Eric T. Peterson wrote an open call to President Elect Barack Obama today, asking the new Chief Technology Officer of the United States, when he or she is appointed, to push for use of First Party Cookies on most Governent sites.

In much the same way that President Obama has to give up his Blackberry upon taking office next month, due to privacy regulations that are difficult to update, so is the Federal Goverment inhibited from using data analytics for insight gathering.

But there are certainly arguments for allowing data collection for insight that does not violate privacy and, I believe, it’s doable.

In fact,this is an area where The Wen Analytics Association can help, by enforcing Peterson’s Open Call (we’re on it) AND creating frameworks and guidence documentation satisfying how data collected can be used while not invading privacy issues (and we need to do that, as well).

Why now, and not before?

Because, the new administration has a much more progressive agenda, is more open and technology savvy, and is likely to try moving forward on making web technology and tracking a way of listening to what citizens want.

And I feel, as web analysts, we could support this progressive agenda by providing firepower for it, via framework documents.

Just a thought on this Wednesday in November.

BTW, this post was created on my IPhone, no hyperlinks and limmited spell/grammer checking, but otherwise a great way to blog.

Sometimes, on difficult days, like today, or was it yesterday, now, I just feel like throwing in the towel, on Social Media.

I haven’t given up, won’t. Still, there’s a lot of obstacles to overcome, and can be difficult.

Even as Barack Obama begins the first YouTube Presidency, you’d think there would be recognition of the vital role of Social Media within professional, member driven organizations. Particularly, in Web Analytics, because it’s the Web Analysts, who, by nature of our tools and focus on online and marketing data analytics, are best suited to evaluate the success of Social.

Yet, for all the potential, before us, the path to it, is too often, blocked, by ignorance.

Where would Barack Obama be, today, if he believed, and those around him believed, that social media wasn’t important? Vital.

You’d think that now, especially just now, would be the perfect time to ramp up on social media as it’s one of the least expensive and most effective ways of reaching people.

But some people don’t see it that way; it’s like, they are not on the same page.

You know, I was speaking to a friend recently about the most effective source of traffic to her site; she used Google Analytics custom segmentation and found out that Stumbleupon was 1500% more effective than any other other source of referral traffic …and it’s a well known site that gets several million visits a month.

And yet …. You’ll find plenty of organizations who believe Social Media is not particularly important. I bet John McCain did not think much about Social Media, and look where he is, today.

Actually, I’m glad McCain and Palin didn’t focus on Social Media; I didn’t want them to win.

But in other cases, you’d be surprised; I know, I was.

Recently, I asked Eric T. Peterson, author of Web Analytics Demystified, what he thinks Analytics Organizations ought to focus on.

Peterson said, an Analytics Organization, in this case, The Web Analytics Association (my question to Eric was what did he think the WAA ought to focus on regarding Social Media); in that context, Eric mentioned the WAA should focus on Social Media Metrics (which, we actually, are, and will be publishing social media standards next year).

Eric asked me to make this correction, and I am glad I did, since I left out, from my earlier writing, on this post, the WAA’s work on drafting standards, the beginnings of which, started through my efforts via the Social Media Committee, which I built, from scratch. Social Media is now the largest committee of the WAA, with 76 members, by the way , about 8% if the entire WAA membership.

I also asked him if Special Interest Groups, or SIGs, would be useful for this purpose.

By the way, I noticed the recent EMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit that I attended, in Alexandria, VA, had an entire Tract (3 solid days of Social Media sessions) dedicated to Social Media Metrics.

That had never happened before at a Web Analytics Conference; found this encourging, and the speakers were great.

Too bad that focus isn’t actually carried into the organizational level more often.

I would imagine, and suspect, Social Media, really needs more of a focus in most organizations than it gets. Perhaps, that is also true of Online Marketing and Analytics Associations.

In fact, some of the best uses of Social Media, and some of the best presentations this year on Social Media, came from Panalists who worked for or with Non-Profits.

It turns Non-Profits tend to be willing to try things they think work and won’t cost much money.

Anyway, this is a long, rambling post, written entirely on my IPhone, hense, no hyperlinks or grammer, spellchecks.

