Yesterday ReadWriteWeb Content VP Marshall Kirkpatrick posted the results of a survey that apparently looked at "Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants" and the current pay they receive. The title doesn’t mention tech bloggers but Marshall notes that the survey only went to "20 top-tier tech bloggers and social media consultants". I wonder what makes someone a top social media consultant. More importantly only 10 people participated in the survey. That in itself makes the survey unreliable and probably should not have been posted without more responses. But hey, it hit Digg, apparently that instantly makes it reliable and accurate.

So what do we know about, and from, this survey?

• The survey went to 20 people (including me, I didn’t reply) and only 10 apparently replied
• The 10 participants posted on a wiki page and we have no idea if it was actually 10 unique individuals
• Site founders weren’t included
• We have no way to tell what makes someone a "top-tier tech blogger or social media consultant" - i.e. there’s no benchmark
• RWW was able to grab data for use with their own bloggers in future negotiation
• Apparently RWW bloggers weren’t included in said survey unless Marshall makes a max of $90k
• Less than 24 hours were offered to participate
• There are numerous disclaimers within the survey findings
• Apparently the survey was sent to only Web 2.0 bloggers, not tech bloggers in general
• No mention on U.S or International

One apparent respondent says they make $15/post but $300/hr consulting. That’s hilarious. The real issue is that without knowing A LOT more about the responses and detailed information about the overall situation, it makes it near impossible to take this data for anything. What scares me is that Jeremiah Owyang calls this a "great post" - isn’t he supposed to be an analyst?

Would a blogger pay survey be a good idea? Absolutely! But it needs to be well thoughtout, have appropriate questions and answers, be statistically relevant, and get a diverse range of responses.

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Back in April, Yahoo acquired IndexTools, a provider of analytics software based in Hungary. Today, that service has re-emerged as Yahoo Web Analytics, and is being offered as a limited beta to customers of Yahoo Small Business – the company’s suite of tools for helping small businesses market and sell products online. Additionally, the tool will also be made available to select Yahoo advertisers.

As you might expect, Yahoo Web Analytics includes integration with other Yahoo products. For example, you can analyze the effectiveness of Yahoo search marketing campaigns and track how well individual products within your e-commerce shop are trending. The product will naturally be compared to Google Analytics, the free offering from Google that has similar integration with AdWords.

While it may be late to the party, Yahoo Web Analytics is apparently a big upgrade for Yahoo Small Business customers. Mashable contributor Sean Aune is a user of the service, and sent along the following screenshot as an example of what the service’s rather archaic reporting looks like today:

If nothing else, if you look at the screenshot below of the new service, it would seem that Yahoo Web Analytics has just received a long overdue upgrade:

Yahoo plans to roll out the service gradually to its Small Business Customers through the end of the year and expand the offering to other users in 2009.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo Acquires Analytics Company IndexToolsGoogle Analytics Gets a Beautiful New InterfaceGoogle’s Urchin Software Released As Public BetaGoogle Analytics Announces New Features, Urchin UpgradeE-mail Organizer Xobni Goes To Invite-only BetaCompete to Launch Search Analytics–Its First Paid ServiceQuantcast Launches New Analytics Tools

This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.

Future planning is a big part of what the national security apparatus of the United States does, and it is incredibly difficult to do well. As the national security writer William Arkin relates in his 2005 book Code Names: “Our Intelligence Community is constantly being surprised by events in the world and misreads what is happening.” Along the same lines, Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his must-read book The Black Swan explains why and how we are often surprised by rare, extraordinary events of huge consequence.

Such events elude the analysis of even the smartest person. Most have heard the term “Renaissance Man” – a person of many diverse talents like athletic prowess, intellectual power, musical ability, street smarts, and a way with the ladies. But we may not need them anymore, with access to “Renaissance Networks,” a term recently coined by a new media analyst at CIA’s Open Source Center. Why have a genius in a cubicle when a person who’s merely “smart” can utilize global crowd wisdom?

