Perhaps the only thing hotter than social media right now is mobile. And with good reason — smartphones like the iPhone and Palm Pre are taking our ability to get information to entirely new levels and ushering in an era of “digital ubiquity” that is clearly without precedent. Unsurprisingly business is responding by actively exploring how they can participate in the mobile opportunity, either by optimizing their site for small screens or going so far as to build cool, new iPhone applications to support long-standing offline initiatives.

Fortunately most business owners have learned from past mistakes and are showing interest in measuring the effect of their investment into mobile. But measuring mobile isn’t easy — the sheer diversity of technologies involved and the rapid evolution of the industry has created a monsterous landscape of devices, communication protocols, and requirements.

As a result dozens of companies have sprung up, all making claim to a unique ability to measure the mobile opportunity. Unfortunately some of these companies have decided that relying on hype, hyperbole, and sometimes outright lies are a better sales strategy than building a great product with a unique value proposition. We have seen CEOs bash other CEOs, sales people obfuscate their identity and try and provide “objective” answers, and antics that can only be described as “juvenile.”

Because the mobile opportunity is so great Web Analytics Demystified started taking a closer look at measurement earlier this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to rely on the expertise of folks like Michiel Berger and Thomas Pottjegort at Nedstat, the mobile team at NBC, dozens of analytics end-users, and some of the brightest product managers in the analytics sector tasked with integrating mobile into existing digital measurement offerings.

What I found was a series of surprising truths about how mobile analytics is evolving. Nedstat was kind enough to sponsor this research — and clear disclosure: Nedstat has been measuring and integrating mobile data into their web analytics offerings for years — and I am happy to announce the availablity of this research in a new white paper titled “The Truth about Mobile Analytics.”

You can download this paper from the Nedstat web site for free (but they do ask your name, email, and company name):

DOWNLOAD THE TRUTH ABOUT MOBILE ANALYTICS

We are also holding a special webcast on the subject on June 23rd at 10 AM Central European Time (CET) which is unfortunately quite late in the evening for those of us in the U.S. but quite well timed for Nedstat’s customers. I suspect the webcast will either be repeated or rebroadcast at a later date and time.

SIGN UP TO JOIN THE MOBILE ANALYTICS WEBCAST ON JUNE 23

Also, if you’re really into mobile and mobile analytics please consider joining us at the X Change Conference September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco. More details will be out next week but our mobile sessions will be led by Greg Dowling from Nokia (a company with some knowledge of mobile I am told.)

I encourage everyone to download the paper and give it a read, regardless of your position on mobile and mobile analytics today. As always I welcome your feedback and commentary.

I am incredibly excited to announce the keynote presentation for X Change 2009 to be held September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco at the St. Regis hotel. This year to kick things off we have arranged to have four guys that have done more than anyone to define the web analytics industry join us for a special “Four Founder’s Perspective” session, moderated by yours truly.

Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, John Pestana, and Bob Page are four names that every web analytics insider knows. Co-founders of Urchin, NetGenesis, Omniture, and Accrue respectively and now senior managers at Google Analytics, Visible Measures, ObservePoint, and Yahoo! Web Analytics, each of these gentlemen continue to shape digital measurement to this day.

In the keynote session we’ll be focusing on the past, present, and future of digital measurement. These guys were active participants in the early foundations of the industry — hell, Matt Cutler co-authored with Jim Sterne the seminal work Emetrics: Business Metrics for the New Economy back in 2000 which more or less kicked off the whole ball of wax — and all four have a history of participating in the early days of Emetrics in Santa Barbara (which is the model for the X Change, an intimate gathering of peers and friends.)

The audience will have a chance to ask questions.

Registration for X Change 2009 is now open and you will save 10% off the cost of registration if you sign up to join us before July 31st! I have more information about the X Change here in the “Community” section of the site and will be adding more content very soon!

I look forward to meeting many of you at the Founding Father’s keynote at X Change 2009!

Okay, so maybe the headline for this post is a wee hyperbolic, but if you’ve been to the X Change in the past I know you’ll forgive me my excitement. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, time to get ramped up for the X Change!

This year’s conference is being held at the extra fancy-schmancy St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, immediately adjacent to San Francisco MoMa and as central as you can possibly get while still suffering Starwood 5-star luxury accommodations. In a word, the venue is SWEET!

But, as with past X Change events, the venue will immediately become secondary to the excellent conversation, excellent company, and excellent insights being shared. As with the 2007 and 2008 events we plan to have the brightest practitioners from the best companies leading the conversation. Confirmed participants already include Best Buy, Intuit, Nokia, AOL, Forrester Research, Charles Schwab, Turner Broadcasting Systems, and more!

Also, as Gary alludes to in his post about the conference, I had a pretty good idea for this year’s conference keynote … we’re still pinning down details but I can honestly say the keynote this year is something that none of us have seen before at a web analytics conference or event.

