Dooley Online

Discrepancy between Bit.ly and Google Analytics on Twitter counts

2009-06-02T08:25:51-04:00

Update 6/5/2009: Added Bit.ly/Google comparison charts

Update 6/8/2009: Added caveats/clarification on data pulled

In pulling together some data on twitter clickthroughs, there was a noticeable discrepancy between bit.ly and google analytics data - bit.ly clicks are noticeably higher than traffic source numbers for twitter on Google Analytics. Two caveats:

1. Bit.ly data collected reflects all bit.ly links including those initially posted by @worldresources using the Google Analytics Campaign Code - accounting for an average of 60% of the clicks - as well as those generated by others.

2. I pulled all information by keyword "twitter" from the Google Analytics account - which brings over all pageviews sources coming from twitter and the GA Campaign Code links posted by @worldresources.

But in closer inspection, I noticed that the Bit.ly clicks and Google pageviews data lines - despite being vastly different in terms of numbers - were almost identical in terms of trends.

I did some research on this and here is a list of potential reasons for this -

No two analytics tools measure data the same way - there will always be discrepancies between analytics tools. With bit.ly we are measuring clicks but with google analytics, we are measuring pageviews which may be captured differently.

Google Analytics may be combining multiple clickthroughs by the same twitter/user account as one whereas bit.ly counts clicks and not users

One prevalent theory is that bit.ly numbers are higher because bit.ly data includes bots and automated traffic whereas Google Analytics will not capture those visits (in GA count is computed using Javascript, which bots do not execute).

In the March 2009 post by Om Malik (Why Bit.ly Will Upstage Digg), he explains

"...with bitly it doesn’t matter where those URLs are embedded -- Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, instant messages, SMS messages, desktop clients -- a click is a click and Bit.ly counts it, in real time."

So while some of the referrers may be bots, because twitter feeds are disseminated throughout the web and desktop clients, not all of the clicks are going through twitter. Aha! Note that as of March 2009, bit.ly screened out HEAD requests from click results.

Another theory is that Google Analytics does not count clicks from twitter.com as uniques -- and that's one reason google counts are lower than bit.ly. It isn't clear how traffic from twitter clients looks to GA, but this may account for overall lower count rates on GA.

Not all bit.ly clicks are coming from WRI-generated links, and these charts only includes bit.ly data - it doesn't include click on links using full WRI URLs OR other URL shorteners like is.gd, tr.im, cli.gs, tinyurl.com, twurl.com. I haven't determined how to capture that additional data efficiently - I'm still trying to get my mind around the bit.ly/google data.

Regardless of which numbers you ultimately decide to highlight (Google Analytics Traffic or Bit.ly Clicks), you should track twitter links in Google by including the Google UTM campaign code as part of the link - see the EpikOne post Twitter and Google Analytics: What to Track by Justin Cutroni.

Posting photos on your site: Embed a Flickr slideshow!

2009-05-18T11:06:07-04:00

Flickr allows you to easily create a slideshow of a photo set and post it on your web page.

The advantage of loading your photos into Flickr then pulling them into your web page is that:

Leveraging Flickr Features. You benefit from the social media tools, search functions, and photo organization features of flickr - arguably the largest user-generated photo site online.

Easy Posting. You (and others) can easily embed the widget on nearly any web page on any site.

Quick Creation. After you load your photos into flickr.com, you can create an online photo display without having to do any heavy-duty coding or learn a new software.

Interactivity. The slideshow embeds interactive elements allowing the user to control the slideshow display.

Sharing. The slideshow can then be easily shared on someone else's site, giving your photos "legs" on the internet.

09ntc: Eben Moglen - "Knowledge must be shared"

2009-05-14T21:06:36-04:00

Eben Moglen, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School and Founding Director, Software Freedom Law Center delivered the keynote at the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco, CA in April 2009.

Here is the video and summary of the salient points from his presentation. The sound quality on the video is poor, but audible.

