The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

What is known about you: That’s the question I left in my teaser last time. A lot, is my answer.

It is widely known that most sites, including commercial sites analyze visitor data for references. Marketing departments do analysis of what is drawing visitors to the site, what they are buying and what they are not. This data is used to manipulate content and offerings and plan promotions, pretty much as the shelf-movement data is used in FMCG companies to analyze buying behavior. Welcome to web traffic analytics.

Blogmeisters will do well to learn a leaf or two out of this practice. But you can give appropriate cues only if you know who your visitors are. On the left side panel, you would find a greeting message, which also tries to guess your city and country, and in quite likelihood, would have got it right. Blog as a medium is not so evolved at this point to natively allow dynamic content generation. But the day is not very far off, and even if you do not know the visitor profile, there lots of other information that’s available to you to target your content. What’s amazing, much of that is free of cost.

Every computer on the internet has an identification number (called IP) which is tied to a location. That’s how you are tracked on the internet.

A small four line code inserted in your blog template can get you amazing insights on your visitors. This blog uses the services of statcounter.com to generate these reports which tracks these IPs. Look at the picture below and you would instantly know from where in the world are you getting most visitors to your blog.

(The images below are not very high quality. But do double click on them to see a better quality picture)

Click on a balloon and you would know more, right upto the street level address of the vistor, what browser was used and other blah. Below is the zoom up of a Googlebot(Google Indexing Robot that feeds the Google search) crawl of this blog and see the details associated with it.

Basically, these services present you three types of information – information related to hardware and software setup of the visitor(which could be you), information pertaining to the medium(ISP) and location and what you did on this blog.

If you do not care much, there is a summary for you, which tells you the basics of the visitors.

But if you are really curious what drives the traffic on your site, here is the best one. It not just tell you what keywords on sites like Google lead the visitor to your blog, but also as a blogmeister, you would know, post by post, how many visits is the blogroll on your friend’s blog referring to your site, how many visitors are coming from a search result that led to your blog, or if the technorati tags are being effective.

There are other services that track people in different ways. Geobutton gave me this Who’s on Now report for their site. ( That’s me in the second row)

Having said that, these reports, particularly the location bit, fails sometimes, and in any case, as a good practice, these reports have to be seen in the aggregate.

In the good old days of hosting pages on Tripod and Geocities ( Well, they still exist but I guess I am of that loop now!), we had to edit HTML ( or use some very basic templates). Many of us happened to put up hitcounters. Well, the same hitcounters have come a long way and know much more about you and your web behaviour. Beware!

(What I have written above is common knowledge among geeky bloggers. However, I invite all non-geek bloggers to try this out. Of course, I am not endorsing the services of any of the names I have taken above but I can assure you would definitely enjoy the reports)

In my next post, we would cover what information ordinary looking website such as this blog gather about you, and what they know about you, most of which you never thought is being available to anyone. Also, how this information is being used for better targetting. Beware, Big Brother is watching you, and unfortunately, it is largely available free of cost.
Somewhat like Google.com, which on Indian Independence Day ( 15 August 2006), not just figured out that I am from India, directed me to Google.co.in where it offered me Independence Day greetings!!!

I shall be back with more.

Finally, the Blogging Capital of India, Chennai is having its own bloggers meet. Titled BlogCamp, it will be held in the campus of IIT Madras. Some of the stars of blogosphere, such as Robert Scoble (former employee of Microsoft, currently VP of Podtech and perhaps the best known corporate blogger) are likely to be present apart from our own desi stars.

The event itself is perhaps the first of its kind in India. The details are available at the event website, http://www.blogcamp.in

I finally read Freakonomics the fourth time!. As I have mentioned in my previous post, this title is an international bestseller. Levitt is an accomplished economist, and Dubner is a journalist. The title gives the impression that this is an economics book and you would be burdened with intepreting curves and lines. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Read the complete title carefully, it reads ‘FREAKONOMICS- A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything‘ This book analyses some day to day phenomena in life which we tend to ignore. The authors have applied some statistical techniques to analyse some situations/happenings and that’s about it of the Economics. (But then, statistical tools are used in studying genes as well, and that does not make genetics a subfield of Economics!). The only term from the field of economics is the the role of ‘reward’ on our actions and what are these rewards.

Example, what is the correlation between a lawsuit of the sixties to the sudden drop in crime rate in the nineties and what the patterns of names in different social and economic strata of US society.

On the other hand, the flow of the book is very good ( The economist could have done it, this is definitely the journalist!) and you do not realize how soon you reach the end of the book. Perhaps a little too abruptly. That seems to be a little dissapointing since you feel that there would be a grand finale,which never comes. Someone asked Levitt about his ‘Unifying Theme’ n the course of an interview at a very young age. Perhaps this book needs a unifying theme as well.

One good thing. For days after you finish reading this book, you are likely to try and analyse the ‘hidden side’ of daily happenings.However, do remember that it is said that the economists are known to be good at ‘predicting the past‘(or fitting the curve to the occasion), so do not expect to be much wiser!!!!!

I would classify this book as General Curiousity read, and if you are curious about the hidden side of some elements of our daily life, go ahead and read it.Am I going to read it a fifth time? Well, not anytime soon.

Disclaimer:Having said all this, I must confess I am not an economist by education or by profession, and the only time I studied ‘Eco’, I managed to scrape through!!

PS: There is much more on the book website at http://www.freakonomics.com

I have read Freakanomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (by Levitt & Dubner) three times so far. Frankly, still trying to figure out what this book is about! Wait till I gather my thoughts. Should not be very long, possibly this very week.

In 1999, Carlos Ghosn ( Rhyming with Phone) was among the leaders at Renault. He had a well established reputation of an achiever, having worked in Michelin as well as Renault. At that time, Nissan was struggling to stay afloat. Nissan and Renault came into an alliance in which Renault took a 44 % stake in Nissan, and Carlos was marshalled off to Japan to change Nissan’s fortunes. He took over as COO and later the CEO of Nissan.That explains the context of title of the book.

Born in an Brazillian family of Lebenese descent, Ghosn was a brilliant student and received his advanced education in France. This book is co-authored with Phillipe Ries and was originally written in French. Under Ghosn’s leadership, there has been a stark change in Nissan’s fortunes. So much so that Renault called him back to lead Renualt as CEO, while holding charge as CEO of Nissan. Today he is a widely respected name in business transformation.

When there is talk of a business transformation of this scale, comparisons with GE’s former CEO Jack Welch are inevitable. ‘Neutron Jack’s’ bestseller Straight from the Gut for years hasbeen read by anyone who reads business excellence. Both Jack and ‘Le Cost Killer’ Ghosn appear very logic driven and straight, though by his writing style, Ghosn appears more sophisticated.

You may even ask the question, what is new in this book? Same old recipe of cultural sensitivity, growth in market share, product innovation, cost -cutting etc! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity with which it appears in the book. It is Ghosn’s writing style to stay away from hyperbole.

This book also shows the deftness with which Ghosn handles the cultural issues ( Not just the western style vs Japanese style but the difference in the companies as well). Perhaps it has to do with his exposure to different cultures at an early age.

Like all great business leaders, Ghosn appears transparent and wants to keep his communication simple to understand. The 180 strategy is a manifestation of this simplicity.

From readability point of view, it holds your attention without becoming too taxing. And perhaps this book is translated from French, personal touch seems to be missing at points. But if a book has been written by a business leader as tall as Ghosn, you cannot miss the point.

Read it , when you can.