Real traffic numbers for Web 2.0 darlings are hard to come by
July 7, 2006 – 11:23 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Web 2.0 as a buzzword is red hot. It’s so hot, in fact, it’s a word that INFLATES expectations. According to TechCrunch, Hitwise says NY Times is still way ahead of Digg. Michael Arrington has made the argument that Digg could soon outstrip the venerable NY Times in page views. If it all sounds a little implausible: that’s because the numbers are based on data culled from Alexa.
What is Alexa, you ask, if you’re like most people alive? It’s a Toolbar (categorized as Spyware by many popular Anti-Spyware programs), which resides in the browser of a small percentage of tech-savvy people who visit websites like TechCrunch, Digg, and go to Web 2.0 conferences. In other words, it’s of major importance only to a small percentage of overall users. Most people have never heard of Alexa, and even fewer would run it on their computer, for fear of having all of their internet activities tracked for no gain.
Using Alexa as data in an argument leaves too many questions for my liking. The skew is always towards a savvy crowd. This is no different than Technorati (where websites like “Matt Cutts Blog” and “Shoemoney Skillz to pay the Billz” end up in the Top 100, despite the fact that almost no living humans have ever visited those websites).
To be fair, it’s probably time to do a poll of what average people really know about the brave new world of Web 2.0. I asked 11 non-technical people I know what they thought of Digg. All looked at me with a blank look. Hardly definitive, but I’m betting that polls of more respondents will turn up similar responses.
If the main source of Alexa data is the “sophisticated user” who uses toolbars (an oxymoron I fear), then the skew is too significant to use for direct comparisons between vastly different enterprises. No doubt Digg is a great little company, but they’re not on the same level as the NY Times which is a major US corporation, which trades publically and employs thousands.
There’s nothing wrong with some of the “Pie in the Sky” arguments we hear of the rosy path of Web 2.0, but some of these comparisons need to get more in depth concerning methodology, or they should come back down to Earth.
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