Recently, I attended a small conference about using social tools for information sharing hosted at Johns Hopkins University and sponsored by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Our hosts for three days were the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Intelligence Review (WIRe) and the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES). They were able to bring together the people who build social tools, those who evangelize about them, and influential end users to have candid and open discussions about them.

In the intelligence community, as in the defense community where I primarily work, there are what people call “cylinders of excellence” – different agencies and units that internally may perform their functions very well, but they do not necessarily have a culture of community leadership and partnership in something larger than themselves. Some in the IC have been promoting information sharing as opposed to keeping secrets. (What’s the joke about secrets? Only two people know, and one of them is dead.) Lately, a big part of information sharing has been the INTELINK system, which is closed to outsiders and includes terrific “clones” of Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, AIM, Wordpress, and more – “These tools have no respect for the formal org chart,” Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee put it to the audience.

And the toolkit is expanding. The big development in IC social networking tools hitting the news recently is A-Space, essentially a mashup of Facebook, LinkedIn, and GoogleDocs designed to be an addictive work environment for analysts with access to sensitive human intelligence (HUMINT). A-Space will have status updates a la Twitter, subscriptions to updates, feeds and friends, activity streams, content management a la Sharepoint, a community grid tag cloud, RSS feeds from outside, drag and drop capability, discussion/question threads, a ’scrapbook,’ and widgets. This system – frankly better than anything I know about in the private sector at the moment – should increase collaboration and analytical thinking.

All the talk about collaboration inspired an interesting formal debate among two IC thought leaders, Geoff Fowler of the WIRe, and Chris Rasmussen, an IC 2.0 evangelist based at NGA. In a fun twist, the debate was moderated using a public Twitter feed by Carmen Medina, a former CIA Associate Deputy Director (Intelligence). The debaters were influenced by Medina’s comments and also by the audience’s, and by the end, participants from outside the conference were asking questions – which for the very private IC is quite profound. Debate largely centered around the question, “Who is an expert?” with the general acknowledgement being that despite the need for subject matter experts, “Buford T. Justice is now involved in the national security process.”

More futuristically, analysts will be able to use A-Space feeds for more than news and personality information. One the government connects the huge number of sensors and other devices reading all sorts of information (temperature, heat, satellite imagery, sonar, radar, robotic sensors, RFID tags, biometric scanners, law enforcement raid cams, views from pilots’ cockpits…) to these feeds (for example, a Navy analyst could subscribe to a feed from underwater sensors looking for suspicious activity happening near underwater cables), the possibilities are endless.

In the private sector, there is discussion about barriers to adopting social tools. These include concerns about computer and information security, side-effects due to using unproven technologies, and concerns about negative impacts on productivity. But, a recent Gartner study suggests that if IT departments do not implement social technology tool use, worker bees will find workarounds. Therefore, a fair amount of time at the WIRe/ICES conference was spent discussing how to change the culture of organizations to take best advantage of the inevitable use of these social tools.

At the end of the film The Good Shepherd, the new CIA director says to Matt Damon’s character, “A Senator once asked me, ‘Why don’t you say ‘the’ before CIA? And I asked him, Do you say ‘the’ before God?” With regard to integrating social technology tools into everyday intelligence operations and analysis the IC is not quite godlike yet… but they’re getting awfully close.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. If you think this commentary is weak sauce, find him on Twitter and tell him about it!

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:National Intelligence Launches MySpace for SpiesWhat Happens When the Government Goes Web 2.0Google: Helping America’s Intelligence Agencies Find StuffIn Finland, Government Disconnects ItselfFacebook Banned For Ontario Government EmployeesFacebook Still Banned in SyriaOMG!! The Feds Launch Their Own MySpace Clone

Source:Mashable!

In the quest for URL shortener dominance in this era of the microblog and limited message space, BudURL comes out swinging. Going toe to toe with other URL shrinkers, BudURL combines metrics with URL shortening.