09ntc: Eben Moglen keynote from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

The primary difficulty of 20th century is that we discovered great ways of doing things in regimented forms. We treated knowledge as a thing that could be owned and therefore needs to be purchased.

But the ownership of knowledge is a moral problem.

Most of the children of the world are deprived of the ability to learn – they can’t afford to.

We must stop starving the intellect that gets us out of the messes we get ourselves into. We need to get beyond the idea that knowledge is something that you own. Intellectual property should now be called free speech.

Knowledge must be shared in order to be valuable.

We live in a world where knowledge can be easily shared. In the digital world, we have escaped the constraints of scarcity but still bias against sharing.

Knowledge cannot and should not be owned. The notion that it can condemns certain segments of society to extinction. "Throwing away human brains" – this is the context in which we are using technology in our own lives. Move to sharing, rather than owning – sharing rather than doing business with those who claim to own.

We can do everything we need to do in a way which is calculated to address the basic question of how we allow everyone to learn. The strongest tool we have for solving the problems caused my human intelligence is human intelligence.

We need to teach people that they don’t actually need software that somebody owns to do what they need to do. There is an answer to get our work done without having to support the idea that knowledge is something that you need to own. Profit is not evil but people will do evil things in the name of profit. What happens to the technology of finance is not unrelated to the technology of knowledge.

People pay for what they love. Do it beautifully and you'll get paid.

The computer is a drag. It breaks, becomes obsolete, needs to be fixed, has costs, clutters things up, creates entropy in the form of heat. Move to thinnest possible client and thickest possible cloud. Enroll oneself in the world’s greatest intelligence service (Internet? Google?)?

But there is the other side – how far do we want to share all our knowledge?

The line between the knowledge we share and the knowledge we want to keep to ourselves is a crucial line but not a straight one. The knowledge that can best be shared is knowledge that can help a mind to grow. The knowledge that shouldn’t be shared is that information that lets you hold sway over the ability for control of you.

Maybe we ought to think about how to free the cloud …

The design of technology assumes certain things about social life. The principle of thinking about freedom in the architecture of technology frees up a lot of things. When you can share knowledge by pressing a button, ownership of knowledge is a problem.

The purpose of technology is to make us peers. People share time, money, skill, passion and out of that we make a better world. We know that the technologies of collaboration are the technologies that in the end will do the best for us. Without collaboration, there is no success.

The architecture of technology in the last 20 years has been focused on platforms rather than community. Platforms are sticky – every moment of collaboration is an opportunity for leverage of the platform.

You need to collaborate and the technologist needs the platform to be sticky. But we benefit now from companies that realize the platform is not their greatest benefit.

At the end of the day it is not difficult to tell the differences between activities related to platform and environment and those about community and collaboration and not throwing away brains.

We think that we can attain sustainability without discussing who owns knowledge, and I wonder if we're right. If you pursue individual benefit at the expense of another’s sustainability you will have problems with self-sustainability.

Our wealth consists in what we share, not what we possess exclusively.

You can’t stop people from thinking, you can only stop them from sharing and learning.

We possess tools of such extraordinary power we take them for granted. But how we use them now will impact those who get them in the future.

We’re the people who care about sharing. We have rarely any benefit from not showing people how it’s done. We want as much as possible to model how we can all think together.

We ought move from how to present our content to how to help people communicate more effectively, more equally without intermediaries.

We are not just the non-profit sector. We are in the business of maximizing humanity. We’re the place where you measure technology by whether it makes a human life better. We should live our principles – the world would be a better place. We say we do this because it makes our lives better – because one person can make a difference. Most of us say I wouldn’t do it any other way.

We’re right.

So let’s just do it. Let’s just make knowledge a thing we share rather than something somebody else owns. Let’s pick up the tools we’ve already got -- live it out and let them see it -- put glass walls around the kitchen so people can learn to cook. We’re the research facility for how to do it our way. We’ve been trying to do this for years trying to become what we were meant to become.

