Comments on The Andy Hadfield Blog: INTERVIEW: WASA, the Website Association of South ...

I think this is very good news, though they face s...

2008-02-22T23:46:00.000+02:00

I think this is very good news, though they face some interesting challenges.

My beef was merely the pay R20k or bugger off appr...

2008-02-22T10:35:00.000+02:00

My beef was merely the pay R20k or bugger off approach that I experienced. I have heard nothing bad at all regarding credibility.

I'm no insider on how the OPA operates, but having...

2008-02-22T08:50:00.000+02:00

I'm no insider on how the OPA operates, but having had some fairly detailed discussions with members and the people who work on making the stats credible, I can't say I share your distrust of the OPA. Whether it has succeeded is a matter I'll leave to advertisers to judge, but I do know that a lot of thought and effort has gone into making the OPA stats accurate and honest.

It's not about the length of the lists, Vincent, b...

2008-02-21T21:24:00.000+02:00

It's not about the length of the lists, Vincent, but relevance! It would be irresponsible of WASA not to list a subset of OPA stats and claim to have a comprehensive list of South African websites with accurate statistics.

Currently the OPA is the only major organisation which represents any websites in South Africa, but unfortunately, it doesn't cater to the needs of the mass website market (the long tail as Andy so rightly pointed out).

Unethical would be if we "sucked down" the OPA / Nielsen's data and pretended that it was our own. We however, clearly state that the site is an OPA site as well as the statistics source as Nielsen's Netratings (As we do for Google Analytics).

WASA too is not interested in competing with the OPA but rather with creating a central body accessible to all website owners where they can publish their site details & audited statistics as well as receive media exposure.

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool, which used in conjunction with membership to WASA makes this possible at a price which is far easier to swallow than the OPA and Nielsen's.

We too make use of a neutral 3rd party, in the form of legal firm Buys Inc, to ensure the integrity of the system, and while yes, we are a "for profit" organisation, I would argue that this will allow us to move quicker and provide a better service than a non-profit one run by volunteers. Profit has also never been our primary focus, but rather the provision of a service which the market seemingly wants and which will enhance the exposure of all SA websites.

I don't have much to say on Amatomu besides that it provides a brilliant service for the South African blogosphere, but I echo your sentiments, Vincent, that it is specifically focused on bloggers whereas WASA is not. WASA's focus is South African websites and whatever form they may take.

Regarding the "self-registration" as you guys have termed it, again, there was no malice in our actions, merely relevance. We wanted to have a list of the top websites in the country on the home page, and surely you agree, that without including the sites currently in the OPA, such a list would be hopelessly inaccurate?!

We did also consult with the OPA before starting this venture and never intentioned for our launch to be a showdown between WASA and the OPA.

PS I apologize for the length of this comment, but that's a lot to respond to ;-)

Agreed about the long tail, I don;t have an issue...

2008-02-21T18:58:00.000+02:00

Agreed about the long tail, I don;t have an issue with the idea I just think the way it was launched could have been done in a way that doesn't lead to a show-down between the two.

Unless you consider this new organisation an auditing firm, the results won't be audited, just verified against Google Analytics. I think its problematic that the process is run by people who have sites listed and tracked in the system. The OPA system is audited by a neutral 3rd party which means less questions will be asked about its motivation. The OPA is also a non-profit organisation, whereas this one is for-profit.

Amatomu is also a specifically blogger thing, we're not that interested in corporate or media web sites. It costs money to track and report statistics like that - the Amatomu database does 55 transactions a second, so bandwidth and processing power presents real costs.

Two things.

1. Interesting point about sel...

2008-02-21T16:49:00.000+02:00

Two things.

1. Interesting point about self registration. That wouldn't really make them "audited stats" or "level playing field" stats, would they? I've asked Jonathan to comment...

2. Point I was making about amatomu - is NOT to compete with the OPA. The OPA says "South Africa's BIGGEST websites" or something, in their strap line. That excludes long tail media, blogs, citizen journalism etc. - a segment of the industry where Amatomu dominates and performs a valuable aggregation service.

Advertisers can still get value (as proved by Adwords) by taking advantage of the tail. The tail in this country battles to get credibility. OPA gave "big" sites credibility as you say. Who's doing it for the little guys?

Yeah I wonder how long the lists on WASA would be ...

2008-02-21T15:14:00.000+02:00

Yeah I wonder how long the lists on WASA would be if they hadn't just taken OPA stats and self-registered all those sites?

I guess when we launched Amatomu we should have just sucked down all of Technorati's data but that would have been er... unethical.

Amatomu isn't interested in competing with the OPA, the value the OPA has brought to advertisers and local traffic reporting standards is substantial.