I am always wary of tools that try to combine metrics with social media, like Twitter Grader and Twitter Follower Friend Ratio. The main reason for this is the risk that people who don’t understand the nature of social media (engagement, conversation and a way to make being genuine a real part of business and personal online interaction) will use the metrics they attain to spam or abuse those in the social media space. Also, turning it into a competition defeats the whole concept of microsharing.

BudURL seems to have found the right mix of metric and social by keeping it simple. Unlike Bit.ly with its custom keywords or TinyUrl with its custom URL feature, BudURL gives you a way to track where your link was clicked. Keywords take time to track and rely on third party software for adequate information, and custom URLs are handy for sharing a link but offer no tracking. To see your referrers without any keywords involved is useful.

The lack of a keyword metric also helps prevent certain kinds of spamming. There is a huge subset of people and businesses out there who watch keywords like a hawk, looking for any opportunity to “game” a system with keyword metrics. By concentrating on where your link was seen and not the keywords around it, you are getting useful information and not contributing directly to a potential spam issue.

My favorite part of BudURL is the real time aspect of the referrer list - it auto refreshes every few seconds as people stop by your page. It was fascinating to me to see the test link I tossed up on Twitter get sent around the Internet. I got a fair share from Twitter, but I also got to see when someone else picked up the link and put it on other sites.

For people concerned with privacy, they may take issue with BudURL’s tracking of visiting IPs. In addition to referring URLs showing on the list, the visitor’s IP is tracked as well. I love this feature - I have a burning desire to see where my readers live and work. I find it interesting. However, if you are nervous when people know too much about you, it may help to keep in mind that clicking on a BudURL will give the person who made the URL your IP.

BudURL also gives you a way to track your BudURLs and create notes to help you remember what they were for. It also offers a toolbar button you can use to easily create BudURLs. Just add it to your toolbar with a simple drag and drop and click it when you are on a page you want to make into a BudURL. It took less than a minute to sign up for the service and install the button for me, and I didn’t even have to wait for a confirmation email. My account was active right away. Additionally, my URL tracking was active from the moment I first sent the URL out into the Twitterverse. Instant gratification is always a winner for me with a new application.

Overall, I think BudURL is going to hold its own against existing Bit.ly and TinyUrl. It isn’t as short as is.gd, so if you are looking for super-short, stick with what you know. I love the metrics feature even more than I love TinyUrl’s custom URLs (I never found a need for Bit.ly’s keywords). I think I’ll be using BudURL from now on to help keep a better eye on my links in microblogging and microsharing services.

Best Buy has announced plans to acquire Napster today for $121 million in cash. From the release, the proposed acquisition includes Napster’s approximately 700,000 digital entertainment subscribers, its Web-based customer service platform, and innovative mobile capabilities. In conjunction with the definitive merger agreement, Napster CEO Chris Gorog and key members of senior management of Napster have entered into employment agreements, effective at closing, pursuant to which they have agreed to continue as the Napster leadership post-acquisition.

Napster, which recently launched one of the world’s largest MP3 stores, had fiscal 2008 revenue of $127.5 million, an increase of 15 percent over the prior fiscal year; a loss of $16.5 million, an improvement compared with a loss of $36.8 million the prior fiscal year; and positive cash flow for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008.

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
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Source:CenterNetworks

comScore has released their latest m:metrics report showing mobile search usage in the U.S. and several countries in Europe. Nearly 10% of mobile subscribers in the U.S. completed a mobile search and the total mobile search usage is up 68% in the U.S. In Europe where mobile usage is further along, usage is up 38%.

For all of the countries in the chart below, Google leads usage of mobile search. In the U.S., 63% of mobile searches use Google while 34% use Yahoo. In Germany, 85% use Google and in France 62% use Google. Spain and France were the only countries that had near 10% MSN search usage. 

Akamai is out today with their second quarter 2008 "State of the Internet" report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. Some of the interesting stats include:

• Japan moved from 7th to 1st in Internet attack traffic - China fell from 1st to 3rd and the U.S. moved up from 3rd to 2nd.
• Directly from the report, "In the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions, Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru) are risky surfing destinations, with 6.8 percent of Romanian and 6.0 percent of Russian domains rated risky."
• The U.S. had the most unique IP addresses at 102 million with a total of 346 total worldwide unique IP addresses.