I’ll be at MobileBarCamp, over at Microsoft Headquarters, in New York City, on Saturday, along with Sebastian Wenzel, WebAnalyticsBook.com; it will be a welcome change, attending this Mobile Analytics grassroots gathering, with Sebastian, who also happens to be part of the Web Analytics Association, the same one whose Board I currently sit on.

On the other hand, this Friday, for me, was a tough but interesting, intense day; Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNowInc and Grokdotcom.com, Jared Freedman of Code4Software.com, Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified Inc, and Jesse Harriot of Monster Worldwide, are some of the best people I connected with and spoke with, today, and Bryan, Jared, Eric and Jesse really helped me to make up for misguided individuals who also cross my path. These individuals acted like the Egyptian God, Osiris, banishing another, Seth, associated with the Underworld in Egyptian lore.

Often Myths have their basis in some fundamental truth the myth symbolizes.

And, my conversation with Bryan Eisenberg, who talked me into running for the WAA Board 2 years ago, Bryan has been particularly helpful today and he was sick as a dog, with a bad cold, yet he spoke to me, and shared wisdom and insight. Thanks Bryan!

Again, I’m actually hearing, in my mind, the lore about an Egyptian God, Seth, Replaced, by another, Osiris. One could say ….back in the day.

Perhaps, the mythology of how Seth, God of the Underworld or Nearherworld, gets removed, replaced by Osiris, relates to the month of April Where Spring begins.

What we nead is renewal and the right focus. And maybe, we need to drill for that focus, or Oil, in Texas (ops! Solar Panels and Green, Renewable energy, please).

We really nead is Wisdom focused on Social Media and Web Analytics, and, too often, it has not happened.

Yeah, Seth, God of the Underworld being replaced by Osiris, of light and renewal, in April; God Willing, the sooner, the better.

Ok, time for bed, this has been a long, long day.

It's kinda nice to have so many supportive, intelligent, smart people in Web Analytics - and it's really nice when they also happen to join the Web Analytics Association's Social Media Committee, which I direct, as a member of the Board of Directors of the WAA.

It so happens, I bought Web Analytics for Dummies a couple of months ago, when it first came out.  I looked at it briefly but have not read it in depth (yet) but I must have noticed that Jennifer LeClaire co-wrote Web Analytics for Dummies - so the name stuck in my subconscious.

And then Jennifer posted a comment to one of my blog posts here at Webmetricsguru.com and the rest is history; Jennifer LeClaire became the 40th member of our Committee.  It's timely, as we're just getting ready to start to work on Social Media Standards and having as many of the brightest, most informed members of the Web Analytics Community that are also WAA Members (a requirement for joining any WAA Committee) is just about to begin next week.

Here's more of Jennifer's kind words about the Social Media Committee:

"…Meet the newest member of the Web Analytics Association’s Social Media Committee. I look forward to working with Marshall Sponder and the gang to build consensus across the industry on social media.

The Social Media committee facilitates WAA members communicating with each other and as groups via Second Life, or other 3D Virtual Worlds, and uses Social Media tools such as chats, blogs, personal portals, mobile, IM, etc. in order to accomplish increased communication. Specifically, a knowledge exchange for WAA Professional Members built on the Social Media Platform tools in order to increase the value of WAA professional membership via increased exchange of information.

Social Media Committee also works to increase the interactive nature of General and Group Meetings and Special Interests groups within the WAA thereby fostering community and increasing membership value."

I've had a lot of influentials joining the Social Media Committee since it started, a few months ago, and have become very aware of the need to move our agenda forward, to gain and keep momentum and to start accomplishing tangible results.  

Welcome Jennifer!

Looking at features that would add value to a website, a Recommendations Engine like Loomia seems to fit the bill.  In fact I just read about Loomia Partners With Wall Street Journal in TechCrunch.

I've been looking for ways to bolster engagement in sites by offering recommendations (at least when people want to get input from an online recommendations engine like what Amazon does …. when it tries to tell you what you might you might also be interested in..most of the time I ignore, or find those recommendations somewhat annoying..but that's just me).

But let's take it up a notch.  What does the Web Analytics Association and architects like Alan Mascord have in common?   Lots of content - different audience - but there's niche audiences for both …. and  yet … no real online recommendation engine in either site.

