[dyladan]

> How do people implement live dashboards on the web these days?

> This is a solved problem. Use Flash. It's insanely customizable, has a huge ecosystem and now runs x% of the sites on the web.

This is argumentum ad populum. Lots of people used Java applets or Flash just a few short years ago, and I think we can all agree that the current HTML5/CSS3/JS ecosystem is much better.

[xiaoma]

When the goal is marketing or communication it's rational to use the more popular ecosystem. The huge ecosystem gives you a huge advantage in getting things done and there are no bonus points for being right in advance. This is as true with blogs today as it was for flash a few years ago. Over the past five years many companies have essentially set fire to their money making HTML5 versions of their flash games, reinventing the wheel for multiple tools in their setup and extend development time only to find their HTML5 versions got worse reviews and were still buggy on some browsers.

And unlike flash vs HTML5, your choice of blogging back-end does nothing to extend your reach. Flash sites weren't usable for iPhone users but WP absolutely is. Not only that, but there are thousands of free themes and plugins to optimize the experience.

The rational way to pick a platform is to evaluate them based on the advantages they offer you now. For most sites now that's not going to be flash. For most blogs it's going to be WP with the occasional feeder post to Medium/LinkedIn/Facebook.