The Inquisitr » centernetworks

4% of Hubdub users think The Inquisitr will be acquired next (50% think it’s some other blog)

Duncan Riley — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:12:36 +0000

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what is this?

Which Blog Will Be Next To Be Acquired?

% chance over time

TechCrunch

VentureBeat

Silicon Alley Insider

GigaOm

Mashable

ReadWriteWeb

ValleyWag

Center Networks

Boing Boing

The Inquisitr

Get this widget

Hubdub – The News Prediction Game

Online predictions market Hubdub has opened up a market on which blog will be acquired next after the news of PaidContent being acquired by The Guardian broke Friday.

Based on a report from Kara Swisher, one blog is out in front with a 50% rating. Nigel over at Hubdub though tells me that the smart money is on VentureBeat. Users rank the chances of The Inquisitr being acquired at the same level as ReadWriteWeb and Centernetworks, so we’re in good company.

Full details in the widget above, or if you’d like to make your prediction, visit Hubdub here.

Hubdub

Interesting Things Learned From Google Trends

Duncan Riley — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:51:07 +0000

Now that Google has entered the Alexa space with Google Trends for Websites, the general public has some access to hidden traffic data from Google’s vaults. The service get its numbers from a combination of sources including search traffic, anonymous Google Analytics figures and other third party marketing data.

The emphasis is mine, but the Google Analytics figures are critical here.Google Analytics is widely used by many sites, so in theory these figures in the mix should deliver reasonable results based on fact.

So what can you learn from Google Trends for Websites?

Omnidrive joined the deadpool in January

Despite Nik from Omnidrive claiming that May was a record month for Omnidrive, Google Trends shows the site flatlined in January. I checked the front page of Omnidrive: the service is using Google Analytics, so if there was any traffic it would be on this graph.

Propeller is now the number two social voting site.

Propeller (formerly Netscape) moved ahead of Reddit in April for the first time, giving Propeller the number two spot in the social voting space. New comer Mixx is still a fair way behind, but is growing well. If you’re wondering why Digg isn’t in the chart, it’s because including Digg squashes the other lines flat.

Silicon Alley Insider is growing faster than the competition

If you take the two market leaders, TechCrunch and Mashable out of the equation, and look at the next biggest startup/ web 2.0 blogs, Silicon Alley Insider is growing the fastest.

People stopped using Megite. All at once

This could be a quirk in terms of the chart (maybe they stopped using Google Analytics?) but for a short time Megite was more popular than Techmeme, then the traffic stopped. Completely stopped. Tailrank is also showing no traffic as of mid April. Deadpool time perhaps?

Digg is more popular than the Australian Press

User generated content hating Australian journalists (not all journos, but some of them) should suck on this chart

Twitter may have officially jumped the shark

The graph seems to indicate that Twitter has peaked and is coming down the other side… only just, and it may change.

FriendFeed and Plurk have similar numbers

FriendFeed has solid, steady growth where as Plurk is a rollercoaster. Still, both are looking good

I’m catching up to Centernetworks!

I’ve always been obsessed by numbers and benchmarking (I spent too long working in jobs with KPIs), and the one site I really wanted to emulate in terms of traffic and position was Allen Stern’s Centernetworks. Great site, top bloke, and a great benchmark to aim for. I’m getting there. I don’t for one minute believe that The Inquisitr is pumping more traffic than Centernetworks, my guess is if I was doing half I’d be lucky, but it’s still really rather cool to have a chart that says I’m competitive with Allen. Now I just need some more links to improve the Technorati rank where I’m 9023 to Allen’s 1456. Enough self indulgence…must go back to working harder

Outbrain Offers Blog Ratings And Recommendations

Duncan Riley — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:18:36 +0000

New York/ Israeli startup Outbrain is a ratings and recommendation platform for blogs and news feeds.

The service works by users installing a plugin for their blog that adds a ratings button either at the top or bottom of each post (see the bottom of this post). At a base level it simply allows readers to rate a post, but Outbrain taps into these widgets to deliver a cross-blog/news recommendation system using collaborative filtering techniques. For example reading a post here about Blogging 2.0 might result (not yet, but in theory) recommendations of posts on Mashable, Centernetworks or Venturebeat, three large sites that are already using the Outbrain service.

It may seem like a small idea, but the company took $5 million Series A in a round led by Gemini Israeli Funds and Lightspeed Venture Partners back in February. If you like this is a Technorati 2.0 style service and all the data Outbrain is gathering has a tangible value outside of the front end service.

We’re going to give it a shot here at The Inquisitr and see what happens, certainly it wouldn’t seem to be doing much harm having it here, and if it shares some traffic out of the site, and even back in again all the better.