Alexa, you coulda been someone

I've been looking at companies who provide Web tracking data for the purpose of understanding how many people are seeing a company's message as it spreads around the Web.

This post really rips poor Alexa, who I thought previously might be one of the good sources of this data.

Alexa was all the rage back during the dot-com boom but what have you heard about them since Amazon bought them? Not much. I'm sure they had great plans back when A9 the next big thing, but that seems like ages ago.

The comments to this post really outline well the main problem with Alexa data: faulty sampling methodology based on the sad fact that the adoption of their toolbar is probably quite small and in niche areas.

Lost in Barcelona

Some of the members of the Factiva Insight management team proved on a recent trip to the Factiva Media Lab's office in Barcelona, Spain, that we can get lost just about anywhere. It's not a metaphor for our business. Really, it's not.

The trip was a great chance to sit down and discuss the state of our business with the multilingual team of Dow Jones media analysts who call this great city their home.

Photo credit: John Costanzo, staff photographer and technical lead.

How's your Bulgarian? Ours is great.

The business champion of Factiva Insight, Мартин Мъртланд -- er Martin Murtland, was recently interviewwed by the Sofia Echo while on a trip to Bulgaria. They talked about how Dow Jones is making use of the local software development talent in our offices there. If you read Bulgarian, have at it here: Компании & Финанси | Мартин Мъртланд: Водим прего