Gawker: valleywag, alexa

Alexa introduces slightly less inaccurate website rankings

Owen Thomas — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Alexa, the Internet-traffic measurement site owned by Amazon.com, has revamped its famously inaccurate rankings. Its argument for why website visitors and publishers should trust it now? Because it says so — a claim likely as trustworthy as its old rankings. [Alexa.com]

Actually, the biggest boner for Facebook belongs to Alexa

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:38:39 EDT

A loyal reader and apparent Facebook enthusiast notes in his Facebook status, "so valleywag apparently has a bigger boner for FB than i do ... weird, huh?" I can only assume this comment comes in response to our chart yesterday showing Facebook's vast superiority to the gang of also-rans Google has rousted up to support OpenSocial. But here's the thing. No way do we have the biggest boner for Facebook. That prize goes to Alexa. Care to inspect for yourself?

Now, we know you already know that Alexa is thoroughly broken, with a methodology so suspect as to be risible. But some of you complained that we used Compete.com for our charts yesterday. And also, there was the matter of the size of our boner to defend.

So here's how Alexa compares views of Facebook and MySpace over the past year:

By contrast, here's how Compete compares the two social networks' "people count" over the past year:

No discussion of boners for Facebook would be complete, however, without mentioning Karel Baloun, author of Inside Facebook: Life, Work and Visions of Greatness. Judging by that title alone, you should know there's your man for a big old red and meaty for the blue and white site.

Mahalo, a top-20,000 website

Owen Thomas — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:49:38 EDT

No one should be surprised that Jason Calacanis has taken issue with my analysis of the paltry traffic to his new search engine, Mahalo. Ever the promoter, Calacanis jumped right into the comments. But I am a bit disappointed that this is the best spin he could come up with: "Being in the top 20,000 on Alexa rank is a darn good for a one month old site." Really, dude, you're better. Let's review this list of Web pages which outscore Mahalo on Alexa:

That bastard did what to whom?

Nick Douglas — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:18:10 EDT

NICK DOUGLAS — It's springtime for Hitler on the Internet as erupts (okay, continues as usual) in war. Let's run through who's been stomping on whom (MySpace on Photobucket, the rapaciously opinionated blogosphere on Kathy Sierra), and whether any of the aggressors have been brought to justice. (Hint: no.)

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. Wanna fight?

Ask and Lycos: Together to victory!

Nick Douglas — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 08:30:00 EST

"Ask.com has reached an agreement to provide search and sponsored listings for Lycos, the fifth most popular U.S. Web portal, the companies said on Wednesday."
— Reuters, November 1

A glorious partnership for two unstoppable up-and-comers!

Ask.com and Lycos team up in search deal [Reuters]
Ask and Lycos death-spirograph [Alexa]