want to hear from you. It''ll only take 5 minutes, and it will help us make Parse.ly (and our blog) even better.

Would you rather know a little bit about everything, or be an expert in one thing? The way you answer that question probably depends on the situation you're in, and your existing expertise. With so many tools out there, we break down which are best for every situation, and recommend the right tool for the job.

.politics, music, justice, finance, sports, tech. Oh and COVID, of course.

Last week's topic clusters read like an ICYMI roundup.

The only stories to top Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP" and the splash it made were stories about the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Audiences also directed their attention toward the ongoing fight for racial justice in Chicago and in the Pacific Northwest, Duke University's most-effective mask test, Big 10 football cancellation, aftermath of the explosion in Beirut, and as Fortnite was booted from the Apple Store, antitrust and the app store business model.