Eric Peterson wrote yesterday about the coming revolution in web analytics. It’s worth a read and it sparked off a lengthy twitter exchange. I think we have a huge talent supply problem in the web analytics industry. Web analysts are very specialized in terms of their understanding of the Internet, websites, tracking technologies and reporting methodologies. And necessarily so. There really aren’t that many of them. Sure, there are plenty of people who have Google Analytics on their blog. And I’m glad that they do. It’s great to have so many people interested in Web Analytics. But there’s a gap between the interpretation and the turning of that data into actionable insight. In fact, many of the things that look[…]
Author: Christopher Berry
I’m on the final chapter of what has been a very difficult read: “Language and Human Behavior” by Bickerton. He tackles some very difficult concepts in a clear cut way, with frequent deep dives into certain pockets of goodness. It’s hard read because it’s very dense, and perhaps I’m not horribly familiar with the subject matter. The material in there about consciousness and the notions of On-Line thinking and Off-Line thinking are driving this post. I haven’t figured out a way of expressing the differences in one paragraph or less without Bickerton finding out and reaming me out for getting it not quite right. Into the meat of the post: I frequently draw the line between observed behavior and reported[…]
There’s a review up on the Web Analytics Association’s website on modeling the determinants of creativity in advertising. I think Smith and MacKenzie et al did a good job on the paper. The term ‘creative’ is completely loaded. After all, isn’t it all subjective? In our defense, even as web analysts, we often try to quantify the subjective all the time. The feeling thermometer and the probability map are two ways that we’ve tried to quantify feelings and prospection. Even the concept of satisfaction, when operationalized through a survey methodology, is subjective. Just because a concept is subjective doesn’t mean that we throw up our hands and walk away. Rather, we should be always trying to improve how we ask[…]
I read the first 120 pages of Joseph Carrabis’ new book “Reading Virtual Minds Volume 1” last night and polished it off this morning while sitting at the airport. The book certainly forced me to think about being really aware of being aware of how hard I was thinking. I was engaged the whole way though, and in the end, I asked “wholly shit, what just happened there?” I spent the better part of the night dreaming about it (always a sign that something upstairs is getting restructured). I’ll write about the experience without spoiling it for you. Joseph tells the story about how NeuroCognitivePsychoLingualAnthropology came to be. In spite of how long that word is, the book is very[…]
A tight group of friends will tend to overlap in terms of product adoption and preferences. Like people clump alike. I hypothesize that the social graph is partially-fractal. I use the word ‘hypothesize’ because I don’t have the technology to prove it. Moreover, at this point, I don’t think I could write the proof to prove that it’s partially-fractal. By fractal, I mean that at the most basic level, the individual with a circle of friends, they’re all alike. If you zoom out, treating each group as though it’s a person, they’re all linked together in a similar way, and if you zoom out again, treating each groups of groups…the structure is the same. In other words, the further you[…]
Jim Novo wrote a Web Analytics Association Review on Firm Created Word Of Mouth. I strongly recommend the read. Although the paper was published in the most recent edition of Marketing Science, it was based on findings that span four decades. The first finding reaffirms the ‘strength of weak links’ hypothesis. Let me explain: Like people tend to clump, alike. Among my friends, more than half own iPhones with occupations centering on technology and the Internet and most have roles that are heavily steeped in data. Three quarters would be classified by Forrester as being Tech Optimists and Creators. A majority live in the inner city. Not everybody in my circle are uniformly this way: I used the word ‘more[…]
It’s been a busy week in the world of social media measurement, or social analytics, as I like to call it. Anna O’Brien, Marketing Science analyst extraordinaire, wrote a very good post on the topic. Her primary point, enough with the phony people, is polarizing and necessary. The secondary point: social monitoring is not social measuring is also apt and important. My interests like in the measurement side: content analytics and metric analytics. There’s a lot of utility there. A few months ago Joseph Carrabis did a very interesting sentiment analysis on Zappos’ twitter stream. “Tone optimization” will no doubt end up being a major offering sooner rather than later. Let me explain. Optimizing a web campaign can be very[…]
I had the good enough fortune to talk with Stephane Hamel, a director of the Web Analytics Association, and Andrea Hadley of eMetrics last Friday while at IMC in Vancouver. As usual with any conference – the really interesting conversations happen in the lobby during the day. Andrea, being the super-networker she is, got me into talking with Stephane about the Research Committee, and fast tracking was to be had. We also talked about the diverse audiences involved in any industry, and how to try to serve each group really well at a conference. There are experts, newcommers, and vendors/consultants. Vendors want to sell, newcommers want to learn, and experts want to talk to each other and recruit talent. eMetrics[…]
My initial feedback: YO #OMNITURE I NO U JUST MERGED AND ALL N IMMA LET U FINISH BUT SPSS’S MERGER WAS THE BEST ONE THIS YEAR – Kanye West So what does Adobe really get for its 1.8 billion? A company in the top 5 of web analytics tools providers for one. A great client base for sure. But there’s a black lining to that white cloud. Even with a client list that most analytics companies dream about – Omniture is hemorrhaging money. Even with strong revenue growth, it hasn’t been able to make marginal profit on that growth. It should just confirm what all honest practitioners admit at a Web Analytics Wednesday: the software is frakencode that’s a time[…]
I’ll confess that one of my favourite lolcats is Skeptical Cat is Fraught with Skepticism. Look deep into that expression. The cat really does look skeptical, doesn’t he? He’s not believing a single word you’re thinking right now. There’s also something about that orange background that makes the expression and the entire image that much funnier. I don’t know what it is about it. But I’m aware of the effect. I think anthropologists have a term for the tendency of humans to superimpose human emotions onto animals – which there is no evidence that an animal actually feels. I can’t remember the term, but it’s funny as hell that we all do it. The reason I bring this is all[…]