Category: Web/Tech

Link: Eric T. Peterson’s Analytics Weblog: How do you calculate engagement? Part I.

Gabe has added a new feature Techmeme River, to one of my favorit sites. I hit this site about 5 times a day, and now, with  the River of News, it’s even easier to see what’s new. Winer was right (again), a river is easier.

Just when the ad industry is starting to get their arms around the ‘net, the main comparative metric is becoming obsolete, with no clear successor. Evan Williams brought it into focus for a lot of us in August. Now, Steve Rubel has a timely article on the demise of the page view, and seems to be pulling up a front row seat to watch:

"As the page view platform crumbles, there’s going to be a shake out.
Everyone is going to scramble to find a metric that helps them compete
for ad dollars. Enjoy the show."

We can argue all day long about what should get measured instead (and we should, because we need something else), but that’s almost beside the point. The ad industry is losing one of the few tools for comparing online efforts and there is nothing on deck to take it’s place.

This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone who’s been watching their own metrics. Page views is really a function of site design and coding, not necessarily interest or "engagement."

But, what next? More coming….

Check out Bookmarked, what looks like yet another social site, this time built around bookclubs and books. You can review books, get recipes for a bookclub meeting, invite friends to join, and support or bookclub’s next event. Kind of cool idea. Who’s behind it? Target.

This is functionality as marketing. It’s solving a problem for bookclub members, and its also solving a number of problems for Target (engagement, brand positioning, consumer insights, online sales). This site helps Target as supporting a lifestyle and helping Target guests (not customers) get to a different place emotionally vs pushing products. Watch for more of this.

Jeff Veen:

Give people the tools to participate effortlessly, accept that they own their data, and remember your service is just one tiny piece of a much bigger experience. A simple formula for success.

Link: Making location simple, by Jeffrey Veen.

Required reading from the guy who invented Blogger on site metrics and rich internet apps. Obsolete? Not yet, but still.

Link: Agenda for 2006 Washington DC Emetrics Summit.

Link: SocialPicks: social stock picks & research. A friend and I were talking about an app just like this yesterday. Weird.

I’m still sort of making sense of Podcasts, even though I’ve been thinking about them a long time. I’m exactly the type of guy who should be all into ’em, but yet, despite trying a number of them, I’m still not a regular listener.

Feedburner presents an update from their perspective, using their own stats and others to illustrate the growth in podcast feed subsciptions. I’ts worth a look. Clearly, there’s something going on, but I still haven’t answered the simple question: Next shiny new object or real game changer?

Link: Burning Questions – The Official FeedBurner Weblog: Expanding Universe: Podcasting Market Update.

Just trying this out from Odeo. Let me know if it works for you and I’ll let you know if it works for me.