What if there was an easier way to take the technology that Amazon uses … and plop it into the Web Analytics Association site … or into Alan Mascord's site … do you think it might help?  I think in Mascord's case, it would help.  For Web Analysts and vendors, the target audience on the WAA's site, it could help if it  were set up and well tuned.

According to TechCrunch:

"..Loomia, a recommendation engine that is used by ecommerce and content websites to suggest new stuff to users, locked up a marquee business development deal with the Wall Street Journal.

The module, which appears next to stories, suggests other Wall Street Journal content based on what the user has read previously on the site, and compared to what other users have read, too. The module is titled “People Who Read This…” - see image below.

Loomia competes directly with Aggregate Knowledge, a high flying startup that has raised a total of $25 million in venture capital."

Here's what Loomia's Widget would look like on a news site, for example:

I like the idea, which is not new to me (I did read about Loomia last year - but don't think I wrote about it):

"..Ultimately, what Aggregate Knowledge and Loomia are offering are merchandising tools to Internet companies. Sites like Amazon can afford to develop their own solutions in-house, but other sites, battling razor thin margins already, need to outsource this. Companies like Loomia and Aggregate Knowedge are there to fill that need. BazaarVoice is another company in this sector, although they offer a different product - reviews and commenting features."

For someone like Alan Mascord, the question really should be .. does Eplans.com, Coolhouseplans.com or other large houseplans sites use Loomia or one of the other online recommendations engines?  The Answer is …. no for Eplans.com, but they have made plenty of improvements on the site since the last time I looked, in depth, at their site, two years ago.

www.Coolhouseplans.com plan pages are now too busy - they went overboard, trying to make their pages more search friendly, forgetting the real reason to have these pages is not for Search Engines, its' for the people that are on your site; they don't have a house plans recommendation engine either.  With Loomia, that would be fairly easy to set up - but everyone seems to be focused on traffic, like addicts, forgetting it's not about traffic.   I tried telling that to The House Designers - but they would not listen - and their profit margins showed it - just as most of the rest of the house plans sites are a horror house story as far as conversions go.

In fact, I'd rather have 10 happy visitors, 5 who end up buying a house plan, than 1000 grumpy visitors, who I bought traffic or manipulated search engines to send the traffic, of whom one may buy every other time, which is what I had seen in several of the House Plans sites.

For most marketers, they still think "volume" when the answer is not volume - it's micro niche and personalized targeting via anonymous click stream monitoring - to give the visitor what they need when they need in form they need it.

GlobalHousePlans.com seems offer the best visitor experience, in my opinion, of all the top house plans sites - yet it does not have a real recommendations engine either.

Getting back to Alan Mascord's site - if you clicked on The Dearborn, a European House Plan, for example, maybe you'd also like to see…. The Ackland, The Holden, The Franciscan, The Wellington or The Avellana.  That would be easy to accomplish, I think, using Loomia, based totally on Clickstream analysis, but much harder to hard wire, and probably less effective than doing it with an online Recommendations Engine.

Same thing for the Web Analytics Association … if you click on a Podcast for say….. Bounce Rate Demystified …maybe you'd be interested in …… Web Analysis With a Single Report or Measuring a Flash Enabled Product Demo or Hitting the Landing Page Optimization Wall.

Yes, I'd like to get the Web Analytics Association to try out a Recommendations Engine like Loomia, and we'll discuss the idea in the WAA  href="http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?16">Social Media and Community Committee.

And I noticed that Know More Media does use a Recommendations Engine - when you click on the hyperlink for this post for Loomia Recommendation Engine, at the bottom you get the following Related Recommendations for further reading:

related entries

• Online Measurement Dilemmas bring about the need for a Measurement Summit Jul 11, 2007
• Measuring Social Media and Online Video - Jim Sterne Jun 28, 2007
• Going to Paris - user generated content in the New York Times May 28, 2007
• A lot of Great Stuff going on at the Emetrics Summit next week May 3, 2007
• It's Official - the new Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association Apr 24, 2007

I have to ask Know More Media what powers this recommendation engine  that is serving up related entries but for a Web Analyst, the goal should be to see how many visitors who view a popular post click on any of the recommended related posts and how much longer, potentially (or deeper) into the blog they go because of it ..and that's the subject for a future post.