We’re also excited to announce that on September 9th we will be holding the first-ever X Change Think Tank training day! Credit Gary this one, and it makes perfect sense to me given the strength of the Semphonic crew, but we will be taking the ideals of the X Change and extending them to an extremely intimate learning environment. I will be leading two classes and I hope to get my new business partner Aurélie Pols to lead one or two as well!

If you have budget for training in 2009 I definitely encourage you to have a look at the Think Tank and feel free to ping me directly for more details.

One of the things I love the most about the X Change is the transparency we have and that we learn from our participants. Every attendee helps us make the X Change a better conference, every year! To this end I am actively seeking input about the conference via this site, Twitter, email, … heck, you can call me directly if you have a good idea!

You can register now for the 2009 X Change and will save 10% if you do so before July 31st! Head on over to the Semphonic web site and start the registration process — and don’t forget this is an event that has sold out every year it has been offered! Because we limit the conference to 100 participants we fully expect to sell out in advance again … don’t get caught waiting!

I hope to see you at the X Change!

When I quit my job at Visual Sciences back in May 2007 to form Web Analytics Demystified I did so because I had a vision of a new type of web analytics consulting group. I very much wanted to build a small practice made up of very senior people capable of solving the really hard problems most companies have after they’ve made the investment in web analytic technology. I wanted to establish a firm that would compliment the highly tactical firms that I respected so much — companies like Semphonic, Stratigent, and Europe’s OX2.

After two years I am very proud of the work I’ve done and the clients I’ve worked with. I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best brands, the best companies, and the most visionary management teams who are actively wokring to do more than simply “run reports” and instead want to actively compete on web analytics. That said, I have come to the realization that there is no way I could satisfy the global need on my own … so I did what every good business owner should do: I went out and got someone smarter, more eloquent, and better looking to be my business partner!

At Emetrics last week in San Jose I was incredibly excited to announce that Aurélie Pols, Europe’s most widely known and well respected web analytics consultant, has joined Web Analytics Demystified as a Principal Consultant.  Aurélie brings depth and experience in web analytics that is rare anywhere in the world and exceedingly rare in Europe, she was the first consultant to break the “one vendor” stranglehold in Europe that forced firms to work exclusively with a single technology, and she brings a brilliance to the explanation and use of these tools that amazes even me.

Now Aurelie and I will be working together in Europe to “demystify web analytics” and help companies make significantly better use of their technology investment. Between the two of us and our contacts across Europe Web Analytics Demystified will now be providing a far greater level of service than was previously possible.

I highly recommend that you read Aurélie’s “Hello, World” blog post and start following her at aurelie.webanalyticsdemystified.com. If you have any questions about Aurélie’s practice or how Web Analytics Demystified can help you regardless of where you’re located, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

I hope you will welcome me in welcoming Aurélie to the Web Analytics Demystified team.

It’s almost amazing to consider that it has been a full year since the last Emetrics “West” event in California — what with so many changes and little Luca Dechamps Otamendi turning one — but it is again time to gather together and bask in the glory of Mr. Sterne’s excellent event. I am again honored to be presenting to a combined track, this time on Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 AM, and will be giving an update of my “Competing on Web Analytics” presentation that resonates so well with, well, pretty much everyone who has seen it.

The update is important and stems from a bunch of research I have been doing for the past six months. Given the launch of Yahoo Web Analytics 9.5 today and the recent opening up of the Google Analytics APIs I am busier than ever talking with companies who are trying to find the “right” balance of technology, people, and process.

Also, as I do from time to time I have a really big announcement that I will be making at the beginning of my talk. Last time I quit my job at Visual Sciences to start Web Analytics Demystified … this time? Come to the talk and be the first to find out!

I hope you’ll drop by and see my talk, again: Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 AM.

I am also speaking briefly in the “Softer Side of Metrics” panel with Mr. Stephen “Recently Elected to the WAA Board” Hamel and folks from BT Buckets and Firefox on Thursday, May 7th at 11:00 AM. This should be fun since I’ll get to introduce the larger web analytics community to the work I have been doing with Twitalyzer.

Also, don’t forget about the Emetrics edition of Web Analytics Wednesday which is, as always, open to conference attendees and the local community alike. We have something special planned to honor our recently deceased colleague Hosam Elkhodary so I hope you’ll sign up (so we can get a good count) and join us at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.

Finally, as always I go to Emetrics to meet with as many people as I possibly can and operate under the “I can sleep when I get home” mentality. If you’ve read my books, read my blog, enjoy Twitalyzer, or just have always wanted to ask me something please feel free to reach out … literally if you see me passing by or by Twittering me at @erictpeterson and setting up a time to meet.

(If you can’t make it to San Jose the next big analytics event in the U.S. is the X Change Conference September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco. I’m a huge fan (and partner) in the X Change so I’d love to tell you more about it if you’re interested!)

I hope to see you in San Jose!