Over the last year I've seen HitWise play with financial forecasting on their blog - now it's Compete.com's turn and they seem to be able to get decent results with it.

Hopefully, Compete will open up more of it's platform.  I think the quality of forecasting depends on the answers your seeking from Web Analytics.

"… don’t know if it’s a cause or an effect, but it sure seems like there’s a high correlation between unique visits to TheStreet.com and the value of the S&P 500. I think this one might require some further analysis. If it turns out that the results are predictive, maybe I’ll be able to alter my investment strategy. Booyah indeed.

Get SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:

• thestreet.com to use.

This is pretty cool, and it's free.

Now that I got done with AlwaysON NYC - while blogging at a Brooklyn Cafe near my studio, I came across Jason Calacanis's post about the TechCrunch 20 conference he's helping to put together with TechCrunch. 

I began to wonder if the companies featured at AlwaysON, esp the new companies, had to pay in order to present at the conference:

"….It's wrong on so many levels (as a lot of folks have pointed out).

First, the best companies would never be able to afford that fee. This means the most promising companies who need the exposure the most–and who the audience would most want to see–never make it to the stage. When Kevin Rose started digg he was broke–he could NEVER have afforded demo. When I started Weblogs, Inc. with Brian we were really broke (in fact Brian had taken a second mortgage to build the company!)–we could never have afforded demo. I suspect that most of the great and up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies wouldn't have been able to cut that $20,000 check (or $12,000 as the case may be). I don't think a YouTube, TechMeme, Blogger, StumbleUpon, or CastFire could afford the ticket when they were starting up.

Second, even the good companies that make it to the stage have to spend around $20,000 to pay for their six minutes! What a rip-off."

Until I read Jason's post I had not even given it a thought - but maybe companies that are presenting at a conference need to pay for that.

Anyway, TechCrunch also announced the TechCrunch 20 Conference tonight - wish they were doing it in NYC (maybe they will down the line); seems there are several comments already.

One of the commenters said: "…The startups that are likely to be picked will probably be those of the well-connected entrepreneurs who know you or Jason personally (oh, wait, you call it a “committee”). So don’t make it sound like you are catering to the little guy in the garage ".

So, there's a concern the selection process will be biased.

I'm glad I went to AlwaysON, and that I got a press pass to cover it.

Webanalyticsbook made it in to the Jimmy Whales event that I got locked out of because I was 15 minutes late and the guard downstairs would not let me go in.

I wasn't there, so I can't tell you how it went, but, judging from Webanalyticsbook's account - I should have been there.  Oh well - read Webanalyticsbook to get the gist - and by the way, I like his blog too.

"…After listening to him, I was surprised about his knowledge. He is really smart and has deep knowledge of what is going on in the internet world. Still I believe his search engine will never take off and compete seriously with Google or other major engines."

Well…. I don't think Wikia is built yet - it's blueprint right now (I was on the message board for a while but unsubscribed because I was getting a ton of emails from everyone replying on the list and I did not have time to read them all).   But if Jimmy Whales is a dreamer -  Wikia is his dream.

Maybe it's ok to have a dream - you never know - it might take on a life of it's own.

Ok, from the sounds of it (and I hope Jimmy Whales asks me to interview him - hopefully in person - if he ever reads this) what will make Wikia succeed is, more or less, what made Google succeed - a very easy way to get (and enter) information - in other words - an INTERFACE.  

He needs the right interface for Wikia to succeed - to make it easy for the collaboration he envisions to make Wikia work.  He also needs for his servers to be FAST - Google understood that - people have very low attention span now - it must be SIMPLE and it must be FAST and it must be EASY and RELIABLE.  If he has those 4 things - and enough buzz, and some MONEY ….he may succeed.

But getting to that is going to be hard - but not impossible.  After all, dreams are the fuel of great art, and I think, of great search engines.

And let's not forget that Google's simple interface, was rumored to come out of the creator's lack of knowledge or interest in HTML - in other words, the design "happened" because it seemed like the most logical, simple way to create an uncluttered Search Interface (that was darn FAST and GOOD for it's time).

So, if Wikia copied that - but 10 years later - why not?  Go for it.

