The Analysis Exchange is OPEN TO EVERYONE

The Analysis Exchange is OPEN TO EVERYONE: "

Back in December of last year Aurelie, John, and I announced an idea we believe has the potential to change the web analytics industry forever, The Analysis Exchange. Briefly, the Analysis Exchange is a totally new approach towards web analytics training — one that depends less on what you read and more on what you do.

The Analysis Exchange lets experience web analysts demonstrate their passion for their work and gives beginners valuable “hands on” experience with data and real business problems. What’s more, the output from Analysis Exchange projects directly benefits some of the most amazing organizations around the globe — nonprofits and non-governmental groups who work not for money but for the betterment of humanity, our planet, and all creatures great and small.

You can read more about the origination of this effort in our blog posts and a very nice write up by our friend Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association:

• Announcing The Analysis Exchange


• Amazing response to The Analysis Exchange


• Nonprofits Profit from Web Analytics Volunteers

Since December we have been hard at work building out a web site and perfecting the business process that would be required to accomplish our core goals. What are those goals, you ask? Very, very simple … between now and June 1, 2011 we want to:

• Provide FREE analysis to 1,000 nonprofit organizations


• Provide FREE training and certification to 500 web analytics students


• Provide FREE certification and support to 150 web analytics experts

1,000/500/150 are the numbers that we will be living by, but we know we’re not living there alone. We know this because the initial response to The Analysis Exchange has been tremendous! In addition to the great stuff we learned in our first testing round we have had excellent feedback from nonprofits, mentors, and students alike.

I love what Amy Sample, Director of Web Analytics at PBS Interactive had to say:

“What I love about the Analysis Exchange is the learning is reciprocal. Not only is the student learning about analytics and giving back to the organization, but the organization is learning from the student as well. Many of our local PBS stations have little experience with Web Analytics. Through the Exchange, the stations are able to learn how to tackle analytics problems along with the student and how to make a lasting impact to their own organization.”

Cindy Olnick from the Los Angeles Conservancy had similar enthusiasm for her project:

“Joy’s a terrific mentor from what I can tell, and she and Danielle are great at translating all the numbers into information I can use. They’ve given me a report and will set up some new parameters in Google Analytics targeted to my goal of increasing membership.”

Todd Bullivant, one of our students said:

“It was a great way to end the week! Thanks again to everyone for the opportunity. I learned a lot about analytics that I can use in my own organization as well as future projects. I hope to work on many more of these in the future! I also just heard that my company is planning to spotlight me in the next internal newsletter due to this project, so increased visibility!”

Susie Hall, Director of Outreach and Enrollment at Acton School of Business said:

“The Analysis Exchange project was very enlightening for me as well. We found out some valuable information, and I’m excited to use this new-found knowledge to help shape our outreach efforts. This project could not have come at a better time, we are in the middle of changing pretty much all of our processes, so moving forward armed with such powerful information is invaluable. Andrew and Candace were lovely to work with, and I am very happy with the whole experience.”

One of our super-motivated students, Andrew Hall said:

“During the course of the project, I worked with almost every functionality of Analytics other than custom variables, got to understand how Adwords campaigns work, and learned the benefits of taking data from Analytics into an analysis software like Tableau to gain and communicate insights. Most importantly, I confirmed that I really enjoy doing this! I am waiting to hear back from a couple of jobs, but in the mean time I’ve decided the knowledge I now possess would be beneficial a lot of organizations. I feel confident enough to start approaching businesses and nonprofits in my community to get consulting work.”

By now I’m sure you get the picture, and our mentors have been having a great time as well. So much so that Joy Billings from Digitaria gave a positively glowing review of her work at the San Jose Emetrics, John Lovett’s student had her work go all the way to the CMO’s office at The Holocaust Museum, and Victor Acquah from Blue Analytics said:

“Just got off the presentation! Todd did such a great job with the analysis and presentation that it is hard to tell he hasn’t been in analytics for too long. Totally impressive output.”

We at Web Analytics Demystified have felt totally blessed to be part of the projects that have been going this far … but now is the time to take it to the next level: Starting with the publication of this blog post, The Analysis Exchange is open to all students, all mentors, and all qualifying organizations around the world.

