Web Analytics Must Catch Up to the Internet

For many marketers, much of the early excitement about the Internet came from the prospect of being able to track everything they wanted to know about their customers. This was particularly important during the first Internet Bubble in the late 1990s, when visitors, more than revenue, were key to so many business plans.

The changes in the Web analytics industry over time are a mirror of how the overall Internet has evolved. And it’s time for another spurt of growth.

Read the full story at Internet Evolution.

Woopra – Affordable Real Time Web Analytics

Woopra, yet another a hosted analytics service, today announced that they are opening their doors for new signups. Until today, you needed a sought after invite code to test out this new service.  Woopra is similar to Google Analytics but provides real time stats and a number of additional features such as the ability to chat real time with visitors to the site. A number of these features are ideal for small to small to medium size blogs.

Woopra is split into two services, a desktop client program and the traditional for web analytics, web server application. Woopra radically decreases the load on network resources by using the power of your desktop to process and  display graphic charts, graphics, and analysis.

Check out the full post at Blogging Tips.

500 years of Newspapers – How many years of blogs?

While the blogging “industry” is still in it’s infancy, I wonder if the blogosphere will have the lifespan of a giant tortoise at close to 200 years in captivity or the less than a decade lifespan of the Betamax videocassette.  Will blogs continue to evolve or will they one day follow the newspapers into the world of cold and harsh oblivion>?

Let’s briefly consider the life spans of the newspaper and the blog to begin to look towards the future.

The Roots of Blogging

While there there is no official start date for the blogging revolution, the earliest form of blogging dates back to 1997.  On December 17th 1997, Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog” when he described the list of links on his Robot Wisdom website that “logged” all the Internet sites he visited.  Then in October of 1998, Open Diary launched with software to make reader commenting available to a wide audience.  The software continued to develop and in 2003, with the release of both TypePad and WordPress, blogging began to explode.

Check out the entire blog here at Blogging Tips.

Bedside Blogging – CarePages

Some people blog looking for fame.  Other bloggers are searching for their fortune.  This week I was introduced to a new universe of bloggers – those who blog for support and help as they struggle with a more basic need – the need to be healthy.  CarePages is an online community of millions of people coming together to share the challenges, hopes and triumphs of anyone facing a life changing health event.

I was introduced to CarePages this week by a friend who is in the hospital dealing with a number of side effects from Diabetes.   Upon receiving an invitation to join his blog on CarePages, I signed onto CarePages and within moments I was reading about his situation.  As the nurses gave him updates, he posted the news and when he was released I found out about it via an email from CarePages letting me know about a new posting on his CarePages blog.

Check out the full story here at Blogging Tips

Chart your way to readable blogs

A few weeks ago I was writing a blog that was chock full of data.  I quickly realized that my blog post would be more efficient if I could display some of the data in a graph instead of text.  While once upon a time I used Microsoft Excel to create charts, that was many moons ago.  However, a quick search showed me that Web 2.0 has created a wide range of charting tools that allow even a charting novice to quickly create professional quality charts for their blog.

Check out these great charting tools at Blogging Tips