Pattern Finder

Gartner Acquires META

Well, it finally happened -- Gartner acquired META Group.  After Forrester acquired Giga in February 2003, the rumors were rife in the analyst community that META would be the next firm to lose its independence.  It just took a bit longer than we thought.

Since both firms are based in Stamford, CT, the physical integration of the two should be easy.  However, which analysts will stick around is another question.

As an independent analyst, Gartner getting bigger is good.  I hear secondhand comments from clients that (1) Gartner takes forever to set up a talk with a specific analyst and (2) that its analysts sometimes lack "real world" experience.  As an analyst that sets up interviews in hours and has worked in the industry for 25 years, anything that makes Gartner an even bigger behemoth -- and slower in reaction and knowledge -- makes my service more attractive to customers who expect personalized and knowledgeable service for their hard-earned money.

Now if only Gartner would buy Forrester, AMR, and Aberdeen....

Personalized Music

On December 15th, VentureWire reported that Savage Beast had received $7.7 million in Series B funding, noting that it offered "music recommendation technology."  So, I scooted over to SavageBeast.com, cruised through the Web site, and it's basically "music personalization."  What will they think of next?  We have personalized recommendations for books (Amazon), DVDs (Netflix), and music (Savage Beast) -- I hope someone is working on art ("If you like Renoir, you'll love Monet....").

Savage Beast has apparently profiled 60 years of music.  Besides navigating music by genre and artist, users "can focus their searches around particular vocal styles, instruments, lyrical content, or compositional qualities," according to the company.  Given the explosive popularity of the iPod, it strikes me that a user could load up the iPod and then call on Savage Beast to automatically generate playlists, rather than manually creating them.

So although personalization as a term is a dirty word in the market these days, at least some companies aren't letting it faze them, and are building personalization technology anyway.

Web Site Oops #1

One afternoon last week I received an e-mail from my broadband provider, Comcast, noting that I could save up to $50 a month for a year on my cable bill if I purchased some Philips electronics.  The e-mail announced in big black letters, "Click here to find out more."

Intrigued -- and sucker that I am -- I clicked, and was quickly shown a notice on the Philips site saying, "Sorry, the site is currently down for maintenance.  Please come back later."

Huh?  You're pitching me an "Exclusive Offer" (their terminology, not mine) and your partner is closed for business?  Take away 10,000 bonus racko points on that one, Comcast.

So the moral of the story -- besides how not to do e-mail marketing -- is that companies looking to set up such a partnership should not only check that the landing page is up, but also ask the question, "When do you take your site down?"

Getting a Medal for Being a Webmaster

The English know how to do it right.  On December 9th, Mike Smartt, the founder of the BBC News Web site, was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth.  (Read the story on the BBC Web site:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4082733.stm).

Like many who were in on the Internet at the beginning, Mike stumbled into it.  Initially, he was a newspaper reporter at the Selby Times; in 1972 he joined the BBC at Radio Humberside; in 1976 he became a TV reporter.  He started the BBC News Web site in November 1997 with a staff of thirty.

So, for you Webmasters looking to get a medal for your efforts, move to the UK.

DoubleClick Gets Out of Web Analytics

Earlier this week, DoubleClick announced it was getting out of the Web analytics business.  However -- Heaven Forbid! -- that they should state it so baldly.  Instead, they alluded to a "partnership" in which their customers "will have the opportunity to migrate over to Omniture's Web analytics solution."  "Opportunity" sounds kind of optional, doesn't it?  However, buried in paragraph four, the company goes on to state, "DoubleClick will continue to support the SiteAdvance platform until the migration is complete...".  In other words, "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?"

This comes at a time when DoubleClick is deciding what it wants to do when it grows up.  On November 1, it hired Lazard Freres & Company to help it "achieve greater shareholder value."  Selling SiteAdvance to Omniture is no doubt the first in a series of shoes to drop.

Interestingly, DoubleClick didn't intend to get into the Web analytics market in a big way.  When company officials briefed me on SiteAdvance before its release, they went to great pains to note that DoubleClick was not planning to go head to head with vendors such as WebTrends and WebSideStory.  Instead, they were merely filling in an analytical gap for their installed base.

However, the solution was more popular than they expected.  I suspect that SiteAdvance fell prey to its success.  If it had remained small, there would have been nothing to sell.  However, as the solution's success grew, the company had to decide whether to (1) aggressively go after the market or (2) bail out.  And bail out won.