Steve O'Hear at TechCrunch writes about Inkitt, a new online publisher:

...Inkitt members are encouraged to post full manuscripts to be read by the app’s over a million readers. This is a way to get reader reviews and further feedback, but can also lead to a publishing deal with Inkitt itself if the reader engagement data the company collects points to a potential best-seller.

“We analyse reader behaviour, analyse their engagement,” Inkitt founder Ali Albazaz tells me. “If they start reading and stay up all night to continue reading, if they use every break during the day to continue reading your story, we look at this reader behaviour in order to see if a book is good or not good”.

(Sigh.) Okay. Sure? Whatever.

I mean, ask anyone with a Netflix account who watched some Saturday morning cartoons once when they were sick one afternoon and still get recommendations to watch Thundercats every day, or anyone who's researched a pair of sneakers online only to be hounded by sneaker ads on every website they ever visit for months thereafter: sometimes, what people stare at isn't a great indicator of what people want to see.