Valleywag
stats
Posts Tagged “Stats”
Who needs users when you have PR?
A Forbes article estimates the number of Twitter users at 80,000. The story does not note the number of news articles mentioning Twitter in Google's database: 10,800. [Forbes]
A Forbes article estimates the number of Twitter users at 80,000. The story does not note the number of news articles mentioning Twitter in Google's database: 10,800. [Forbes]
Slow-motion newspaper-industry death continues
Newspaper readership, long resilient, is now clearly dropping. Paid circulation from September 2007 to March 2008 dropped 3.6 percent from the similar period a year ago; Sunday circulation dropped 4.6 percent. [Reuters]
Newspaper readership, long resilient, is now clearly dropping. Paid circulation from September 2007 to March 2008 dropped 3.6 percent from the similar period a year ago; Sunday circulation dropped 4.6 percent. [Reuters]
bubble 2.0
Are VCs fleeing the Web? Yes and no
Most venture capitalists are adept followers of the herd. As such, their investments are best seen as trailing indicators — the financial detritus of events past, rather than predictors of what to come. Is there a bubble in Web startups? The numbers themselves are as confused as investors. Dow Jones says the first quarter saw a record $1.58 billion in venture capital invested in Internet companies. Thomson Reuters says its figure of $1.3 billion was down 7 percent from the fourth quarter. Data about VC investments is hard to obtain, and the two categorize companies differently. Anecdotally, it's clear that smart VCs have stopped funding every new social-media website and online-ad network that cross their desks. But the Valley remains awash in dumb money that has yet to be called home. The popping of this bubble will take more than a quarter's time.
acquisitions
2,000 Microsoft fans convince Steve Ballmer no one uses Yahoo search
Speaking to a crowd of nearly 2,000 at a technology conference in Seattle yesterday, Steve Ballmer asked how many in the audience used Yahoo search. "Only a handful of hands went up," reports Reuters. Fewer, in fact than went up when he asked who used Microsoft Live. Taken aback, Ballmer responded: "Wow! We offered 31 bucks a share." In March, 59.8 percent of all U.S. searches went through Google, 21.3 percent through Yahoo, and 9.4 percent through Microsoft, according to ComScore.
stats
ComScore plays Google whipping boy, but Web statistics firm actually saved search giant's bacon
In February, ComScore reported underwhelming growth in clicks on Google ads in the U.S. Google shares sank below a 52-week low for the first time in the company's history. Then, yesterday, Google reported 42 percent year-over-year revenue growth, surpassing expectations. Burned, Wall Street traders reacted harshly toward ComScore, dropping the company's shares by 8.4 percent after hours. Today, ComScore wants to remind the world that it never said Google's revenues would sink and that it only measures clicks on Google ads in the U.S., not internationally But really, Google investors owe ComScore a large debt. More »
stats
Alexa introduces slightly less inaccurate website rankings
Alexa, the Internet-traffic measurement site owned by Amazon.com, has revamped its famously inaccurate rankings. Its argument for why website visitors and publishers should trust it now? Because it says so — a claim likely as trustworthy as its old rankings. [Alexa.com]
Lies, damn lies, and RSS subscriber figures
Google prides itself on running its business by the numbers. But its FeedBurner unit, which tracks subscribers to RSS feeds, has laughably inaccurate numbers, writes venture capitalist and blogger Brad Feld. One out of six of his 117,000 RSS subscribers come from automated signups, he believes; those users rarely if ever read his blog. [Feld Thoughts]
Google prides itself on running its business by the numbers. But its FeedBurner unit, which tracks subscribers to RSS feeds, has laughably inaccurate numbers, writes venture capitalist and blogger Brad Feld. One out of six of his 117,000 RSS subscribers come from automated signups, he believes; those users rarely if ever read his blog. [Feld Thoughts]
great moments in pr
Brooke Hammerling, online-video PR rep, weighs in on online-video audience debate
BrewPR's snacky flack Brooke Hammerling penned a guest column for Silicon Alley Insider, arguing that the Web video industry needs to come up with a strict viewership metric. Though she doesn't mention it in the piece, New York-based online-video startup NextNewNetworks is a Brew client. (It's disclosed, in tiny type, at the end.) We could ask why Henry Blodget is giving a self-interested company rep a soapbox, or why they couldn't fix the red eye in Hammerling's photo. But the real question is why Hammerling suddenly cares about online video analytics. More »
online video
YouTube's U.S. video share now bigger than Google's search share, but profit eludes it
The latest data from Hitwise shows YouTube claiming over 73 percent of the online video market in the United States — a larger share in its home market than even its parent compan, Google, enjoys in search. That figure is up 18 percentage points over March of last year, when YouTube had 55 percent of the market. Problem is, these numbers represent significant growth in viewership, but not growth in advertising sales or revenue, leaving Google on the hook for ever-expanding bandwidth costs.