The difference is this time we win!

eMetrics: What Makes a Good Web Analyst?

2009-05-09T23:39:01-04:00

What does it take to be a good web analyst?

This was the question raised several times throughout the 2009 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Jose, CA this past week.

The responses across the board were fairly consistent. The most valuable qualities for a successful web analyst cited time and time again were:

Inherent sense of curiousity. A good analyst always asks questions, wanting to know more.

Business acumen. A good analyst is able to provide context for the data and analysis; therefore, they know the business and the current business climate. They are able to connect the dots because they understand the business purpose and can identify and focus on the business problems and disciplines apart from analytics. They have both a great sense of the data and the business.

Honest, unbiased and credible. A good analyst is not be biased by politics, bonuses, and compensation packages. They are not afraid to provide a real analysis based on the data, no matter how unpalatable that analysis may be.

Creative. They can effectively communicate the results of analysis and can use data to tell a story. They have a mastery over visualization and can take a complex story and boil it down to story that is simple to the untrained eye, but complex enough to provide answers.

Marketing savvy. A good analyst can sell the analysis at the right level, is passionate and cares. They market the analysis internally through email, presentations, posting the analysis, providing visualizations and training others on understanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Avinash Kaushik - author, blogger, and analytics evangelist - explained that knowledge of tools is not a criteria – in fact it is the opposite. We can’t teach analysts how to think, but can teach them what buttons to push.

What matters more is that an analyst have a flexible mental model, curiousity, and a good breadth of and diverse experience in life. He went on to say that we tend to look for analysts in the wrong places. We often look for data nerds but we need analysts who can accept the imperfection of web data (because there is a lot of it!) and still see the lessons we can learn from that data.

Avinash believes analysts don’t need to be technically savvy. After all, he explains, his is not looking for a technical implementor. What he prizes even more is the analyst's mental model and analysis.

I used my flip camera to record the eMetrics conversation between Avinash Kaushik and Microsoft's Ian Thomas at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit where they discuss rules for analytics revolutionaries. The sound quality is poor, but audible. Enjoy!

eMetrics: Rules for Analytics Revolutionaries from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

eMetrics: "Measuring the Success of a Movement: BarackObama.com"

2009-05-06T11:04:39-04:00

Blue State Digital lives in the world of online fundraising, advocacy, social networking, and constituency development programs for nonprofit organizations.

Mark Skidmore describes the metrics behind the movement and the calculations behind the execution of barackobama.com during a lunchtime keynote at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Conference in San Jose, CA (May 2009).

Here is the video, captured from the keynote. Unfortunately, it ends abruptly as my flip camera ran out of power! Sound quality poor, but audible.

But I captured the conclusion (key takeaways) of his presentation in my notes, below the video ...

eMetrics: "Measuring the Success of a Movement - BarackObama.com" from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

Key Takeaways from Obama Campaign

Remove the challenge of technology and pave the way for clear and concise messaging

Every online investment should lead to a measurable outcome that furthers core goals Drive action through engagement

Create a holistic approach to online strategy

Get really good at the fundamentals before experimenting the with new “flashy” 3rd party apps (open rate for email 30%+; Make sure you are doing email campaigns right)

IF you do experiment with social media - make it actual, make it interesting, make it engaging

eMetrics: 10 Web Analytics Takeaways from Larry Freed, Foresee

2009-05-05T14:02:20-04:00

Larry Freed, President and CEO of Foresee Results (@larryfreed on twitter) delivered the following Top 10 Takeaways about Web Analytics at the end of his address at the 2009 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Jose:

You cannot manage what you cannot measure
What you measure will determine what you do
Measure what matters most – your customers (know your metrics and measure the right things)
Knowledge is power, the consumer is in charge
Turn data into information … information into intelligence
Satisfaction (when measured correctly) drives conversion, loyalty, retention and word of mouth
It takes only 2 things to survive and thrive: Satisfy your customers – be fiscally responsible
Measurement is hard – don’t fall for gimmicks
Integration of the web metrics magnifies the value
You are in the fight of your life – now is the time to rise above the competition – satisfy your customers to win

What do you think?

