Edelman public relations professional and celebrated blogger Steve Rubel said that AJAX, the technology behind the Web 2.0, will lead to the demise of the page view as a metric for Web site success. Is it really possible?

At the recently held AJAXWorld conference in New York, Rubel admitted that he doesn't have the magic sauce for accurately predicting what will replace the page view, however; he got some good ideas to ponder on.

Rubel pointed to statistics from Edelman showing that even though there are increasing numbers of Web users, the number of unique visitors to the top news sites has leveled off. Rubel said, the metrics that have carried Internet marketers to this point may no longer have the same relevance.

Rubel explained, "We're in an era where the page view is going to die. It's an outdated metric, a 1.0 metric in a world where you can do so much in the page, a world where you can watch live streamed video, get content from anywhere and put it anywhere."

The "window," as Rubel referred to it, is really all about widgetized code. A widget is a small element that can include content that is easily repurposed to be included on another site or even a user's desktop. The best widgets often employ AJAX.

"AJAX is enabling the business case but how do you actually work with your audience to do things that they want to do?" Rubel asked. According to Rubel, what bloggers and others in the me2revolution typically want can be narrowed down to three items: money, fame and traffic.

"We're in a transition where everyone wants the big page views, but as supply increases and there is so much more content to choose from, those numbers will diminish," Rubel said "You have got to go where the people are."

[via: Internet News]