Sorry I missed the Jimmy Whales talk but Webanalyticsbook has it covered - read his blog.

Exhausted after my AlwaysOn NYC coverage plus having lunch with my manager at IBM and then just missing Jimmy Whales talk at NYU because it was too packed today; I was just about to go over for a life drawing session at Brooklyn Artists Gym (which I still may go to, but if I go I'll be late, as usual). 

Then I saw Gary Angel's post of Eric T. Peterson's Engagement Metric care of Google Alerts, which mentioned me - and suddenly - I felt energized.  After all, I was surrounded at Always ON NYC, which Kimberlee Morrison at Know More Media commented on better than I realized, surrounded by power makers, a bunch of CEO's and kinda felt like …. well … not all that comfortable - not exactly out of place - but I don't hang out at Davos either (and a good number of AlwaysON Attendees did, some flying in right from Davos - by direct jet - practically airlifted to the roof of the bloody Mandarin Oriental!), and I could not afford to go to Davos even if I was invited and wanted to.  

So I did not say much - but Kimberly Morrison picked up what I only half realized myself:

"…This week WebMetricsGuru author Marshall Sponder is covering AlwaysOn Media from New York. He started the  conference off with a reflection on what it felt like to be surrounded by so many powerful people; downplaying his own growing citizen media power. Check out some of Sponder's other posts from AlwaysOn Media.

I guess it would be "citizen media power" since I don't have any other authority.  Or do I?  That's what I'm going to explore in the context of Gary Angel's comment on Eric T. Peterson's post.

"…, he evaluates Marshall Sponder’s referrals to his site using the Engagement metric and comes up with a specific action he can take based on the KPI. In passing, he mentions some previous issues he’s had with how broad Marshall’s posts sometimes are."

I did write up a couple of words for Eric's blog last night (on my SideKick 3, almost ready to pass out from a couple of drinks at an AlwaysON after party - I have to say they do know how to "booze it up" for sure at AlwaysON.  I think Eric is going test if my engagement score will sell him more books (I hope it does).   As far as the action to take …I'm glad when Web Metrics can actually inform you on the next steps to take.

Here's what I think - Web Metrics, Web Analytics, whatever you want to call it - is simply a method of "focusing" and communing with web data. When you get enough information (go through the process) often the next step becomes clear (if it's not - then you haven't gotten all the information that's needed yet). 

So I'm glad if Eric could get, out of his Engagement Metric, that the next step was to focus on visitors to his site that were coming from mine, because they were more engaged.

"….On this last point, I think Eric and I both suffer from envy. I know I do. I write a "corporate" blog so I have to be pretty careful about staying on topic and not writing about politics, religion or popular culture. I often wish I could though! I love web analytics. I really do. But I love books, movies and football too. And Marshall is enviably prolific (as well as amazingly timely – I can promise I did no writing the evening I had dinner and wine with him)!"

Well, my life is my writing, my web analytics and my art - maybe not in that exact order - but I believe, as a blogger, the sooner I write down my impressions - the more vivid they are.  My approach is 180 degrees away from the Chinese painting approach of taking in information and then drawing a picture from memory several days later - my best work is immediate.  But it's also possible to take in information and process it and later comment on it - and I've done that to in a post called When Search Engine Ranking is not enough where I commented on a former client where I had digested a lot of information over time.  Both approaches are needed and valid - but I feel the best work - and the type that draws engaged visitors to Eric T. Peterson's site - come from posts where I'm emoting about Web Analytics.

Besides, it's not every evening that I get to have dinner with Gary Angel - and I wanted to capture that … and not lose it …..and that's why I stayed up and wrote a post on Dinner with Gary Angel at The Modern - Semphonic two weeks ago.  It's the artist in me.   I have to express what I know - I can't contain it, I have to express the experience, capturing the immediacy of it, or lose it.

"….2) Eric describes a particular action that he can take based on the Engagement KPI (get Marshall to plug books) – and it makes sen
se. But it doesn’t so much change my mind as make me think I need to clarify my original post."

I just want to say that Gary Angel's approach has been very helpful to me in understanding the value of my work to Stakeholders at IBM and elsewhere - even when the reports don't suggest any clear course of action. 

