As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve run a music blog in my spare time for most of the past two years. Since it’s only a hobby, I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my web traffic. Sure, I’ll check my average numbers on occasion, but for the most part I really don’t pay much attention.

The story is different with Rogomo, though. Once we launch, it’s going to be important for us to be able to monitor and analyze our traffic. We need to know who’s using our site, how they’re using it, and, if we can, why they’re using it. To do this, we’re going to have to rely on web analytics software to do the heavy lifting. The problem, however, is that there’s a lot of different programs available, and there’s no easy-to-find resource to help you decide which one to use. (Or, if there is, we sure didn’t find it.)

So, in an effort to save other folks the time and frustration of researching all of the available options on the market, we figured it might be a good idea to share what we’ve learned in this process. While I’m sure this post will be outdated by next week, it should at least get you on the right track a little faster.

From what we saw, there are really three main questions to answer in order to find the right web analytics software. First, do you have your own web server? If the answer is no, then your choices of software on the market are essentially halved, and you’ll have no choice but to use analytics software that relies on page tagging. Page tagging is exactly what it sounds like — you cut and paste a short piece of HTML code onto every page of your website that you want to track, and when a user comes to that site, that user is tagged with a cookie which reports information about where the user came from, how long they stayed, and what they did on your page. Our favorite page tagging tools were Google Analytics, which is free and pretty powerful, and Mint, which is beautifully designed though a little less powerful (see also SiteTracker and StatCounter).

We had two main problems with page tagging tools. First, page tagging forces you to add JavaScript code to every page on your site, which can be extremely time-consuming and difficult, especially if you have a variety of differently-formatted pages. Second, and even more important, page tagging forces you to depend on a third-party tool to analyze your traffic and provide you with information about your traffic. In other words, important (and potentially confidential) business information is being sent to and from a third-party. This flow of information could open up vulnerabilities in our server, and could also slow our server down. These aren’t chances we want to take.

So, if you do have your own web server, you may want to look into analytics tools which analyzes your web server’s logfile. One of the biggest benefits for a company like Rogomo is that server logfiles, in addition to showing what your users did, also shows you what they tried to do — i.e., if your user tried to do something on your site but got an error message, logfile analyzers will tell you (but page taggers won’t). More information on the differences between logfile analyzers and page taggers can be found here.

Finally, there are also programs out there that are “hybrids”, which offer analytics based both on page-tagging and logfile analysis (i.e., Moniforce, NetTracker). However, based on our concerns about page-tagging (and price), we chose the logfile analyzer route.

The second question you need to answer is whether you want to host the software on your own server or whether you prefer that it be hosted elsewhere. Assuming you have a server (see question #1), the answer to this question really only comes down to how comfortable you are (or someone on your team is) installing the software on your server, as well as any future updates, and maintaining it going forward. Obviously, sometimes it’s just easier to have someone else do it — in that case, you can use software which is “hosted” on someone else’s servers. The more interesting “hosted” programs we found included CrazyEgg, which has great looking screen heatmaps, and Xiti, which was crazy expensive. (PS: The majority of the page-tagging programs are also “hosted”.) The more interesting “server” programs included AWstats and SmarterStats. Additionally, there are also a couple of programs, like Moniforce and NetTracker, which can either be placed on your server or hosted elsewhere. Like I said above, there are a LOT of options here.

Since we think we’re comfortable maintaining the stats program ourselves on our server, we decided to look at the “server” programs. That basically narrowed our choice down to AWstats, Moniforce, NetTracker and SmarterStats.

So that brought us to the third and final question — how much were we willing to spend?. Frankly, some of these products are really expensive, running in the thousands of dollars. One program called ClickTracks offers its professional grade product for $9,300. Moniforce and NetTracker didn’t list prices on their site, but are clearly designed for large enterprises (and enterprise-sized budgets). While I have no doubt that there are companies out there that need that type of power, and have that type of budget, Rogomo is not one of those companies.

Thankfully, AWstats is free, and SmarterStats is $199, so we had two legitimate options. At that point, we looked at a ton of message boards and comments around the web about the two programs. Both had good reputations, but at the end of the day it seemed to us like SmarterStats was the more commonly-used program, so that’s what we chose. We haven’t been able to put it to a lot of work yet, but we think we made the right choice. We’ll let you know for sure once we’ve had a few months to test it out.

