Wednesday May 25, 2005

Tagophiles vs. Logophiles I might as well come out early and state my biases on the topic of page tags vs. log files. 

The more measured among us (yes, the pun is intended) accept the reality that both measurement approaches have their pros and cons, and that any business needs to evaluate its particular situation to decide which approach will work best for them.  And indeed there are now hybrid tools available that leverage both methods to give a more comprehensive view.

For a great, unbiased discussion on this topic see Brian's paper from Omega Digital Media.

But when you hear some of the almost religious enthusiasm that often occurs when making this comparison, I wonder if deep down inside everyone isn't truly a "tagophile" or a "logophile", and the wise just try to show a sensible facade.

Me frankly, I'm more of a logophobe than anything.  Previous experiences with log file crunchers have given me the scars to justify it. 

But  ask me again in a year or two and by then I might have changed my mind.
( May 25 2005, 08:30:34 AM MDT ) Permalink Comments [6]

Monday May 23, 2005

Please allow me to introduce myself... It seems customary to introduce one's self at the beginning of a blog.  

I'm a Senior eMetrics Analyst at Sun and have been doing this as a full time job for about five years now.  I'm a scientist by training and prior to coming to Sun I did university research in chemistry, and then worked in the disk drive business as a manufacturing engineer and manager.  

What chemical research has to do with Web Analytics is a good question.  I wonder myself.  The answer is nothing, except that both disciplines are based on understanding data generated by a machine that measures what a system of things (molecules or people) are doing.  That's the best I've been able to come up with.

At Sun I'm part of the Corporate Web Design and Usability team so my purview is across all of Sun's vast Web presence, which is like a mini World Wide Web in itself.  As a result I don't have the limitation (or would that actually be a luxury?) of having to understand just ecommerce analytics, or just lead generation, or just service delivery, or just community development, or just search engine optimization, or just, well, you get the idea.  

This diversity of challenges drives me to want to blog it out of my system.

I can't help but hope that after 10,000 hours of thinking about and doing Web Analytics (see, I *am* a numbers guy) that maybe I've learned something worth sharing with the world.

Then again, maybe not.  I guess we'll see.

( May 23 2005, 08:52:27 PM MDT ) Permalink Comments [2]