But I'd do the same thing for Alan Mascord's site if they put in Loomia, or something like it …I'd look at how much the Reccomendation Engine contributed to engagement by observing clickstream and trying to tie that back to a shopping cart purchase.

And that's a lot more important than being number 3 or 4 for house plans, home plans and floor plans in Google.

Online Measurement, according to Jeff Jarvis, creates as many issues as it solves; often the wrong things are tracked or there's not enough data on areas that should be tracked:

"..Measurement is holding back so much progress online — both because there’s not enough of it and because what there is of it is too often tracking the wrong things. Without good measurement, we won’t get money and without money we won’t be able to sustain so much of what we want to do online.  "

I think it's true - as there are more and more widgets and web services that present themselves on a sub-atomic page level (they're not being seen as a page, but as a part of a page - the and the content is separated from how it's displayed and presented).

".. I predict that we’ll soon see brands that essentially don’t have sites but become huge because they are distributed (think apps on Facebook that have no home page). I’ve often said that Google’s audience is many times what is reported because Google distributes itself as widgets — ads, maps, feeds. Google doesn’t care because it’s measuring only one thing: revenue. And Google knows everything it needs to know. We don’t. "

And then there's a whole bunch of things that ought to be measured, that aren't including:

".. RSS, widgets, mobile, apps — and kinds of content — video, podcasts — but also of new sorts of measurements — such as influence, meme-starting, involvement, creation, engagement, popularity — that aren’t even being tackled. And there are new dimensions that need to be explored, such as measuring a person’s trust, influence, or even fame across many platforms, sites, applications, and so on. "

Advertisers want the relevant online measurements so they'll know how much money to pour into a campaign and what the benefit of that campaign is - and yet, online media measurement is not developed, often, to the point that intelligent answers are able to be provided (at least, I don't think it's developed well enough yet).

Jeff Jarvis's answer to all of this - A Measurement Summit (interesting!).  Sounds like Jeff Jarvis needs to attend the Emetrics Summit in DC … if he's asking these kinds of questions - because that's where the questions get asked and often answered.

"…I’ve suggested before the need for a measurement summit. Maybe that’s one way to tackle this. Or perhaps we need to find ways to better educate advertisers (but we’ll never educate them out of wanting metrics). Or perhaps this is something academics should take on with foundation help because it will support invention: measure it and they will come. "

Don't want to over plug the Web Analytics Association, http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org, or my own Social Media and Community Committee at the WAA, but I really believe the answers for better online measurement can be found from within the ranks of the Web Analysts - who have their hands deep into the web data….data that is used for business intelligence and to drive traffic and revenue.

We had a Board Meeting of the Web Analytics Association (I'm the Director of the Social Media and Community Committee) and I quickly rolled my own "Invite Only" Social Network for Committee members using Ning.  While it still needs some work it was amazing how quickly I could build a basic, functional Social Network with plug and play tools in about 20 minutes.

I think there's' a lot more that needs to built on top of what I started - and honestly, for the last year or so, I've looked at Ning, KickApps and Clearify.net ..wondering what I should or could do with them.  Every time I tried to use one of them - I found I no real reason to build a Social Network.

But now, it's different, and I'm finding that having a Social Network to do Social Media Committee brainstorming, discussion and work - is much more interesting and fun then just emailing or calling people directly.

Just as I put up my first video in my social network, which again, is only for my committee members, I get another "user generated video" form none other than Jim Sterne, Mr. Emetrics Summit / Web Analytics (below):

With Social Media - you learn as you go and by doing - I don't think reading about it helps that much.   The other thing is the sense of community that gets created by allowing everyone to contribute.

Since being elected to the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association I've started to think about what kind of Social Media tools would benefit WAA members seeking to communicate with each other - to add value to the membership.

One example that comes to mine is what the New York times did with it's travel section on going to Paris and where to stay (I happen to be going to Paris tomorrow, BTW).

Readers were asked to contribute suggestions - to contribute content - and it was focused on a subject (which makes it a little different than a blog post with comments).

There's also a lot of content created by The Times with attractions on what to see, where to eat, where to stay and nightlife (with user ratings).  For example, Paris Nightlife Listings are listed and rated by readers - this is a level of "engagement".  Personally, I find such listings extremely useful.