Which if these points resonates most with you?

Is there anything missing?

Pass it on ...

09NTC: Clay Shirky Keynote

2009-05-04T23:26:06-04:00

Clay Shirky is the author of “Here Comes Everybody”.

He delivered an inspirational keynote on what social media means for the non-profit sector at the April 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco.

Here are the videos I took from my seat in the front row, using a Flip HD camera - the sound quality is poor, but audible.

09NTC Keynote: Clay Shirky, Part 1 of 2 from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

09NTC Keynote: Clay Shirky, Part 2 of 2 from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

09NTC: Clay Shirky Q&A from LauraLee Dooley on Vimeo.

Check out Chad Norman's great post "15 Clay Shirky Quotes That Blew My Mind at NTC". Here are some of my notes from the keynote:

5-word synopsis of his book - “Group Action Just Got Easier."

EXAMPLE: Dr. Who Page on Wikipedia. Data shows most active person contributed almost 1000 times. Most others contributed 1 time. Inside every large collaborative effort is a small collaborative effort. Small group of people in there doing the hard work of taking the much larger inputs and turning it into something useful. Trying to find the most knowledgeable person on a particular issue – Wikipedia’s power is in its ability to convene a large enough group so that the most knowledgeable people/person on a particular issue show up.

We are living in the middle of the biggest expansion of informational exchange:
1. Rise of printing press, movable type, ink

2. Teletype, telephone

3. Moving image - movies

4. Television, radio

5. Internet- subsuming all other media

EXAMPLE: John Fitch Steam Boat conceptual drawings. Fitch initally built on what he knew but discovered that new technology required creating something new. We are experiencing a changing institutional environment – we need a new set of principles – need to change. We are in the long process of iterating what this means for our organizations.

John Fitch initial steamboat concept,
with canoe-type paddles wasn't the right model for the task.

Fitch's final steamboat as much different - but led to a revolution in transportation.

EXAMPLE: Flash mobs. Started out with random pillow fighting - crazy people. But evolved into using media not just for information, but for coordination. See Andy Carvin's May 2006 post "Belarus, Flash Mobs and the Ice Cream Revolution". These participants brought their cameras. They wanted these pictures. They wanted to take photos to upload to servers as soon as possible – nothing says dictatorship like arresting people eating ice cream. It only took 3 years for flash mob to go from mocking participants to become real world social tool. Figuring out how to use these tools is a big part of what we have before us now. These tools are not socially interesting until they become technologically boring.
EXAMPLE: Obama campaign organization – the most effective example of a model that said we’re going to set out to adopt an organization from the outside. Obama model of change wasn’t just a political slogan – radically different. First platform candidate. When you understood what Obama was up to, you turned around and relayed that to someone else. Will.i.am "Yes We Can" video was created outside the campaign. The Obama campaign leveraged the convening power of the internet. Horror show - Sing for Change - having children repeat words that adults put in mouth. Republican backlash. Took down from internet. Yeah, right (this "FULL" version is actually remixed version by anti-Obama folks). Famous video response: PyongYang remix. Made a horrendous mistake – but nobody blamed the Obama campaign. 20th century rules using 21st century media. Rules need to change. The fact is they can talk to each other without you and your input.

Most important message – the loss of control you fear is already in the past. Go after the value this environment makes possible. (Whoohoo! NTEN Applause)

First Linux, Wikipedia messages were humble messages (this is something I'm working on, I'd like your input). A commitment to fail informatively. Two key lessons for institutions:

Failure. Impact of failure. Orgs spend a lot of time trying to lower likelihood of failure. We’ve now spent more energy trying to figure out if something is a good idea rather than trying it out and seeing. Internet Lowers cost of failure but only way to take advantage of that is to fail like crazy and make sure people can tell the diffearence between what’s working and what’s not. Find person in institution who will transform org – come up with 10 medium ideas and 20 small ideas. Don’t do just 1 big thing.