A keyword report on a bunch of Storage Group UR L's don't necessarily tell the Stakeholder what they should be buying in the way of Keywords, or even, what they should optimize for, but the report does have value and it may move the stakeholder towards a decision - inform them as to the next steps they can take (informing vs. knowing - it's part of their process not the conclusion of it).

"….The Engagement metric is much richer than most KPI’s – by blending a half-dozen separate measurements, it comes close to providing something like a real context for decision-making (you're probably picking up hints that I think a report set needs to have multiple descriptive KPI's to provide an overall context within which an action might make sense). That’s why I think it’s unusually good. But even so, Eric has snuck in a second metric (Marshall doesn’t generate book sales) before coming up with an action. I’ll give him a pass on that since he could presumably create an Engagement/Sales ratio as yet another KPI. And in a way, he's even snuck in a third because the original KPI is simply a measure of engagement but he's crossed it by source - tieing it to a particular kind of story - a story about sourcing.  This gradual building of a context around a measure is exactly how I think reporting actually works - and how analysis drives to actionable understanding."

I think Web Analytics can be like a mirror - you can see what you project into it ( I often use the term "touch the data" - I need to connect on a gut level (again, the artist) in order to know what to do next). 

If you need a direct answer - you can get it (depending on how you ask the question) if you get enough good data ("good data" is a value judgement - I guess - one man's "good data" is another's "bad data", or whatever). 

What I think Gary Angel is really saying - is the value of an Engagement Metric, or any metric, KPI, is independent of it being directly actionable.  As long as it contributes, in some way, to a better understanding of the subject, it has value and is worth reporting on.

However, I'll add another insight that I noticed this morning at CEO Showcase: Web & Blog Analytics & Research - AlwaysOn NYC when BuzzLogic's information gathering might be related to Eric's Engagement Score:

"…In fact, I'd say that something about BuzzLogic reminds me, in a tangential way, of Eric T. Peterson's engagement score - just follow me here.   What Buzzlogic is trying to do is find the authorities - the people who really matter that are blogging or just talking about your company.  I believe, perhaps, that engagement might be a quality that goes with "authority".  If that's the case, Eric might have, without realizing it, defined an algorithm for determining authority - or a part of it.  Read  Eric T. Peterson's  post in detail to find out more."

Could it be that Eric's "engaged visitors" to his site, coming from mine, are engaged because they believe me?  And if that's the case - is Engagement really another form of "Authority" - the kind that BuzzLogic is looking for to decide which conversations are more important?

Well, I've said enough and if I am going to do any life drawing tonight I better get going.

I don't generally have that much to say about Coremetrics - even though I'm using it at IBM (in Pilot form - I generally like to work with something fully set up in order to speak about it - otherwise I might be commenting of a feature that's absent because it's not been setup yet - which is not fair to comment on at all) but I did see an email earlier today announcing new enhancements to Coremetrics Search functionality and I see Webanalyticsbook did an post on Coremetrics today, so I feel I should comment on it.

BTW, the CEO of Coremetrics was at AlwaysON NYC and I could have spoke to him, introduced myself, but decided not to.  Why?  What would I say to him?  I decided to talk to people only if I knew what I wanted from them; unless people came up to speak to me, which happened a couple of times. 

Rather than going on about the new functionality of Coremetrics Search 7 - I'll key in on Webanalyticsbook's comment about SEO/SEM/Webanalytics:

"…Big Big steps for Coremetrics. An integrated bid management is what everybody is looking for. SEM, SEO and Webanalytics are one big field! No matter what David Pasternack or others say. Depending on the quality of Comscore’s new tool, Atlas bid management just added one more serious competitor. "

Yes, he said it …. SEM, SEO and Webanalytics are one big field….they're not separate. 

In fact, I wrote a long post the other day on why Top Rankings are not enough.  Sure, everyone knows you need to do more than that - that you need a plan - but for all that - much of the benefit of SEO and SEM is not measurable without Web Analytics.  