If you haven’t already, please create an Analysis Exchange profile and join us in our effort to change web analytics forever. If you need more information first we have lots and lots of content including:

• An over-arching explanation of the effort


• Information about the benefits to students, mentors, and organizations


• A frequently asked questions document


• A growing body of information and documentation


• A map showing where many of our members are around the world

If you’re already in the Analysis Exchange and you want to help, please reach out to nonprofits you know and ask them to create a project so you can work with them. If you’re on Twitter, please use our short link (http://bit.ly/analysis-exchange) to help spread the news. If you’re a member of Web Analytics Wednesday, please consider mentioning the effort at your next meeting.

Finally, I want to offer a special “thank you” to Aurelie, John, Jim, Holly Ross, Beth Kanter, Sean Power, and each and every one of the mentors, students, and organizations who have helped us over the last five months. You are all amazing for contributing your time and energy to help make this effort run as smoothly as possible. Thank you!

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© 2010 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com



Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

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Everybody Can Ride the Faster, Easier Google Wave Now [Google]

Everybody Can Ride the Faster, Easier Google Wave Now [Google]: "

There's a lot of under-the-hood changes to Wave to make it faster, more stable and more extendable with new APIs, among other improvements, but the big news for most people is that now anybody can use it with their standard Google (or Google Apps) account—it's just going to live in Google Labs for the time being. [Wave] More »

HOW TO: Get Your Startup Featured on Mashable

HOW TO: Get Your Startup Featured on Mashable: "

Have you got a project cooking that you think is a certifiable winner? Well, tell us about, then! It’s no good basking in the glow of your own genius all by your lonesome. Each week day, Mashable features one startup that we think is truly stellar (take a look at our Spark of Genius channel for some examples of past coverage).

So what are we looking for? Basically, apps, websites, tools, software and programs that fit within one of our channels: social media, tech, entertainment, web video, mobile, etc. Specifically, you should stick to the following criteria. Your submission:

• Must be less than 3 years old

• Must never have received coverage on Mashable.com before

• Must have something to showcase to our readers (active site/product)

• Be generating less than U.S. $1 million in annual revenue

Additionally, if the site is in private beta or alpha, please provide our editors with access information, and ideally invite codes for our readers.

If you have a genius venture that does, indeed, meet these criteria, please jet on over here to apply.

image courtesy of iStockphoto, Neustockimages

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For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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Tags: mashable, startup

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Growth of Social media since 9/11

As we all remember that 9/11 is a date which will change the lives of not only Americans but the whole world. I would rather not go into how it changed America socially but the one thing which has changed since 9/11 is the internet.

I was browsing for some regular updates on my google reader and I found that what would social media(twitter, Facebook, mySpace, Orkut) responded to such an incident like 9/11. This article made me realize that we have come a long way from being internet users to being internet citizens. The tremendous growth in terms of broadband to the internet penetration all around the world but not only in america.

The term social media was not in existence when 9/11 took place. The forerunner of social networking sites friendster.com was the first on scene. Then Myspace came into picture, then began a revolution of websites which not only became an applications of social media but made internet users into internet socially relevant citizens

Happy Birthday Internet!!

On Internet 40th birthday I got this video which tell the complete story of the internet in 8mins

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

File sharing problem solved!!

I was reading a tech blogs and I found this post to the blog where the author of the blog has kinda provided a solution for the file sharing problem.

An open letter to the RIAA: Illegal file sharing problem solved?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:11 am

Dear the Recording Industry Association of America (the “RIAA”),

I know I’ve said some harsh things before, and to be honest, I still stick by them. The Family Guy musical sketch describing the characters’ opinions of the FCC could well be replicated here in view of your own organisation.

However, today I offer you a potential solution to the illegal file sharing problem that seems to have gripped the world stage.

In a nutshell, if you live in the United States and are caught downloading illegally, you can consider yourself already bankrupt, as the RIAA will sue you into the ground. However, under new legislation in the UK, instead of hefty fines, the Government could order your ISP to cut off your broadband connection.

This has annoyed the ISPs on this side of the pond because they claim while they provide the service, it is not their job to police how their customers use it.

The problem

I honestly believe that with the price of media at the moment, the vast majority of people would be content in buying media online - provided they could have it there and then in a download. The problem is that many popular items are simply not available online to buy. Granted, this has changed with the Amazon and iTunes wave of technologies and services,but it still isn’t up to scratch.