Scale. Start with a system that is small and good and make it bigger. Rather than start with a system that is one bad idea and make it better. And do just a handful, not 100 things. Nobody gets to a working paddle steamboat in one big step.

Added May 11, 2009: Check out Shelley Hamilton's great notes from the keynote -

Here Comes Everyone

View more presentations from shelleyhamilton.

Facebook redesign: Some thoughts

2009-03-17T07:21:40-04:00

I have to admit that I'm a big one for change, but sometimes I like to know what's coming and prepare for it.

Facebook did what they could to get the word out about their recent redesign of profiles and fan pages. Some of the changes are welcome. Some of them ... well ... we're trying to get used to and realize we need to do some work on our end to make them truly useful.

Eric Larson, a facebook friend, left a thoughtful note about the redesign which raises some interesting points about the role of facebook in our lives -

The New, New Facebook -- some thoughts ...
I've been at this for less than a year and this is the third iteration of facebook that I've experienced. The last change prompted a ton of "I don't like it/Bring back the old fb" messages. This latest change has brought a whole new round of similar comments. I've withheld my own judgment, thinking it's probably just something I have to get used to. My old habits for using fb will give way to new habits.
But this morning I realized what might be a fundamental change. Part of what has amazed me about fb was that it joined so many different aspects of my life onto a common space. I was flabbergasted the first time a friend of mine from my teenage life began conversing with a college friend on my wall. As they joked (at my expense) I was shocked and amused to see two different parts of my life – parts that I had kept separate in my own mind – joined on the page. It was enlightening.
This morning though, as I worked at creating new Friend Lists to better filter the ongoing feed, I realized that I was repartitioning my life again. By categorizing my Friends List – like an old school Rolodex – it'll be easier to sort through all the info, but I worry that serendipitous opportunities -- "bumping into someone or something," "childhood friend this is my co-worker… ," "I saw that video your neighbor posted…" -- might be lost. I'm worried it may prove to move an online "porch community" into one much more like the real communities in which we live.

From an online marketing and analytics perspective, segmenting is good. But, Eric raises some important points that get at the heart of what draws us -- and keeps us coming back -- to social media tools like facebook.

I'd love to have your thoughts on this ...

What URL Shortener Should I Use?

2009-02-28T18:28:54-05:00

Update (3/10/09): Added 301 redirect criteria.

Update (3/20/09): Added Google Trends and Compete charts of URL shortener usage (includes cli.gs).

When I began using URL shorteners and analytics, tweetburner.com was the darling favorite. It provided an easy-to-use interface that integrated with the variety of browsers I used and it provided statistical reports that I found very useful.

But on December 12, 2008, Tweetburner began to break down. I tend to be loyal to a fault, but after two months and no real progress on fixing the problems that began on that fateful date, I realized I needed to move out of the tweetburner neighborhood into a more livable situation.

But which URL shortener? I wanted the features I had come to appreciate from tweetburner. I couldn't use tinyurl.com or is.gd because, as far as I could tell, there was no built-in tweet tracking tool for URLs shortened through these services. However, I included tinyurl.com in this analysis since it gets frequent use.

I noticed that recently some tweeters were using tr.im, so I began using that tool to see what kind of tweet data it provided. And on a webinar I was co-presenting with NWF's Danielle Brigida, she shared the two tools she was using and some of their features.

Because I didn't want to shift to just any tool, I decided to take the analytical approach and do a comparison.

