Technically Speaking

twittermoms as profiled by TechCrunch earlier this afternoon has been with Lookery for about a week now. Already they have some pretty nice demographic data.

As I noted in my comment, this is only some of what you can see for FREE. That is empirical audience analytic data!

So the question for you people out there reading this - How come you haven’t signed up your site for Lookery? OH you run a Wordpress blog? Well we took care of that for you also with a WP Plugin for Lookery!

Technically Speaking, we don’t bite, and we go down as easy as Google Analytics. When you sign up you have the full access to your data as outlined here, so what are you waiting for?

[ This is cross posted from our CTO's blog ]

Today I created a simple plugin that allows you to easily add the Lookery Audience Analytics tracker to your Wordpress blog.

Lookery’s Audience Analytics is like Google Analytics + Compete.com but instead of measuring your site’s “pageviews” and “clicks” Lookery helps you analyze your site’s audience.

We’re working on some great analytics that should be out real soon. Despite being quite early we’re already seeing sites such as ThisNext and ReadWriteWeb signup as early adopters.

I love your feedback. Please let me know how we can improve our analytics and our new Wordpress plugin.

» Amplify your Wordpress Blog with Lookery

[ End of our CTO's cross post]

Now the millions of Wordpress blogs don’t have an excuse. It’s quite easy to start viewing great statistics about your audience. Whether you love stats or only casually follow them, you should always have another point of reference. Lookery gives you that for FREE. All you have to do is sign up for an account.

And if you love that money, well we are also an ad network! We serve over a billion ads a week to sites within the social networks such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, and the list goes on. We also serve ads outside the social nets. The combination of the two means we are a powerful force in the ad network world. But if you are in it for the love of statistics, well you have come to the right place.

There have been some detractors to our business over the past few days since our coverage of our recent closing of funding of $2.25 million. That’s quite fine, as we welcome the opportunity to educate our users and our potential new users. In the next few months we will be quite busy letting people know that Lookery isn’t the evil doers that have left a bad taste in the mouth of many online.

It’s not the first time that personally speaking I have been related to the dark side or being pointed out as evil. I usually smile at the challenge of speaking to that ignorance of not knowing it all. The worst thing that I have always seen in the human character in general are the people that are willing to go out and spread the word of evil only because they are not educated in regards to what they speak of. See for example the Salem Massachusetts witch burnings. In other words, you know them well - the mister or miss know it all that in the end really only has a vague idea of what they are really talking about.

Misinformation has always been a challenge to overcome, but we are in love with the opportunity and challenges that lie ahead. While we will always have an ad network for the money that our publishers love to receive monthly, what good is running ads if you have no idea what your audience wants, likes, or is really coming to your site for? That is why you have to love the free opportunity that is available to you to study the analytics that have always been there, but now we make it visual.

Technically Speaking, I cracked a smile at the person that accused Lookery of being evil; honestly do you think it’s the first time I’ve been associated with evil in my life? Take a number, sit back, and become educated on Lookery’s goodness.

Lookery spent the last few days in Boulder, CO and thanks to the people at TechStars for letting us use their cool space called the bunker. It was great meeting some of the Boulder startup people on Thursday evening at our get together we had. Also nice to finally meet in person was Gnip’s founder Eric.

Being the virtual company we are, as I mentioned jokingly in my last post about “Lookery East” and “Lookery West”, it was great finally having all of Lookery in one location. The about 10 miles west of the Mississippi puts me in the Lookery West “office“; virtually of course.

During our time in Boulder, VentureBeat was the first to finally cover our latest funding round of $2.25 million. They always do a great write up since Matt only hires the best writers to cover the beat.

Other coverage you can read of this is GigaOm’s coverage by Carleen Hawn - which tells the story of how to go really lean and do funding in a way that makes sense, and also another PaidContent post by David Kaplan who did correct the post, as it originally stated we “troll” for data which is a bad implication to crawling for data. We don’t “crawl” for data folks, companies and private sites give us data!

Why would companies just give us data?

Because we do not break privacy boundaries. All the data we have is anonymous. I guess that is one point I really want to stress. We are in total compliance with all the privacy laws. The above blogs did great coverage, but there are always comments about privacy and the data we collect. I’d like to address that now.

People, you know the type, will always say we (Lookery) can identify you and where you live and who your children are and what kind of car you drive, you sexual preference, what you like to eat, etc.. etc.. from our data. No we can’t. ASL (Age, Sex, Location) or AGL (Age, Gender, Location) data is what we collect. The two terms you will often see(ASL and AGL) are what we do. We are not the bad guys that get all the press that you read about lately. Those companies that collect that kind of data scare all of us.

To address the question, companies either just love us or they want some money! Data is worth love and money to many. The money part, you really should contact us and speak to one of our data sales experts.

