It’s been said that people would rather pull off a finger nail than learn how to leverage their website data. I’ve thought about that a lot lately, and think I have the answer:
A good manicure. French, maybe.
But really, this is all soo sad because the reality is that. . . .
Web Analytics is like a drag queen: It has Really Big Hair, killer eye makeup, and knows how to promote itself:
Right?
We believe it, but how do we get to a point where others in the organization do as well?
Step One for each and everyone of us (and you are unique and abnormal in that you read a web analytics blog!) is to accept and recognize the fact that Web Analytics might might be seen as outside the mainstream and a bit freakish. Once you accept then you can move on and do something about it.
I think that’s all the steps required, really!
With extreme apologies to Avinash, and extreme thanks to June.
PS to Jim Sterne: no, I will not. Don’t even ask, ‘K?
Two new blogs today…
eMetrics from Jim Sterne, who probably needs no introduction, and
metricbox from William Garrison, a Senior Professional Services Engineer (I assume from WebTrends)
Welcome to the discussion, Jim and William!
(As always, when I find new blogs that seem to touch on web analytics, I tag them with the wablogger keyword on del.icio.us. Social bookmarking, baby! Sure beats keeping a blogroll up to date.)
Congrats to WebTrends who announced their new CEO today. Dan Stickel is no stranger to the Internet, having done executive stints at Google and AltaVista.
The press release quotes Dan: “The web analytics market is forecast for nearly 20% growth in 2008, and the growth in enterprise marketing software is even greater.” Looks like the gauntlet has been thrown — this looks like a CEO challenge to WebTrends to do better than 20% growth this year.
It’s great to see such a venerable player getting past the cloud of uncertainty. I don’t know anything about WebTrends’ plans, but given Dan’s recent past at Google, expect to see an emphasis on partners.
Forgot to mention in the rush of Coremetrics funding last week, that WebTrends announced email alerts. Gotta love the quote from Rand. The press release might have the coolest URL I’ve seen in a while. I’d like to see that in a web analytics report.
Every week the sleepy world of web analytics has something interesting happening. I can’t wait to see what gets the buzz this week.
In case you missed it — Coremetrics announced today that they just landed another $60M in financing.
(How things have changed: when Accrue did its IPO nine years ago, we raised something like $39M. It just goes to show that there’s a lot of money available outside the public markets.)
Good for Coremetrics that their investors see enough demand to hand over such a large sum. It certainly bucks the conventional wisdom that Coremetrics was slowly withering away — it should put new life into their deals and a new swagger in their walk. Reading the press release, I can imagine the message to investors: we are not constrained by the market, the competition, or our technology: we need more feet on the street.
When Apple’s Aperture arrived, it was the first tool especially aimed at photographers with extensive photo management needs. While praised for its vision, photographers were frustrated that support for new cameras took such a long time, seemingly requiring updates to Mac OS itself. In the meantime, Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom offered quick support for new camera models, and it was one of the reasons many photographers switched over to Lightroom.
Now with the release of Mac OS X 10.5.2, and perhaps due to updates to iPhoto and Aperture, Apple is able to push new camera support much quicker than before:
Would we be seeing this kind of turnaround on new cameras without competition from Adobe? Hard to say — but it’s clear that Apple heard the cries of its market and responded.
So I’m filling out the WAA Analytics survey, and get to the question where they want to know how many years of experience I have in the field. Shocked to write down “12″ — that’s crazy. How far have we come? I’m still listening to people talk about tracking users.
Hi kids! Today the cute and cuddly Mr. Penguin from AOL will answer all your questions on behavioral targeting! Isn’t he cute! Now you know that behavioral targeting is your friend!
Have a good day! And a tip o’the cap to the Good People at AOL who keep Mr. Penguin in anchovies in return for a little education gig he does for them.
PS oh, and did you know that Google doesn’t track you around the web? Hahahahahahaha!
PPS Seriously, why doesn’t AOL focus on the benefits of BT — like that the ads you’ll get are actually relevant? I am also concerned that they are confusing BT with tracking across an ad network. They are not the same. As it is, what I see from the storyboard is I get a TRACKING COOKIE ON MY COMPUTER followed closely by somebody thinking “I should remove that cookie”… is BT the new cookie? Is the cookie the new cookie?
Today I bought my first digital-only “CD” online.
I have the iPhone, manage my music with iTunes, and all that. But until today, I never actually purchased any music in digital-only format. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned (or just old), but I like the physical medium. I’m sure the recording industry wishes there were more of me…
Today I read that Most fans paid $0 for Radiohead album, and being a Radiohead fan, remembered I hadn’t heard “In Rainbows” yet. So it’s off to the Radiohead site, and a few british pounds later, downloaded the “album”.
It’s ten songs in 160kbps MP3 format. Not archival quality, for sure. It comes with the basic ID3 tags mostly in place, except genre. But the songs themselves — the music — just fabulous.
Since there’s no cover art, I made my own, a screen snap from the In Rainbows site. Because, you know, for Cover Flow.
So I see the U.S. Government is showing off the new currency ..
Hey, they are using Yahoo! purple for the number. Coincidence? I’m just asking…
