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Concerns about the accuracy of logfile analysis in the presence of caching, and the desire to be able to perform web analytics as an outsourced service, led to the second data collection method, page tagging or 'Web bugs'.

In the mid 1990s, Web counters were commonly seen — these were images included in a web page that showed the number of times the image had been requested, which was an estimate of the number of visits to that page. In the late 1990s this concept evolved to include a small invisible image instead of a visible one, and, by using JavaScript, to pass along with the image request certain information about the page and the visitor. This information can then be processed remotely by a web analytics company, and extensive statistics generated.

The web analytics service also manages the process of assigning a cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify them during their visit and in subsequent visits.

I started my social media career at Hitachi Data Systems (I’ll actually be speaking to Hitachi in Tokyo this coming week) and eventually become the online community manager. One of the keys to being a successful community person is to be a resource (or lethal generosity) to the entire industry you want to serve –rather then just a vendor pitching jockey.

In the spirit of sharing, over the past few weeks in client calls, I’ve referenced these posts several times, one of the challenges of my blog layout is that it’s difficult to find the most visited or commented posts, here’s some I think you’d enjoy.

In this freeconomics world, startups still have a chance because startup costs are rock-bottom low. However, it is not enough to build a "killer app". They have to build a "killer honey pot" that uniquely attracts workers/customers that generate the content that both attracts page view "honey" and (virally) more workers/customers.

Is this bad or complex? Not really, just a different skillset. In this "honey pot" world, effective social architecture is more important than sheer quantity of application features. You don't charge (or charge much) for the "application." Instead, you harvest value out of the content/attention of your worker-bee customers.

One of the biggest problems that I have with the "free" argument, which you've mentioned in your article, is the whole idea of marginal costs of zero, or virtually zero. Generally speaking (and I can't think of a good counter-example), the only way that you get to such low costs is through significant capital investment and mass production so that, over time, fixed costs are distributed over a huge volume of product.

Anything that's mass produced, or mass distributed, still requires a rather large up front investment. That takes deep pockets, which many smaller companies don't have. You've indicated this above in your comments about Gmail overpowering Yahoo Mail (although Hotmail is still around...?)