I think this approach would benefit the membership of the Web Analytics Association Membership site - with the subjects being created and voted upon by members and moderated by WAA volunteers on subjects such as first/third party cookie debate, mobile technology, user engagement you name it.

This is part of my notes of how I would build Social Media tools that benefit members - and there's an older model - Webmasterworld.com - which had a part of the site with content that only paid members could see as well as an email  system (sticky mail) and a user community.

I'm also thinking that KickApps might be one way to build the interactivity of a site - I haven't yet seen anything that is prepackaged version of what the NY Times Travel Section put together for Paris but I think it's worth looking into, at some point, to see if prepackaged solutions exist (I am thinking past what Magnify.net and Ning.com already provide out of the box).

I haven't even looked at the agenda yet but I know next week's Emetrics Summit in San Francisco is going to be GREAT - and I'll be there - anyone who reads Webmetricsguru.com that's going to be at the Summit, please come up and say hello (hint: You get a free MOO card or two with artwork on it just for saying …hi. See below:)

Anyway … getting back to the Emetrics Summit - Eric T. Peterson has a post on Can’t make Emetrics? You’re in luck if you’re in the WAA! where he gives away some tips about events that you need to be a member of the WAA to attend:

"…I’m not sure how they’re advertising this event, but the WAA International Committee is piggybacking on the “Ask the Guru’s Breakfast” that Jim and Matthew have put together and offering the ability to join the breakfast virtually. According to the WAA web site:

• 30 minute exclusive analytics discussion between Eric Peterson, Bryan Eisenberg and Avinash Kaushik
• Virtual attendance at the San Francisco Emetrics Summit Guru’s Breakfast – your chance to listen in to this one hour session with Eric Peterson, Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne,
• A question and answer session for international attendees

This event is limited to WAA members but my understanding is that the recorded event will be made available to everyone sometime in the coming weeks. If that is not the case, I will have some of my deadhead friends in San Francisco make a bootleg tape and we’ll share via the Archives."

 

 

I knew for over a week but did not blog about it since I was waiting for the Web Analytics Association to officially announce the new Board of Directors; today, in April's WAA Newsletter, they did announce the new Board and I'm on the list.

You voted, and here is your new Board of Directors:

• Jim Sterne — Target Marketing consultant (returning director)
• Avinash Kaushik — Analytics Evangelist for Google
• Robbin Steif — CEO LunaMetrics
• Andrea Hadley — President NetSetGo Marketing (returning director)
• Seth Romanow — Senior Director, Customer Intelligence and Analytics, Microsoft (returning director)
• Marshall Sponder — Web Metrics Analyst for IBM
• Neil Mason — Co-Founder Applied Insights
• April Wilson — Director of Customer Value Management for The Dallas Morning News
• Laura Paxia — CTO ImetriX.biz

Welcome to all the new faces; welcome back to the familiar faces. It looks like a great team for the WAA.

I'm pretty happy…grinning actually - and now can go public with it.   I'll be at the next Emetrics Summit and the WAA General meeting on May 6th and the Board of Directors meeting on May 10th.

You know what - if you want to vote for me to be on  WAA Board of Directors - the voting is now open as of noon, Sunday, April 1st and Sunday, April 15th, according to Jim Sterne; it was announced in Jim Sterne's email newsletter  - Sterne Measures.

the Web Analytics Association site has set voting to start on Monday and end on Friday, the 13th - but I guess the WAS wanted to avoid a couple things like… April Fools Day and Friday the 13th so…Jim Sterne's email says:

The vote opens today at 12 noon (Eastern Time) and closes at 10 pm Eastern Time on Thursday April 15th. That was to avoid the April Fools/Friday the 13th stigma.

It's open to all members and be a Survey Monkey experience. More here:http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cms/?757

That statement above "sorta" suggests the student members can vote too!  You know what - if your a Student Member, you got to the link and it lets you vote - then please vote (for me if you want to).

And you have till the 15th to vote so it's no sweat to wait a couple of days, as long as you get it done in the next two weeks.

On the other hand, if you try to vote on Sunday - April 1st - April Fools Day … maybe Sterne's announcement is part of April Fools.   I don't know.   We'll see…