Also, the peer-to-peer technology and online file sharing is an open Pandora’s Box and now cannot be closed. You can attempt to take random people to court and financially send them back into the Stone Age, but you cannot convict everyone.

The recording and broadcasting industries must change to survive. You cannot sustain the business model you once had because the times have changed, along with the content delivery system and the generation of people.

The solution

In the UK, to effectively raise enough revenue to help roll out super-fast fibre-optic broadband, the Government added a £0.50 “tax” on top of every monthly phone bill. There are roughly 34 million landlines in the UK, so that will generate £17 million a month. Add another £1 to this and you’ll generate (an obvious) £34 million.

The UK’s equivalent to the RIAA is the PRS - the Performing Right Society. Every time a record is played on the radio, the royalties are paid by the radio station to the PRS, who then divide up all the money from that month (or other specified amount of time) and pass on the royalties to the artists. No doubt, this is what the RIAA does also.

So with the £34 million generated each month, the PRS can use the already-available technologies to see what is being downloaded, take some of the money for their own inconvenience and divide the rest up to content creators.

When using torrents, it’s clear to see when you are (or have) downloaded an episode of a popular TV series, so in that case, a small portion of the overall royalties can go back to the creators of the series.

The under-belly

A £1 tax a year sounds harsh to some members of the tax paying community. Over here, the very vast majority of us pay roughly £0.70 ayear on paying for the Royal Family which brings in huge revenues from tourists who, quite frankly, could be easily entertained by giving them a balloon on a stick instead. An extra £1 would generate huge revenues and the PRS would be able to do their job much more effectively.

Of course, the numbers can be interchangeable but with a greater population and exchange rate differences, $1 should suffice.

The system works, in a way, very much like the UK’s National Health Service. We all chip in pretty much the same amount of money through taxes, but as you would expect, some people need more treatment than others. Here, we don’t mind doing that because if we switched to the American system then a good proportion of the country simply couldn’t afford medical treatment - even in an emergency.

In conclusion

But because we live in the digital age that we do - we cannot be waiting around for months at a time for the latest Harry Potter film to be released to DVD. So we search alternative sources and download it illegally. Release the online download as soon as the film is out, and then we can buy and watch it there and then. You won’t be losing out in revenue, because at least this way you

a) won’t have people downloading it for free, and

b) when those people are caught, you’re not spending tens of thousands of dollars bringing them to court.

This is why cable companies are bringing popular U.S. television shows to other countries as and when they are broadcast in the U.S. You can’t have a programme floating around the Internet for half a year and expect people to wait patiently until it arrives in their region. No, they’ll turn to the weband they’ll download it for free.

It makes sense, and everybody wins - so do something about it.

Kind regards,

Zack Whittaker
Contributing writer, iGeneration, ZDNet

I totally agree with the idea that revenue should be generated from the internet consumer in such as business model which would create an win-win situation for all.

For Eg.. The movie kaminey... http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=kaminey&cat=0

has a many torrents for it and each torrent on an average has 1000 downloads over it. The practical solution for the problem would be charging a fee for the ISP say 100rs per month. Wont it generate a huge income for the producers, ISP and the government considering the number of downloads of hindi movies per month and considering the number of internet users.

Zack Whittaker has provided an ideal solution for the whole piracy and file sharing problems. Cheers!!

Apple`s New iTab

Apple announced that it will develop a tablet pc which can be called as iTab. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, who founded the company in 1981and who currently had an liver transplant operation, is now pouring all its attention to this new iTab project. Steve Jobs for the past few years have introduced us many products such as ipod, MiniMac, OSX etc... Come September 9, he will introduce us with this new product which would be described in one word.."Awesome".

Even though other blog and techie sites have assumed many things. Some have tried to make an assumption that it maybe a multitouch computing tablet.Hackers at DIY has tried to hack Mac and made them in Mac Tablet. I certainly feel that Apple and Steve jobs has the capacity and innovative thinking to think beyond just making an MacBook Laptop into a multitouch tablet like PC.

According to me, I would say that ITab would be as thin as Macbook air, not only with the multitouch functionality but with many new innovations. These innovation may result into the death of the keyboard and mouse.

To end the surprise, we would have to wait till September 9, where this iTab will be unveiled.