Web analytics programs provide a LOT of data, which can be an overwhelming experience.  It’s good to know which metrics are relevant to your site and what they mean so that you can act on the information you get.  One of the most frequently useful metrics for marketing analytics is the bounce rate.  The idea behind this is that a “bounce” visitor is one who comes to your site and leaves right away without really taking anything in.

Last week Facebook announced a new application designed to let all your friends know exactly where you are by using GPS in smart phones.  The blogosphere is already full of articles lambasting Facebook for privacy issues, debating whether Foursquare and Gowalla will stand a chance, and some even praising Facebook for considering privacy issues before the release of a potentially prickly service.

Already, the Internet is full of contradicting information on how the program will actually work.  This Associated Press article on Yahoo gives kudos to Facebook for anticipating privacy issues and states, “If you're out and about with friends, you'll be able to "tag" them using the (at) symbol, much the same way you can already tag them in your status updates. Your friend will then be notified that you have tagged them and can choose to check in too, or reject it.”  To me, this implies that I will get a new notification every time someone tries to check me in, which I can either approve or deny.

As a board member of the Triad division of the American Advertising Federation (AAF), I have the opportunity to attend some truly fantastic conferences and networking events.  For those not familiar with the AAF, it is the oldest national advertising trade association bringing together professionals from traditional and online marketing agencies; corporations; media companies; non-profits and more.  

Yet another issue with Facebook user data privacy has come out this last week with the recent post of over 171 million user’s data to Pirate Bay.  Facebook is actually not responsible for this one though.  (Who knew?)  This data was published by someone who created a script to pull data from all publicly searchable profiles.  Scraping data from Facebook is actually against its terms of use, and anyone could have compiled this data.