I developed the following chart of URL shortener features. The numbers in (parenthesis) are rankings that I applied to create a rating system to roll-up the values:

scale: 0-5
0 = feature not applicable or not available
1 = feature available, but not the best
3 = feature works okay, not worst, not best
5 = feature available with great performance
some features may be equally ranked

Feature	twurl.nl (via tweet- burner)	tr.im	bit.ly	poprl.com	tinyurl.com
Type of redirect	Not 301 (1)	301(5)	301 (5)	Not 301 (1)	301 (5)
Ease of use (1=poor; 5=excellent)	(5)	(3)	(5)	(3)	(3)
Length of shortened URL (including http://)	22 (2)	17 (5)	19 (4)	20 (3)	25 (1)
Daily Clickthrough Rate Rollup for Account	Displayed until problems began Dec 12, 2008. (1)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Visitor Activity Timeline Per Tweet	First 24 hours Last 24 hours and total (3)	First 72 hours (4)	Live, past day, past week, past month (4)	Total (1)	(0)
Visitor Locations Per Tweet	(0)	Country (3)	Country (4)	Country and state (5)	(0)
Visitor Referers, Browsers, Platforms, Per Tweet	Top 10 Referers (many in "Other or External Client" category) (2)	Known Referring, Browers, Platforms (4)	Known referring and subsections (5)	(0)	(0)
Most popular tweets	Ranking by most popular 5 tweets. Was working until December 12, but I referenced this feature regularly (5)	(0)	Numbers displayed through search feature (3)	Numbers displayed on account HP (3)	(0)
Conversations about URL	(0)	(0)	Twitter and Friendfeed reposts of URL (5)	(0)	(0)
Metadata about URL	(0)	(0)	Yes - keywords, description, tags (5)	(0)	(0)
Downloadable URL & clickhrough data	Can cut-and-paste output into spreadsheet (3)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Bookmarklet or drag to toolbar integration with browser	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE; includes a pop-up window for conversion & sending to twitter & friendfeed (4)	3 different bookmarklets; Integration with all browsers except IE (4)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)	Bookmarklet integrates with all browsers except IE (3)
Integration with social media tools	Twitter, Friendfeed (3)	Twitter (3)	Twitter, email, Gmail, Facebook (4)	Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Tumblr (5)	(0)
Ability to share stats with others	tweetburner/ links/URL (3)	tr.im/ statistics/URL (3)	bit.ly/ info/URL; can designate account public; RSS feed of stats (5)	poprl.com/ stats/URL (3)	(0)
Login	Separate (but recommends same as Twitter and Friendfeed) (3)	twitter or Identi.ca (4)	bit.ly (with opportunity to submit twitter login info) (2)	twitter (3)	(0)
TOTAL RANK	(35)	(38)	(59)	(30)	(12)

Notes on above features

Type of redirect. Google recommends URL shorteners use a 301 redirect. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

Ease of Use. When shortening a URL, I prefer to have a pop-up window with the shortened URL in a text box which is ready to be populated with 140 characters then tweeted. Having a separate pop-up box allows me to toggle back and forth between the content I want to tweet and the tweet input box so I compare what I plan to post with the actual post. Only tweetburner.com provides this time-saving feature. But bit.ly carries the title of the post over to a new tab - which allows me to toggle between tabs. That works for me, too.

Length of Shortened URL. Because you only have 140 characters to tweet with, the shorter the URL the better.

Daily Clickthrough Rate Rollup for Account. This was a feature tweetburner offered which stopped publishing on December 12. What I really liked about this was seeing how my daily clickthrough rates grew over time and then doing a comparison of my daily clickthroughs against my daily tweets and a comparison of my daily clickthroughs against follower growth. Can't get that in any other tool. If other tools adopt this chart, I recommend it be calculated based on the tweeter's standard time zone rather than the application's (tweetburner used The Netherlands time zone).

Visitor Activity Timeline Per Tweet. Generally most of your clickthroughs occur shortly after the post of your tweet - but it is useful to see the long tail of the clickthroughs and which of your stories have a thicker or longer tail of clickthroughs than others.

Visitor Locations Per Tweet. Okay, poprl.com wins in this category hands down because it not only breaks down clickthroughs by country, it goes further to break down the large U.S. group into states. Wonder if there could be a breakdown by top cities also? Hard to say as it depends on how they gather this data ... Definitely something the other apps should consider.

