One thing you can do with Google Analytics is compare the references your web site gets from different sources. This installment in my Learning Google Analytics series compares one weeks' visits referred from Google itself (e.g., from searches on Google that resulted in someone linking to my web site All Kind Food) with one one-week's visits that were referred from one particular web site where I had left comments and a link back here on a blog entry.
J. Alex Halderman and Edward W. Felten have published their "Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode" after an open and collaborative publishing and review cycle on their Freedom to Tinker blog. In my review I've tried to hit what I think are the high points. I recommend the entire paper to anyone interested in the complex relationship between the music business and technology given continued erosion of the music CD's market viability.
On of my favorite blogs, Fashion Incubator, has an interesting post about "best practices" (she calls it "standard work") applied to manufacturing in the clothing and fashion industries.
I'm a member of the Linkedin professional networking group. I've found it to be quite helpful in making connections with new friends and colleagues around the world. While most of the features of the network are available and visible on the web to members only, Linkedin recently added a feature whereby the internal Linkedin member profile can be displayed publicly on the web. Here's a public view of my own profile:
If I write something that is likely to be changed by the distribution system or by the actions of collaborating authors, what do I own? What if, when I write a blog article I come back and regularly change, update, and correct the original, and add comments? Do I have a way of knowing if people who read the original will know that I've made corrections or changes? These are difficuly questions, and one way to help answer them is to develop registration systems to help identify and describe works and their owners (or creators).
Part of the evolving Web 2.0 environment is the collection and redistribution of original content and conversations as well as meta-information (tags etc.) relating to that content. What we are seeing are not only the easy creation of online content and media but also the sharing of that content and associated information and conversations. Functions such as aggregation of feeds and mash-up of application services are examples of operations that take place where original content and functionality may be combined and recombined in new, unique, and potentially powerful ways. We need to make sure, though, that in the process we don't destroy the integrity of the intellectual property we now find it so easy to copy and manipulate.
In looking at Google Analytics data I have seen that about half of all visitors came to my web site All Kind Food via the main page (which I call “Recent Postings”) and half come directly to other pages. One question that arises is, what do people do before and after they go to a specific page on my web site?
In the downloadable MP3 audio file Google vs. Uncle Sam, Martin McKeay, Dan Sweet, and I talk about the U.S. government's request for search information from Google. (This is a Podcast Roundtable podcast.)
Collaborative Deconstruction of DRM
There's a terrific series of articles and comments over at Freedom to Tinker that involves the authors' pre-publication of a detailed analysis of DRM technology. Some of the stuff is pretty technical, but if you take the time, you'll be impressed with the analysis and with the many intelligent comments that are being left (I left one, for example!)
While there is nothing new about the concept of peer review this project is a very serious use of "web 2.0" technologies in service of a very important societal function, i.e., patent review.
Recent events have pointed out how differently these two companies operate.
No sooner have we grown accustomed to the horrible “Web 2.0” moniker (I plead guilty) than Office 2.0 arrives.
In looking over the recent usage data for this site I decided again to look at individual page counts. Google Analytics offers several, including “visits,” “page views,” average time spent on each page, percent of times visitors exited the site from this page (as opposed to going somewhere else in the site), and something called “$ Index” which refers to the accomplishment of a specific type of transaction.
What Kind of a Project Manager is King Kong?
I’ve seen the new King Kong movie twice so far and I intend to see it again. I love movies, I love writing about movies, and on occasion, I even enjoy reading about movies. King Kong, in my opinion, is just about as good and as visceral a cinematic experience as one can hope for. It presses all the right buttons, it’s exciting, funny, scary, and touching, sometimes all at the same time. But that’s not why I’m writing this.
Jeremiah Owyang and I recently co-authored a “white paper” titled “Business and I.T. Must Work Together to Manage New ‘Web 2.0’ Tools.” For joint authoring we used the “Writeboard” web based collaborative authoring system. This article describes our experience.
Significant opportunities to meet market and customer needs are emerging as corporations harness the next generation of “Web 2.0” tools and applications. Many business units recognize this and want to move quickly. But are corporate I.T. (Information Technology) departments ready — and willing — to provide the needed support?
This article discusses how business units and corporate I.T. departments can work together to leverage emerging “Web 2.0” applications.
A couple of weeks ago I signed up for the free Google Analytics service. This free Google service tracks web site usage including frequency, type, and source of visits, as well as behavior of visitors after they come to a site’s initial web page. I figured that, if Google was going to be knowing everything about my site in order to help it calculate advertising rates, I should at least take advantage of the data.
For a given technology-based application, system, or service, it's critical for a company to define who owns and is responsible for developing, managing, and running it. Failure to do so can result in "orphan" applications and systems that sit uncomfortably between business and IT, all the while consuming resources (storage space, updates, maintenance, communication costs, infrastructure costs, governance costs, etc.). Even blogs and podcasts can turn into "orphan applications" if we're not careful.
Small web publishers have to work hard to create a coherent web identity. Editorial policy, content, appearance, frequency, and a host of other variables have to be managed successfully in order to establish and maintain market presence and exposure. Heck, just deciphering the meaning of Google Analytics is challenge enough.
You’d think that larger, established names have it made; they can generate significant page traffic and advertising revenue, and they can attract indexing, referrals, and links at a frequency and rate that smaller publishers envy.
Well, it’s not necessarily rosy at the top.
There are a couple of interesting discussion threads going on over at the Freedom to Tinker blog. One is called Not Just Another Buggy Program, the other CD Copy Protection: The Road to Spyware. I reproduce one of my comments below, but I suggest interested readers check out the entire threads if you're interested in some of the business and strategic aspects of what Sony is doing.