Not sure what that has to do with counting IP addresses (the number I gave that most any dopey stats program can handle) but I'm sure you absorbed that tidbit of useless knowledge on a forum somewhere and have been dying for a chance to spew it out.

If you want to add value to the conversation, here are the dreaded awstats and, as a bonus, a little vintage Battelle talking about them. I look forward to further apples to orange analysis from you.

http://www.boingboing.net/stats/

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/04/boingboing_traffic_s....

meanguy

And Nick has his facts wrong.

Comscore has Federated's worldwide uniques at almost 11mm in October.

Nick's data in the post is US audience only.

Fred

fredwilson

anyone who buys into such a flawed methodology gets exactly the level of accuracy they pay for. comscore sucks.

sample_my_taint

To get the real number, something that SiteMeter would give you, you have to divide awstats by 5-10 or so...

ScalaWag

I tend to believe both these numbers. So the claim really comes down to how many people are using Digg and I think Battelle got caught up in that nonsense. I'd imagine the conversation at Digg Central might have gone something like this:

"Kevin? Here boy, sit down. Have a biscuit.

Here's the good news: your personal share of the
Federated Media money -- even after we deduct the
beer expenses and the cost of having the corporate
furniture de-loused after the Micki Krimmel incident --
still averages $21,000 a month.

The bad news? Well, the statistical dickwaving required
to close those ad deals pretty much means you have no
credibility and can never sell the company or involve
yourself in any media-related venture, ever.

Aw, little fella, don't cry. Have another pumpkin beer."

meanguy

Now when someone says "unique readers" it starts to become meaningless, because you should either say "page views" or "unique visits", and when you say unique visits then you might wanna add how you count 'em (e.g. "same IP within 30 minutes range").
I sit on my stats, and it's absolutely impossible for me to find out how many different people I'm reaching with my writing. Some of these blog posts are copied on other networks (I use a Creative Commons license), the RSS reader completely hides the number of views, someone looking at the frontpage may read 1 post or 20 or none at all and move on to the blog's forum, the same person will have a dynamic IP and thus not be recognized as such, and so on and so forth.

Philipp Lenssen

Yeah, that was definitely the low hanging fruit.

Randall

We're in frequent dialog with the Comscore gang (and have recently become paying customers!) in an effort to find a better alternative to server logs when we talk about the aggregate reach across our family of sites. But we're still not satisfied with the data. In a chat with Gian and Magid at Comscore earlier this month, even they admitted that accurate measurement of small sites (or even large sites like Digg and Boing Boing, which skew towards tech savvy young men) is a code that hasn't yet been cracked by anyone. I'm sure Comscore will eventually get this figured out, and we're doing all we can to help them.

It will be a great day for all of us when the audit firms get this right -- and capture the reality that upscale, web savvy consumers are gravitating toward Gawker, Gizmodo, Digg, Boing Boing, Dooce and others, instead of the traditional favorites from a decade ago!

Nick Denton

As an author I literally do nothing but say yes or no to quality advertisers that they bring to me and collect checks. I don't even have to place the ads in my template. Their team does everything.

The website they use to track my ads works very very well and they provide tons of support and other tools include good author forums and feedback on how to make my blog better.

John Battelle's done a great job with the network. I've been very happy working with them over the course of the past 6 months or so.

Thomas Hawk

MATIC

http://valleywag.com/index.xml is equally bereft

KevinMarks