Category Archives: statistics

Facebook drives 6MM people to Friendster!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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