A VC - Latest Comments in Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Andrew Warner — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:00:53 -0000

My brother showed it to me, but I don't know how they did it. Might be something they created themselves.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:28:13 -0000

Don't get me started

I rant and rave about notifications to all of our companies and many others too

It is the single best way to develop engaged user bases and yet people miss this all the time

Great comment!

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

nabeel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:49:28 -0000

Agreed. Where is that GA widget from Andrew?

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Colin Devroe — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:26:51 -0000

If only I could keep up with my Google Reader in a timely-enough-fashion to respond sooner than N days later after you post. Sorry.

As I read through some of the features you mentioned something struck me. While I believe Chartbeat's realtime offerings are, in general, the main value in the application/service I wanted to make note of something that it does that I do not feel many other stats applications do very well; notifications. It seems most other stats gathering applications focus solely on recording the hit, and all of its metadata with it, that they ignore the position they are in to do so many other things. The realtime feedback being a big one - but also the opportunity to let the administrator know when things are going on that might otherwise not be normal for that site.

As you said, Chartbeat lets you know when you're getting a serious amount of traffic. That's noteworthy in and of itself. But the fact that it notifies you that your blog is down is absolutely the perfect feature to be build into a statistics application. I have never used Chartbeat, so I do not know all that it offers, but other things related to this that strike me as good fits in this category are: notifications when specific URLs "go down" (in other words, if people are getting 404 errors, email me), broken image reports, is a particular widget slowing my site down, and what about notifications of when new URLs link back to a particular page?

These are off-the-cuff ideas that would need a lot more thought... but in general we are using a geographically targeted, real-time, and aggregated Web that needs to begin to think itself as such. Statistics programs, while useful for gathering data about what has happened, are in the perfect position to let us know what is happening right now. And not just what people are doing on a site, but even what the site itself is doing.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

julie_poplawski — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:41:44 -0000

I really like this! I have a blog and when people don't comment its hard to tell what they are looking at from Google analytics. I can see there are lots of page hits But, not the breakdown by posts. Thanks so much!

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

howard lindzon — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:03:59 -0000

turning it inside out as you do is exactly what i think the best use of this service is for sites where a lot of actiin is occuring like stocktwits for example. At a stock site, I can get a feel for whats hot by seeing where people are at.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:19:12 -0000

Cool, I'll check out ihearditon

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Andrew_of_ihearditon — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:18:01 -0000

Is there an alternative to Feedburner? WoM and Google Searches hasn't produced anything lately....

Also, saw you just added the Metric track to your streampad musicplayer - my site, ihearditon.com, has been preaching them for since March 3, when our team posted "Help, I'm Alive." Check us out, and since you're an honest fan of music, and reviewer of online services, let us know if you find anything with us.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:04:14 -0000

That's sweet

That must be a google analytics widget

I had no idea they were available

I'd love to get one

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

avertiz — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:32:30 -0000

This is cool stuff. As someone who focuses on online retail I can see (and have been looking for) the benefits of having a real-time solution that tracks customers through your site. I've tested a lot of stuff out there and this definitely looks as good or better than most. I don't see much in terms of e-commerce integration on their site. In my opinion, that's the killer part - being able to track how your sales funnel is working so you can launch and tweak usability improvements and marketing campaigns MUCH faster. Usually it is more of a launch -> wait -> analyze -> tweak -> launch and all over again. A good real-time tool could take out the "wait" part of that equation making it very powerful (the faster you optimize the more sales you get).

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 08:59:15 -0000

Mybloglog and feedburner are slowly dying inside their parent companies. It makes me sick to even think about it

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

RacerRick — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:15:55 -0000

I added it to a couple sites today. It's pretty amazing.

Google "anal" is helpful for looking at trends and ad campaigns and such.

But literally watching people go through a site is amazing.

And thanks for keeping your's 'open'.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Andrew_of_ihearditon — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:09:08 -0000

Chartbeat is great, thank you! The real-time data is a bit dangerously mesmerizing to watch.

First, I'm using Typepad Plus at the moment, and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to use the chartbeat service (Typepad Plus won't permit editing of CSS). I emailed and got a quick response, which I really appreciated. That being said, chartbeat really should have a help section that answers this questions

Second, I'm wondering about your thoughts on the different data services and how you weight them relative to each other. You do go into it a bit above, but are there particular services whose data you weigh more than others? Or particular data you've found to be most reliable?

I ask partially because MyBlogLog failed on me for 9 out of the past 14 days. An email exchange with a perky customer service rep did little to help, but I have been assured their "topnotch engineering department" is working on helping me recover the data.

A quick search on #mybloglog on Twitter Search, and a conversation with a Yahoo! employee, suggested I wasn't the only one ....

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:27:38 -0000

I'd prefer they just get their facts straight about our portfolio companies and not spread baseless rumors without fact checking them

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:58:55 -0000

Fortunately I wear pants

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

BmoreWire — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:56:55 -0000

Chartbeat is awesome and their API is increadible too. Much like bit.ly how ad networks and media companies leverage these tools will be huge money for Betaworks.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:53:26 -0000

Hmmm.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

fredwilson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:14:26 -0000

I've been doing it with sitemeter and lijit and other services for a while. I believe in openness and transparency

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

daryn — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:11:18 -0000

This point about the .LY domains is actually a good one... There is definitely a risk when using some of the more exotic country code TLDs. Many of these registries are run by small operations (At one point several years ago, I actually had main registry database and server for a to-remain-nameless ccTLD running on the DSL line in my condo), are subject to the policies & restrictions imposed by the country's government, and face the risk of redelegation, revocation, and/or things just up and disappearing one day. This has happened in the past, and while strides have been made to reduce these risks, they are worth being aware of.

In more related news, I started looking at Chartbeat earlier this week as well, and it's super slick. Betaworks is tearing it up! Cool to see your stats too...

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:44:10 -0000

Fred,

Thanks for opening the Kimono a bit. A bunch of us are sitting in the Web2Expo keynote hall huddled over your analytics. Being able to put this data in context of a blog we're all very familiar with makes the demo incredibly useful. Hat tip to you.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

AndyFinkle — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:36:47 -0000

Very cool Fred - But kinda feels like i'm looking up your blog's dress

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

rkorba — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:56:01 -0000

And on top of it, noticed yesterday that you got a HT from techcrunch in that article. from them, it's as near as proxy as one gets for outright praise as a thought leader.

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

example — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:31:46 -0000

Hey, what do you think about the fact that .ly domain is controlled by Libya? Apparently the law requires websites ending in .ly to comply with sharia law, does bit.ly do that?

Re: Chartbeat - Real Time Analytics

Andrew Warner — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:08:11 -0000

Hey Fred, check out how this site shows users its Google analytics. (Tab on left side.)

http://www.vbseo.com/f5/vbs...

Cool, huh?