Well, I tried to go to see Jimmy Whales of Wikipedia, today, but when I got over to Courant Institute, 251 Mercer Street, Room 109 at NYU, it was packed and the guard downstairs was not letting anyone else up to the room where Jimmy was speaking.    Should have said I was from the Press, maybe that would of worked - but I did not think of it till several minutes after I left.

It threw me off, actually, because I planned my afternoon around listening to Jimmy Wales, maybe finding out if there was a way to interview him for Webmetricsguru.com - and I could not make it happen.

I guess I should have read the notice (below) a little more closely. 

Following up Cory Doctorow, next Wednesday we’ll be hosting Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. The lecture will be held during a class of Evan Korth’s Computer’s and Society course and is also co-sponsored by NYU’s ACM and NYU’s WinC chapters.

Jimmy will be giving a talk entitled “Free culture, transparency, and search.” Read more about Jimmy on his Wikipedia entry here.

We’re extremely lucky to have Jimmy and expect to have a full house, so please arrive early in order to ensure you get a seat.

Here are the full details:

Jimmy Wales
Owner, Wikia, Inc.; Founder, Wikipedia; President, Wikimedia Foundation
“Free culture, Transparency, and Search”
Wednesday, January 31st @ 3:30pm - 5pm
Courant Institute,
251 Mercer Street, Room 109

Free and open to the public.

Maybe next time.

I walked in on an the session after it already started.  

You need to know how the web analytics services collecting the data.  Most of the data collected in "opening the door" and for Publishers, is not interactive.   The data published also favors the big media companies (according to a questioner).  

10:30 am – 11:15 am: Workshop: Harnessing Web Analytics to Your Advantage
Are you confident that you're making the most out of your web analytics? Do you know what analytics can drive your business advantage? This workshop will show you how.
        Moderator: Burt Helm, BusinessWeek
        Howard Kaushansky, CEO, Umbria
        Greg Stuart, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
        Brad Silver, President, Brandimensions

How do you understand that you did not miss an opportunity to present your brand?  Well, there's metrics that inform industry and affect rates and those that don't.

The adoptions of standards is something the IAB should lead -and Publishers should ask themselves to be "audited" for ad effectiveness (if I got that right) and it's something that is not just "happening" - Marketers have to push it.

As a measurement device, Web Analytics is a long way away from definitive measurements.  Greg Stuart, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
 questions the value of demographic measurement services and thinks that Geo-graphics is much more predictive of buying behavior than demographics.

There are problems with measuring the success of your online activity and is your online activity driving offline activity.  Have what you seen online affected your impression of the brand offline?   Is the online activity moves the "needle".  Ad Recall is not necessarily that useful because you can "juice" it - and does not measure the effectiveness of the ad campaign. If you can measure the impact of seeing a campaign in behavior - that's measurable.

What do you  mean " we spend a 100 million dollars and we don't know what it does"? - according to a story that Greg Stuart related about a major automotive CEO who asked his top marketer the question at the beginning of the paragraph 5 times and got different answers.

Just got here - a lot of well known people here but I decided not to speak to anyone yet.  After getting breakfast I listed to Rob Crumpler of Buzzlogic. 

As readers might recall, I asked for a Demo of Buzzlogic about 3 months ago - and was sopposed to get into the Beta Program.  Since then - nothing much happened.   I did not care for the way Rob Crumpler spoke - it seemed too artifical - like Buzzlogic is going to solve all your PR and Buzz issues - but I know it's not like that.  

In fact, I think Buzzlogic has the potential to give BrandPulse a run for the money (and there's probably a couple of other platforms similar to it)- and anything that gives Nielson a headache is a good thing in my book (since they're suing every analytics company that uses any of it's patents - at least, that's the way it seems to me).

In fact, I'd say that something about BuzzLogic reminds me, in a tangential way, of Eric T. Peterson's engagement score - just follow me here.   What Buzzlogic is trying to do is find the authorities - the people who really matter that are blogging or just talking about your company.  I believe, perhaps, that engagement might be a quality that goes with "authority".  If that's the case, Eric might have, without realizing it, defined an algorithm for determining authority - or a part of it.  Read  Eric T. Peterson's  post in detail to find out more.

I guess having BuzzLogic as part of the AO 100 makes sense - since the technology is disruptive.  More likely, if they become really all that disruptive, Nielson will just buy them out.