Visitor Referers, Platforms, Browsers Per Tweet. Identifies where clickthroughs happen on your tweets - twitter.com, search.twitter.com, Tweetdeck, RSS feed aggregator, Email, etc. and on what platforms. No consistency in what is important to display here but b it.ly wins in this category because it allows you to see where clickthroughs happened in subsections within the different clients.

Most Popular Tweets. Tweetburner.com used to offer a table of the tweets that were clicked on most often in individual acounts. With the other tools you have to "eyeball" it. Having said that, poprl.com does feature the most clicked URLs for all accounts on it's home page.

Conversations about URL. Bit.ly wins this category because it is the ONLY tool that includes this feature - a list of all the retweets or redistribution of the link

Metadata about URL. Data about the source URL gathered from both the source and external services. Bit.ly is the only tool that offers this information.

Bookmarklet or drag to toolbar integration with browsers. tr.im offers three different bookmarklets which offer different behaviors. Tweetburner.com integrated with all the browsers I use - Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox - except for Internet Explorer. But given that I used Internet Explorer less than the others and the separate pop-up window was a major positive feature of the tool, I was willing to deal with this incongruity. But I noticed this behavior towards IE in the other tools as well and wondered if it was an IE configuration issue - played around with configuration a bit but didn't find resolution. Then I saw this explanation on the tinyurl.com website:

For some users, such as some recent IE 6 installations, the clicking and dragging of links that contain javascript is no longer supported. To add this to your IE links toolbar, click the link with your right mouse button and select "Add to Favorites..." from the menu. Click OK if a security warning alert pops-up (this shows up since the link contains javscript). If a list of folders is not shown, click the "Create in >>>" button. Now select the folder called "Links" and then click OK. You should now see the TinyURL on your links toolbar...

Integration with social media tools. The existence of URL shorteners came out of the need to have such a tool for use with twitter. Integration with additional social media tools is icing on the cake.

Ability to share stats with others. One of the important aspects of social media is the ability to learn from others. Being able to view other people's statistics can give you an understanding of what makes a successful tweet.

Last words on the issue:

Poprl.com received a 2007 Webby Award.

Google Trends comparison of these tools.

Just as I was finishing up this piece, I came across the following article from July 22, 2008, "The Bit.ly Interview: "No Comment" on Twitter URL Switch and Yes, They Have a Business Plan" . . . which made me believe that bit.ly has something planned with twitter.com that hasn't been announced yet.

Comparison Charts

Update: 3/20/2009 - I ran a comparison of the URL shorteners identified here but replaced http://tinyurl.com with http://cli.gs (which has a strong fan base). Note that http://tinyurl.com DOMINATES the market because of the length of time and integration in the market.

Google Trends

Compete (live data)

So, does this information influence your choice of a URL shortener?

What information is missing?

What criteria do you use to select a URL shortener?

Baby Boomers and Social Media and Usability

2009-02-21T16:49:19-05:00

Okay ...

My hat is off to Jeremiah Owyang for using statistics in the report "How Baby Boomers Use Social Media" to say what I've been saying for years -- that "apparently Baby Boomers aren't exactly the technology Luddites that people think they are."

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to sit through meeting after meeting with people saying you have to be under 30 to "get" social media as if that is an excuse for not trying it if you're over 30.

But I have to say that I don't think lack of adoption of social media by baby boomers is primarily an age-related issue. I believe it is a usability issue.

As social media has developed over the years, some standards have started to emerge, including:

many of the services are free (so people don't have to worry about online credit card use)
many of the tools have similar elements - status updates, profile pictures, short bios
tools are easy to adopt because they've become their interfaces have become somewhat standardized and easier to understand

As more and more people adopt social media, tools developers have access to more feedback in terms of usability and features that people would like to have. The more feedback you get and respond to from your users, the better you are able to improve your usability.

So, is it a question of age or usability?

What do you think?