Neil had a post a few months ago talking about his favorite places to eat in Buenos Aires. I disagreed with his recommendation of the Cabana Las Lilas steakhouse, which I found to be too touristy and “mass production”, and mentioned that I’d found a much better steakhouse near the Park Tower Hotel. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember the restaurant’s name.

Well, I figured it out today completely by accident — Las Nazarenas.

The steak I had there was among the best that I’ve ever had in my life. In fact, everything was excellent there, from the bread they put on the table to the provoleta appetizer.

If I ever go back to Buenos Aires — and it’s not on my list of things to do — I’ll definitely be going back at least once.

(Photo source)

There was an interesting article in Tuesday’s New York Times about the so-called “Bubble 2.0,” and the growing belief of many that we’re on the verge of a second Internet bubble burst. One quote really stood out to me — one of the people interviewed stated that “entrepreneurs [have] begun to think that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues — since that only limits the imagination of investors.”

The article made me ask myself — why does history repeat itself?

Consider that from 1999 to 2001, there were plenty of people who, like now, were happy to throw out their finance textbooks and leave startup valuations to “the imagination of investors” rather than looking for actual revenue. And for a while it seemed to be working. People got rich. We were told that we were in the middle of the “new economy”, and that the rules of the “old economy” didn’t apply anymore. In fact, people were so convinced of this “new economy” that some even tried to create wholly new, Internet-based currencies like Flooz.com (remember the Whoopi Goldberg commercials?)

We all know how that turned out. The majority of the hot new Internet startups burned through incredible amounts of money, and investors eventually bailed out of their investments when “the imagination of investors” became less important than future profits. Tech workers went from being paper billionaires to collecting paper checks from their nearest Unemployment office.

The lesson that I thought we had learned from Bubble 1.0 was that we shouldn’t invest solely on “imagination.” However, instead of learning this lesson, investors repeated their mistakes just a few years later as they poured money into the real estate market. There was no rational reason for the sudden and dramatic increase in home prices, aside than the fact that everyone else was investing. Many investors started “flipping” homes for a living or buying up many homes as investment properties. And for a while it too was working. People became rich overnight. Real estate was clearly “different” (just as our “new economy” had been).

As we’ve learned, though, real estate is not different. People overcommitted themselves, and now are being foreclosed upon left and right. Homes and apartments are sitting empty. Condominium buildings are being converted to rentals. Prices are falling quickly. What we’re seeing is that popular thinking — best demonstrated by a popular Miami real estate website’s tagline, “Bubbles are for bathtubs” — was clearly wrong.

To be fair, the real estate investors that helped build the housing bubble were generally not the same people involved in either the first tech bubble or the current tech market (I’m not ready to call it a bubble, yet). But others, including the homebuilders, banks and even the Fed, should have been able to look at the market and see that history was repeating itself.

So, to get back to Tuesday’s New York Times article — are we repeating our mistakes of the past and will this lead to a Bubble 2.0? It’s hard to say. There are some key differences between the tech market now and in 2001. It’s less expensive to start an online company today than in the past (something Rogomo has benefitted from), meaning that the barriers to entry are lower and that it’s a new crop of investors in the current market. However, much like Bubble 1.0, it seems clear that many investors are still basing their investments on “imagination” rather than hard numbers. In addition, much like the real estate market, established companies are overpaying for innovation for the simple reason that their competitors are doing so as well (i.e., eBay/Skype, Google/Doubleclick, etc.). The value of these startups are increasing dramatically. People are getting rich (again). But will it last this time?

The reason that history repeats itself is because we refuse to learn from our mistakes and instead let greed and hubris cloud our judgment. The investors driving up the so-called Bubble 2.0 valuations don’t believe (or at least hope) that the lessons from the original tech bubble apply to them. They should know better than to ignore history.

Personally, I learned my own valuable history lesson from the original tech bubble that will forever guide my investments — don’t take investment advice from Deloris Van Cartier.

I haven’t done a music update in a while, and I’m not doing one now, but I promise there will be one soon. To hold you over, here’s video of what might quite possibly be the first White Stripes song I’ve liked in 5 years. I’m not a particular fan of the band, but this song is pretty great.