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  • A serious Alexa competitor?

    Greg Sterling at Search Engine Journal points to Compete’s Snapshot, a new service offering Alexa like stats. From what I can gather the company compares itself more to comScore in it’s methodology, promoting the service as the “First premium web metrics tool made available for free”. The stats come from over 2 million users of the Compete Toolbar, so the data gathering is similar to Alexa’s, however they are primarily focused on the US market, where as Alexa looks at traffic worldwide.

    Question is I guess: are the figures any good?

    My gut feeling after plonking in a few sites is that they are as nearly as good as Alexa’s figures, with the proviso that Alexa’s figures are at best questionable. You get the visitor figures for a month, not daily like Alexa, but the actual data itself is fairly rich including uniques, a rank, page views per visit and time spent on the site. However despite the service playing up it’s advantages over Alexa in the FAQ, I don’t think it’s anywhere near being an Alexa killer yet. People like the up to date stats in Alexa where as monthly stats from Snapshot are sort of nice, but certainly isn’t going to drive demand to the site when you see the same figures for the whole month. And yet, competition is always healthy, so best of luck to the team at Snapshot.

     

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  • TPN and News hook up

    Congrats to Cam on the news that TPN and News Corp have hooked up to produce a celebrity podcast for news.com.au, one of Australia’s leading online news sites. Nice to see Australian companies looking at doing deals like this, now if only they’d get their chequebooks out and fund TPN so we can keep it here in Australia instead of losing it to the States.

  • Yahoo! to buy AOL?

    Fortune reports that Yahoo! is in talks with Time Warner to acquire AOL. Naturally it makes business sense but every time one of the bigger companies are gobbled up, that’s one less major site/ competitor out there, and further consolidates internet traffic at the top. OK, so we all know the barrier to entry onto the web is low, but every day it gets harder and harder, indeed even impossible to start a new service that would seriously be able to compete with the existing players. Where as Google came around at the right time, there probably will never be another Google, baring some magical technology advance, and given Google is still the leader in search the chances of someone else coming up with it is next to zero.

  • Will the person asking “do you want fries with that” be in India?

    FortWayne.com reports on the rise in the use of call centres to take orders at fast food outlets. At the moment they (the call centres) are in the same town, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that if your using a call centre to take an order in a drive thru line it’s only a matter of time til you’ll be ordering a Big Mac via a call centre in India, even if you’re sitting in your car in Western Australia, the United States, or even timbuktu.

  • TechCrunch Party wait list open

    Mike Arrington with the good news for those who cant get a ticket. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say from who, but I managed to get a ticket so I’ll be in NY on the 16th. My first trip to the States as well, and all for a tech party, so here’s hoping it’s all good, which I’m sure it will be. Given there will now be 2 parties and if you’re chasing a ticket, I’d sign up to the waiting list quick smart.

    I’m particularly looking forward to meeting some of the event’s sponsors, Blog Talk Radio would be top of the list: I still think it’s a facinating idea, Right Media with their ad auction service should be of interest, plus obviously some of the other Web 2.0 startups, both from a personal interest perspective and looking at some of the services on offer in relation to what we are doing at b5media. Of course did I forget to mention the opportunity to meet some great Web 2.0 people in the Capital of the free world?! fun, fun.

     

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  • Leaving the United States?

    This Slashdot comment thread is probably one of the more interesting reads I’ve had lately…altough be warned, to read it all takes quite some time. As one commenter noted, it’s nice not to see just another flamewar but some interesting discussion.

  • Chaser Classic Clips: dumb Americans

    For RSS readers there’s video below:

     

  • Free cards!

    Darren has the details at Problogger, but there doesn’t seem to be the usual we only send to the States b.s. you get with a lot of these offers. I’ve just ordered mine. As a concept though they are rather cool, it will be interesting to see the quality once they’re delivered.

  • Freedom is fickle: the national disgrace of press freedom, or the lack there of

    Australia comes in 35th on RSF’s freedom of the press list behind countries including Ghana, Lithuania, Bosnia, Cyprus and even New Zealand. It’s a complete and utter national disgrace, but not surprising really, our Federal Government jails journalists for not revealing their sources, video bloggers will shortly potentially need to be licensed to do video online, and libel laws are headed in the wrong direction in terms of the publics right to know. We should be top of this list! Of course, you won’t read much about it in the MSM either, after all, we all know about the great relationships our media owners have with the Government. It really is a sad day when you realise that your own country isn’t as free as it once was, nor should be.

  • A slippery slope?

    TechDirt on Weblogs Inc vs Newsgator. My natural inclination (dare I say once again) is to side with Jason Calacanis on this, however Mike does make an interesting point. It’s an issue I still struggle with when it comes to full vs part feeds..how do you actually measure the return on these sorts of things, presuming there is one.

     

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