Jobs, Humor, Advice, Music, Movies, Coolness

For years, the free standard that webmasters and bloggers used to judge website/blog popularity was Alexa, but there are some alternatives that you should consider, sites that are beating Alexa at its own game.

I’ve never considered Alexa to be that accurate in its rankings, due to its flawed methodology:  “Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users and data collected from other, diverse sources over a rolling 3 month period”.  What this means is that Alexa’s traffic estimates and rankings are primarily determined by users that have installed their toolbar.  Toolbars are a dime a dozen, many are considered spyware, and the only one worth a damn and that I would actually install is the Google toolbar.  While many thousands have probably installed the Alexa toolbar, it’s hardly a way to measure anything since it represents such a small sample of traffic data, and is not a good indicator of typical internet browsing behavior.

Two alternatives to Alexa are Quantcast and Compete.  I’ve found that Compete seems to have a much more accurate estimate than Alexa and Quantcast, plus it allows you to compare your site/blog with competition.  The compare feature is both a blessing and a curse.

As you can see from the numbers below and Internweb.com’s actual numbers, Alexa is not accurate at all.  Alexa’s founders sold their company at the height of the internet boom to Amazon.com in 1999 for 250 million in Amazon stock.   Wow.

• Alexa has Internweb.com ranked 439,457 and doesn’t estimate uniques.
• Quantcast has Internweb.com ranked 300,351, with uniques estimated at 3,879 per month.
• Compete has Internweb.com ranked 125,735 with uniques estimated at 14,000 per month.

Since I have Google Analytics installed on all my sites and blogs (and you should, too!), the actual uniques in January 2009 for Internweb were 28,801, which is substantially more than the estimates of any these popularity checkers.

The conclusion is to use Compete for you popularity (ego) checks.

The French group Zombie Zombie made an AWESOME music video homage to one of their favorite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing, using stop-motion with GI Joe figures. The 1982 horror film starred Kurt Russell as part of a research team stationed in Antarctica that encounters a shape-shifting creature. The movements are fluid and the set design is accurate and amazing. The title of the song is “Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free”:

The Lonely Island, a comedy trio featuring Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg has released the first single from their upcoming album, “Incredibad”: “Jizz in My Pants”:

The video features Molly Sims, Jamie-Lynn Sigler (Meadow on The Sopranos) and Justin Timberlake. Other comedy shorts from The Lonely Island include “Dick in a Box” and “Lazy Sunday”.

The Lonely Island is Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.

This is your brain on tequila. Any questions?

Click pic for larger version.

Facebook has become the most popular social network in the last year, finally overtaking MySpace.  It seems like everyone I know, and probably everyone you know,  is now on Facebook.   Facebook offers targeted advertising based on profile information, so you can really zero in on the people you want to view your blog/site/business.

To help you get started with FacebookAds — here’s a free $100 advertising voucher.  All you have to do is:

1. Log into your Facebook account
2. Add the Visa Business Network App to your Facebook profile
3. Once added, Facebook/VISA will send you an email with a code, and you can use this to claim your $100 advertising credit

I am testing this out myself, and will post results once my week of advertising and/or budget has been spent. It makes sense for me to advertise my internship search site Internweb.com on Facebook, since the audience for my site is college students, who make up a large percentage of Facebook users. Screenshots of the ad campaign I set up are below:

Ad Copy

I uploaded a suitable picture to go with my ad and added a description. My two most successful keywords (phrases, actually) have been “summer internships” and “paid internships”, so I made sure to put them into the ad copy.  I also created a Facebook Group for internships and added a “Social Action” to it as part of the ad.  This way if someone clicks on my ad they can also join the group where I can post content from my site as another way to build traffic.

Ad Targeting

I chose to target only Facebook users listed as “In College”, “18 and older”, and added relevant keywords.  I was limited to only the keywords that matched what Facebook had in its keyword databse, but the ones I chose should be fine.  As you can see, you can also target by location, other education levels, relationship status, etc.

Ad Budget

Since I was using my coupon and didn’t really want to spend much more than the free $100 in this initial test, I set my budget at just $5.00 a day, and set up a CPC ad, so I am only paying for clicks and not views.  I chose to go with 50 cents a click, within Facebook’s recommended range for my keywords.   Finally, I chose to run my ad only during the week since my site traffic has shown that students don’t search for internships on the weekends.

After your ad is submitted it goes into an approval queue.  Hopefully it will be approved by Facebook and begin to run on my target date.

“THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING is not just the most complete documentary ever put together about JAWS…but probably the most complete documentary ever put together about any film-period.”

“THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING is an amazingly comprehensive and entertaining document of one of the greatest anecdotal Hollywood productions of all time. It quells many of the famous rumors that have grown in its wake, illuminates others, and shows the true machinery behind one of the greatest artistic and commercial triumphs Hollywood has ever known. True Hollywood storytelling at its best.”

“THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING is clearly a labor of love for those who made it, and a total delight for those who see it. Seldom have I encountered a documentary that so meticulously and joyfully examines not only the nuts-and-bolts making of a beloved classic film, but also celebrates the stunning and lasting impact that that film has had on audiences (and filmmaking) the world over. This is a love letter not only to JAWS as a singular film experience, but to the idea of cinema itself — a must-see for anybody who’s ever been swept away by the flickering images in the dark, for all who love the movies.”