Category Archives: statistics

Facebook drives 6MM people to Friendster!

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Rakesh Agrawal

That headline is kinda, sorta true. If you buy shoddy analysis from misinterpreted data. Like a recent piece from Henry Blodget, mass inflator of the Web 1.0 bubble. He is at it again with a piece on Facebook being a … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, search, social networking, statistics | 1 Comment

Cutting the cord on the home phone

Posted on August 27, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The Times reports today that the percentage of homes with cell phones and no landline now exceeds the percentage of homes that have a landline and no cell phones. It’s been about four years since I paid a landline phone … Continue reading →

Posted in statistics, wireless | 2 Comments

comScore redefines search, Google wins bigger

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

ComScore is changing the methodology for its qSearch market share ratings. Instead of just counting search activity at the major search engines, comScore is expanding the definition of search to include searches at sites such as Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon, MySpace, … Continue reading →

Posted in aol, facebook, google, metrics, search, statistics, yahoo | 3 Comments

Mmmm…. McCarrots and McMilk

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The AP reports on a study of 63 poor children that found the kids preferred food in McDonald’s wrappers over identical unmarked food. The golden arches cast a golden halo over even healthy items such as carrots and milk. The … Continue reading →

Posted in random, statistics | 2 Comments

Measuring Web traffic, let me count the ways

Posted on August 1, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Mark Glaser at MediaShift has a great two-part series on measuring Web traffic. It’s well worth reading for publishers, advertisers and anyone else who cares about how traffic is measured. There are a number of different ways firms measure traffic: … Continue reading →

Posted in advertising, media, publishing, statistics | 1 Comment

Measuring the Facebook traffic tsunami

Posted on July 25, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Upstart traffic measurement company Quantcast has released some impressive data on the effect of the Facebook platform on audience growth. The company measured pre- and post-Facebook platform usage on three popular companies: Slide, HOTorNOT and RockYou. All three have seen … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, statistics | 1 Comment

AOL is #1

Posted on July 13, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

In my piece on Nielsen’s shift to time-on-site metrics, I mentioned the downsides of using a single metric. ZDNet has a follow on to the Nielsen story that explores this further. The shift in methodology puts AOL at the top … Continue reading →

Posted in statistics | Comments Off on AOL is #1

Nielsen tears up page view metrics

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Hallelujah! From the AP story on Nielsen’s move: A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected … Continue reading →

Posted in google, search, statistics, yahoo, YouTube | 1 Comment

Hard numbers on reader participation

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

With as much attention as user voting models (such as Digg), email to a friend links, etc., are getting, I’ve wondered what the ratio of passive vs. active consumers is. Having been in the business for 12 years, I know … Continue reading →

Posted in newspapers, statistics, web 2, web 2.0 | Comments Off on Hard numbers on reader participation

Fun with metrics

Posted on October 13, 2006 by Rakesh Agrawal

With AJAX, streaming video and other technologies making page views a less and less meaningful metric for Web businesses, Jeremy Zawodny asks what is the best metric for Web 2.0?There is no single metric that works across all sites. Of … Continue reading →

Posted in advertising, statistics, web 2, web 2.0 | Comments Off on Fun with metrics