Michael Arrington, Pete Cashmore puff up egos, traffic
At last night's PopSugar-TechCrunch party, I hadn't hoped to become part of the story, but LA Times reporter David Sarno suggested Arrington's 86ing of my date inspired Mashable's Pete Cashmore to invent a story about his own ouster. I don't know whether there's anything to Sarno's theory. But I do know this: Cashmore and Arrington are full of it if they think either of their operations are "top 10 blogs." (Photo by Robert Scoble)
stats
The Internet has elected Obama president
In the real world, politics are complicated. On the Web, things seem reassuringly simple, though. Take the Democratic campaign: Polls show Barack Obama ahead, but he doesn't have the necessary delegates to force Hillary Clinton to drop out. Web-traffic analyst Matt Pace of Compete.com believes he has the internet traffic stats to prove that Obama is a shoo-in. More »
stats
The fall of Drudge is greatly exaggerated
Is the Drudge Report shrinking? One blog thinks so, and cites Alexa data — by far the most inaccurate of the website-measurement sites — to prove it. Is Drudge shrinking? No, but it also isn't growing as fast as some other sites, including the 3-year old Huffington Post. HuffPo has certainly grown its readership, recently passing 3 million unique visitors per month. But where it really matters — total visits and daily uniques, the number of people who come back every day — Drudge continues to dominate. All the more impressive, since Drudge maintains a tiny two-person staff, while HuffPo's fills a SoHo office. The sites compared by (more accurate) numbers: More »
What's good for Amazon.com is good for the country
Recession or no, online retail sales are expected to increase 17 percent to reach a record $204 billion in 2008, making up 7 percent of all retail. [WSJ]
Recession or no, online retail sales are expected to increase 17 percent to reach a record $204 billion in 2008, making up 7 percent of all retail. [WSJ]
housekeeping
Where to find our stats
Valleywag publisher Nick Denton likes to boast that our traffic statistics are published for anyone to peruse. As a former user interface developer, I'm painfully aware that we've made it impossible to find them. Here are the hot links to two of our three separate site statistics feeds. Thank God the numbers don't add up, or I'd really doubt them. More »
mahalo
Calacanis reveals journalist roots with extra-clever math
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is an entrepreneur now, but back in the 1990s, he ran a publication called Silicon Alley Reporter. And sometimes, his journalist roots show. Like during this recent interview with The Deal when Calacanis explained who uses Mahalo. Seems 80 percent come from one place and 80 percent from another. Watch for when reporter Mary Kathleen Flynn nods in a big way, as if to say, "Makes perfect sense to me."When people come to the site, I think its it's probably 80 percent the use case of Wikipedia and 80 percent the use case of a traditional search engine like Yahoo or Google.Below, Calacanis explains the perfect sense of his figuring. Those prone to motion sickness should proceed with caution. More »
online advertising
Google tests video ads against search results
Last summer, metrics firm IQ Report said that after watching a Web video ad, as many as 45 percent of viewers enacted some sort of measurable response. A full 31 percent actually later went to the advertised company's website. Maybe that's why Google is testing placing video ads on its search results. Full screenshot of what the video ads will look like, below. More »
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