The love part is - who wouldn’t love to see data about their site and use it to drive more traffic? It also becomes love once you can show advertisers what is driving traffic to your site. And of course that can lead to money for your site. So love and money. Anonymous data. You just gotta love it - especially for blogs and site owners - who would love to just make some more money!

What can a regular web site or blog do to take advantage of the data that is out there today?

Why they can easily sign up and start running the JS code today. We already have announced in the past few weeks all the great data you can see for FREE about your site.

There really should be no fear factor in putting the JS code on your site, as noted in this blog post - it’s a cookie! That’s it. A simple cookie that you already are using (I’m assuming you are if you are a site that loves some stats!) - Google Analytics!

Here are some cool stats about my blog, and I get this information for free and so can you by signing up for a Lookery account, and placing a simple javascript on your site(s). My site’s stats are right here in the Lookery network pages.

The above screenshots are the August 2008 stats for my site. Since my readership is no where near one of the big dog blogs, there is still little data for September 2008. But of course, you can check that out at my network page link above!

Oh and if you are a blog/blogger that maybe wants to see what drives the big dogs, you should check out ReadWriteWeb. They are one of my favorite blogs to read with their great blogger crew that is headed up by blogger/writer extrodinaire Marshall - no last name needed.

Technically Speaking, if you haven’t installed the Lookery cookie (JS Code) on your site yet, you are soon going to be left behind all of your peers in whatever type site you have. The adoption of the Lookery cookie has been phenomenal thus far and we’d love to be able to show you the free data that is out there about your site!

What about Lookery STL?!? Seriously though, I just saw this tweet by our road warrior VP Todd. LMAO! Yes, I’m still really in the STL, not at Lookery East or Lookery West. Right smack dab in the middle. So where are we going?

The entire team Lookery, as many of you have read, are heading over to Boulder, Colorado this week. Should be a fun week meeting the Lookery East crew, who I have yet to meet in person. I’ve met some of the Lookery West crew, but we here at Lookery are growing and hiring good people - like crazy! Many new people have joined us since our humble beginning last July (2007).

Once again - if you are in Boulder, Colorado this week - come join us on Thursday September 4th for some fun with all of us.

Technically Speaking, I need to probably pack, and actually look up how to get to the hotel and off site location where Lookery will be for the rest of the week.

Why? Usually movies like this planned one - “Facebook The Movie” - are something that will end up on television and than have a cult following like that one pirates movie that they made back in 1999. Interesting for a moment in time perhaps, but I don’t see anything great coming out of this supposed Facebook the Movie.

Since it appears they are rolling along into pre-production and casting of this from what is being said online, I do agree that Micheal Cera should be playing the role of Mark Zuckerberg. It probably wouldn’t be a far stretch for him to play that role.

The question though is still “Why?”. I mean why not make a movie about TechCrunch? Or GigaOM? Or ReadWriteWeb Or VentureBeat? - heck, why not just title the movie “Blogs Of the New World Order“. You could slap all four in there, and have Allen Stern of CenterNetworks play the raving video maniac from NYC calling out all those wrapped up in the silliness of Valley madness. Allen, you know you have always dreamed of playing the heel, and here would be your chance.

Seriously, why don’t we just create another movie about the little ad data network that could. Yeah, my company Lookery. I already know who our CTO wants playing him, quite obvious by his twitter icon. As far as the rest of us, our CEO would be an interesting casting call, and our VP of Marketing would probably be pretty easy to cast. What about me? What about who freakin’ cares!

The point being, a movie about anything online will hold the interest of so few that live every day lives, that you’d be lucky to make any kind of money from it. Do you really think that most of the world really cares that Zuckerberg prefers Mt. Dew over Coke or that he picks his nose with his middle finger? No. And that is the kind of stupid personal stuff they are going to write into this.

Back to my example of “Lookery: The little ad data network that could” movie. The movie about us would be so trivial and interesting to so few that no one in their right mind is going to want to watch what we do or how we did it.

Same goes for Facebook the Movie, the interesting stuff is right here online; there isn’t a need to put it on screen anywhere. I mean social networking is cool - online. Social networking translated to a movie is kind of dumb. Same goes for the blog movie idea above, as well as the Lookery Movie. Just not right for movie or television movie.

If you want to meet with the real live people and in person - team Lookery, than you have to hook up with the entire crew in Boulder, Colorado next week. Now that is real life, and if you think that a movie deal should be in the works for every online company or social network, we’ll entertain you in person and entertain your offer. I think Lookery in the real will be more interesting than any movie version could translate.

Technically Speaking, yes - team Lookery is in Boulder, Colorado next week - we hope to see you not in a movie but in reality!