Well …  I guess that Forrester Research doesn't have to worry about who is going to replace Megan Burns's coverage of Web Analytics, according to Eric T. Peterson in Forrester acquires JupiterResearch. 

It seems to me there's all kind of jobs out there for "Analysts", but, in most cases, most of the money is going to the Analyst Company, not the Analyst.   Anyway, I digress – here's what Eric had to say about the aquisition:

Somewhat ironic that FORR has been actively looking for someone to cover web analytics since Megan Burns (who will be at the upcoming X Change conference) has transitioned to cover customer experience more broadly.  John Lovett, in my humble opinion, will make a great Forrester analyst and was almost certainly the best candidate for the job … <grin>not that Mr. Colony should have paid a $23M bonus to his current employer.</grin>

Ha, ha… well, it seems the whole Analyst thing has some hidden assumptions – that the analyst firms really do know what they're talking about and and the analysts are impartial advice givers that can tell the client "Yes" or "No" and why, to any kind of deployment advice.

It just seem to me the burn out rate on Analysts is very high -too high – which implies that something is wrong with the job description – there needs to be some kind of re-adjustment that's not happening.

But with the higher cost of travel and the high turnover rate of Analysts – an aquisition for Forrester Research of JupiterResearch makes sense. According to Eric:

… Don’t get me wrong, I have a tremendous respect for all involved here — otherwise I would never have advocated for inviting Megan, John, and Bill to keynote the upcoming X Change 2008 conference I’m a partner in.  But I do have some small concern that the market’s view of the vendor landscape will soon be defined by one fewer data points, especially since Gartner has not done a formal Magic Quadrant on the sector recently (although Bill did publish a market note on web analytics on July 3rd that I assume is available to Gartner clients.)

So…. what's happening is we're essentially losing JupiterResearch – we're getting less analysts, less points of view, to make up for the economy that's tanking.

That's what it sounds like, to me.  

Yes, it's going to be an interesting trip to XChange for me … and Search Engine Strategies too …… but more about that later.

I do want to bring up one piece of news for those who follow Webmetricsguru.com – my readers can rest assured that I've secured Webmetricsguru.com from Know More Media and it will soon be moving to a new blog network that I'm forming with Sebastian Wenzel of WebAnalyticsBook.com

We'll move Webmetricsguru.com into WordPress and keep all the content I wrote over the last two and half years plus we're looking for more bloggers to join us – but we're still working out the way we're going to form and run this blog network – more like a community – perhaps focused around Analytics, but not limited to it.

More about this news, soon – but feel free to blog about it or contact me at now dot seo at gmail dot com.

I'm attending and speaking at the

Social Media Measurement Rountable NYC, August 7, 2008

The RoundTable takes place at the offices of Converseon Inc, a Social Media Agency in Midtown Manhattan.

 

Katie Paine, author of Measuring Public Relationships and CEO of KDPaine & Partners will be assisting in leading discussion at the roundtable. She will also be joined by Marshall Sponder, the Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee and Converseon’s Director of Social Media Constantin Basturea. Social media professionals, PR practicioners and web analytics experts will be present to discuss the methodologies and resources available today in measuring PR and social media initiatives.

Here are the details:

Date: Thursday August 7, 2008

Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm

Location:
Converseon
53 West 36th Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Well ….. looks like Facebook developers who write applications that everyone likes ….. get wiped out eventually, according to a post in TechCrunch today by Erick Schonfeld – Endgame: Scrabulous Gets Wiped Off Facebook

"…Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game:

Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

Hasbro has long contended that Scrabulous infringes on its trademarks for Scrabble. It licenses the North American digital rights for Scrabble to Electronic Arts, which announced its own Facebook version of the game earlier this month. (RealNetworks owns the international digital rights, and is not taking as aggressive a stance against Scrabulous)."

And what was so bad about letting Scrabulous stay up?   Wouldn't it drive more people be aware of scrable – and probably drive some sales of the game up too?

Last week, Hasbro filed suit against the owners of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla. The same day, EA publicly launched its officially-sanctioned Scrabble game on Facebook. (See screen shot below, which I took that day).

I know this is tricky – but instead of taking down an application game off of Facebook that people liked, Hasbro ought to have simply launched their own and let people decide which one they liked better.

I find that brands still don't get it.  People will not be happy their favored application was taken from them and replaced with what is probably a frail copy -

"…Hasbro and EA planned their moves very methodically and waited patiently for their chance to strike. Perhaps EA felt that it could not compete with Scrabulous other than by taking it out at the knees. Scrabulous boasts 509,505 daily active users. EA’s Scrabble Beta has 14,956 (after only five days). Now, the question is whether Scrabulous fans will boycott the official version of Scrabble on Facebook or switch over to satisfy their word lust."

I predict most fans of Scrabulous won't switch of the Hasbro Scrabble application – and I hope they don't.    Brands have to play in a new world – Brand doesn't own anything anymore – they just think they do.

Hasbro doesn't own Scrabble – it just thinks it does, and the legal system agrees, but people don't care  … they don't care about Hasbro, they care about all that garbage the Brand cares about – they care about their relationships – but the don't like a Brand coming in and interfering with their fun.

I think Hasbro made a big mistake getting Scrabulous taken down – and I hope they reverse the decision.