9:30 am – 10:15 am: CEO Showcase: Web & Blog Analytics & Research
        Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic
        David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights
        Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY
        Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo
        Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK
        Demo Review by Industry Experts:
        Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital
        Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek
        Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips

Ok, I did not pay much attention to David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights which seems like it used some analytics (but I did not catch what he said).

I spoke to Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY on Monday night at AlwaysON NYC, he's in NYC so I may interview him later.  I like Amar's way of speaking and his platform of making time into money and has a module for Bloggers to legitimately monetize their blogs.  eTimeisMONEY sells time and there's a commission on the time sold on the site.   It looks like a pretty good platform and he's launching today.

Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo is a platform for marketers that has a "listener" which crawls the internet and picks up relevant content and allow the marketer to respond to it.   It sounds to me like Kalivo has a nice way of categorizing what's happening in context to the what the marketer cares about - which might give it an edge; I like the analytics, based on what I can see.

You an even focus in of the type of Blogger platform (ie: WordPress bloggers talking about iPhones - and also categorizes conversations based on importance - and you can then interact with those sources - a very nice feature!)

ClickDensity ( I think it was Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK  presented) is really presenting a standalone heatmap program that, while is fancy to look at, is not really much different than what most upper tier web analytics platforms provide in some form or another.  I like that each click on a page also includes the time spent on the link (page).  However, there are segmentation capabilities in ClickDensity - more how people react on the page (how quickly a visitor, on average, click on a link of the page).  It's not a replacement for your regular Web Analytics - it supplements it.

There were also 3 panelists that just came on the stage - Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital, Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek and Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips.

I think what the panelists/analysts above liked was the ability to know what the blogosphere is saying and interacting with it (as well as the attractive pricing).  The analytics seemed more intuitive - drawing a box around all this unstructured data in a visual way.   But the panelists want to know how the analytics here really work - and which one is better and why.   ETimeisMoney is also liked by the Panelists - they think it's a good direction to go. 

Anticipating issues rather than just being reactive.  But the Panelists think it's all about Google - Google dominates the conversation even though they are not, in away way I'm aware of, present at this conference.

Well, that's it for this session.

While at AlwaysON NYC today I noticed this link http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story3165.shtml about using Unique Visitors as the universal metric for newspapers.

"…Simon Waldman, head of digital for the Guardian Media Group (GMG), has called for online newspapers to focus on a single metric as a barometer of success to avoid making a mockery of the industry.

In a blog post today Mr Waldman urged publishers to focus on the Abe's agreed minimum metric  - the unique user - as a more appropriate measurement tool.

He wrote: "There is little that's perfect about measuring unique users. It's not the same as people.

"But we have all (including the Telegraph, indirectly) agreed through Jicwebs that audited unique users are the way forward. At least it is consistent and frankly our industry looks a shambles if we keep hopping from one metric to the other just because it suits us."

This is interesting; however, the numbers differ depending on which analytics package you use; it's an improvement - but not the answer.

Last session for Tuesday - can we use the blogosphere for buzz marketing?

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Panel: Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere?
        Moderator: Jeff Jarvis, Blogger, BuzzMachine
        Rich Murray, president, me2revolution
        Gordon Gould, CEO, ThisNext
        Barry Reicherter, SVP, Director of Persuasive Technologies, Porter Novelli
        David Weinberger, co-author, Cluetrain Manifesto

You can't buy Buzz, Buzz is owned by the people.  I wrote a post about a year ago titled "Dell Sucks" - made a big deal.  Jeff met Michael Dell in Davos, btw.

If you got a good product/service you can get "buzz'; but there are a lot of great products that won't get buzz because they're not that interesting. 

You measure Buzz -(no one figured out for sure how to do it) and 5% of the population who are influencer (have 75 or more friends) - go after them.

There is no direct ROI on conversation and are interested as along as the investment is small.  You can't buy your way into a conversation, you have to engage in to a conversation.

Buzz Marketing is all "exceptions"; 99% of what's out there is pure crap.

What should people do who want to brand?  The stuff you do online needs to be tied into what you do offline (Coke/Mentos) - you do an offline "tour".