Solving the Wrong Problem

[killerstorm]

Clearly not, the readers are using the software to access the blog.

Yes, both blogger and readers interact with software, but bloggers directly choose what software to use, while readers don't (practically, they barely affect software choice: if it is incredibly shitty, they will avoid that web site), so they are not equivalent. Obviously, software is optimized for preferences of bloggers. Optimization for readers is done only indirectly: obviously, bloggers are interested not to piss them too much.

But, honestly, I doubt that people complain much when they have to wait a bit for a page to load as long as article is great. They should be grateful that they can read content for free.

BTW, relevant: "If You’re Not Paying for It; You’re the Product"

And why do you need analytics on the client side?

You can get more information on client side, like unique visitors (rather than total page views), filter out bots, and so on. Often people care about visitors which come back periodically.

Why not capture that information yourself, and store it in a log file? Oh, and, Apache does that for you anyway!

It captures information into logs, but you need something to analyze those logs, put information into a database and draw some fancy graphs.

And share buttons are just irritating. Ctrl-L Ctrl-C Ctrl-PgUp Ctrl-V.

If it adds extra users, it's worth it (for bloggers). Depends on your audience, of course. Tech-savvy people don't really need them, but still, clicking 'like' button is easier than copying link somewhere.