Here are a couple of the charts from the report.

High Broadband Connectivity: Fastest International Countries

South Korea remains in the lead with 64% of connections to Akamai occurring at over 5 Mbps. Japan ranked second and the U.S. moved up one slot to sixth.

Slowest International Countries

For those countries on some form of broadband, here are the countries with the slowest (less than 256k) connections. Rwanda came in first although they moved up from 100% to 94% of connections on these slower broadband connections. The U.S. comes in just over 8% of all connections at this speed - my mother is one of those 8% as she is still on a 56k modem.

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
– DEMO
– Techcrunch50
– Event and Interview Videos

There are numerous plugins to help bloggers insert tracking codes into their blogs. Google Analytics gets the most attention, and there are several others that are worth trying out that will keep you from having to make numerous edits to your templates to make sure you cover all the pages you want. Here are 10 very helpful tools for running stats tracking in WordPress.

All of the following are supposed to work in version 2.5 and above. Also, as always, don’t install all of these unless you want to decrease your blog’s response time.

Google Analytics

Google Analyticator - Allows you to set up the tracking code by simply knowing your tracking code number.  Can also disable tracking for admins, set up additional codes and more.

Google Analytics for WordPress - Allows you to set the extensions of downloadable files you want tracked, can also set different prefixes for different types of tracking.

WordPress Google Analytics Plugin - Can set it to not log anything done in the admin area, record 404s, keep track of searches and more.

Other Metric Packages

CyStats - Besides all of the normal stats, CyStats will also provide you with most viewed tags, top referring sites, multiple languages and more.

Generic Stats - Allows you to enter any stats program tracking code you’d like and define where it should appear in your pages without having to go and edit your template.

Piwik Analytics - Based on the Google Analytics plugin, the Piwik Analytics add-on will let you add the Piwik code to your site and define what it tracks.

Quantcast Quantifier - Allows you to add Quantcast statistics to your site without any template editing.

WassUp - A stats package updated in real time that can even show you who is online at that time and reading your site.

WordPress Blog Stats Plugin - A plugin to help you easily add the W3Counter to your WordPress blog, and view the stats in your admin section.

WP-phpMyVisites - Uses the open source Piwik analytics system to track your visitors, pages viewed, software used and more.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Wordpress 2.3 ReleasedWordpress Plugins Directory - Thanks, Wordpress!Douchebag Wordpress Plugin Helps You Curb Bad CommentsWordpress 2.3 out on Monday; Now with TagsOhloh’s Open Source Tracking Tools Go Open Source. Whew!Revver Plug-in for WordpressWordPress 2.5 Is Finally Out

Multimedia search provider blinkx has announced a distribution partnership with Getty Images today. The partnership brings blinkx search technology to the Getty Images database. Apparently it’s easier to search for images on Getty using the blinkx search rather than the search on the Getty Images site.

blinkx will use their ad platform, AdHoc, to serve ads next to the images from the Getty Images library. Revenue will be shared between both companies.

Last month blinkx made an offer to acquire Miva and this year they have formed a variety of partnerships with Revision3 and the BBC.

More CN Coverage:
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Source:CenterNetworks

comScore has released new stats for European Internet usage based on their World Metrix audience measurement service today. The report shows that Russia is leading Europe in Internet audience growth followed by France, Spain and Ireland. Russia’s Internet audience grew 27% from June 2007-June 2008.

As for Internet penetration in Europe, The Netherlands leads with 82% of the total population online. The Netherlands is followed by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Switzerland. Based on what I am seeing, Switzerland appears to be pushing out the most new startups out of the top 5 European Internet penetration countries.

Unfortunately Alexa didn’t make it. After stopping to count again yet again, Dr. Stern did all he could to bring the service back. Rest in peace Alexa, rest in peace.

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