Those of you who remember MeasureMap are long time readers of this blog. It was a blog-centered analytics service that first surfaced in August 2005. The service was created by San Francisco based Adaptive Path. The first details emerged in October 2005.
It was Google Analytics but just for blogs. It told you stats based on posts and other key blog features. By November 2005 Google had copied some of the features. And a couple of months later, before MeasureMap had even officially launched, they just bought it outright.
Since then, nothing. Founder Jeffrey Veen became the User Experience Manager and has been associated with a number of projects. Measure Map simply faded and was forgotten.
Except, not completely. Today Google emailed early MeasureMap users and said:
About your Measure Map account
Remember Measure Map? A couple of years ago, we gave you an account on an
early alpha test of our blog analytics software. Since then, a lot has
happened. We got acquired by Google, we redesigned their Analytics app, and
we’ve since rebuilt Measure Map from the ground up.I’m writing you because we need to move everyone over from their Measure Map
accounts to the new version at Google. If you’re no longer interested, no
problem. You can stop reading this now. But if you’d like to try out the new
service, here’s how: [instructions followed]
I went through the signup process, which requires a Google Analytics account and tracking pixel. They then said “Great! You’re all set. We’ve got a few things to set up on our end. We’ll send you an email when we’re ready (soon!) and explain how to log in.”
I’m emailing Google now to see if they’ll give more details on the planned launch and how it will be different from Google Analytics.
See all
Post
I am actually rather excited about it. I really liked MeasureMap back in the day when it first was announced. And if it wasn’t for them I don’t think Google Analytics would look as good as it does. I know that isn’t saying much, but it really did get a lot better.
Sounds like the plight of Feedburner!
Google Analytics is so focused on commerce, I suppose it does make sense for a blog-centric offering to be part of their mix. A lot of blogs, maybe most, already use Google Analytics. Something specific to blogs could give Google visibility to a very large base of publishers for their AdSense program.
I’d honestly like to see how it compares to what Google offers with Analytics.
Just got the email and enabled it, can’t wait to see what they’ve done…
I just received this email as well. I had completely forgotten about Measure Map - it was definitely an innovative way of looking at the data back then. As an analytics junkie, I’m anxious to see what the new service is like.
I was not a measure map user, but if anyone finds themselves with an invite to share…
I think that I might be one of the few people who use still regularly use Measure Map to track their blog. Hopefully they don’t gut the functionality (especially the real-time tracking of visitors) in order to move us over.
Sounds like Feedburner too — I have yet to mess with Feedburner’s API and the pieces of it but this seems like just another extension for Google analytics, how many users were there for Measure map?
I was an alpha tester and I didn’t get much out of it. I’m not a fan of Flash, just show me the data, I don’t need it animated. Also the remote hooks will slow down your site to some degree, no thanks. I map my traffic internally with a custom WP plugin. Watched traffic spike halfway down my screen this evening, multiple queries/second
It seem to me some folks at Google have seen the buzz around the new Woopra reel time analytics solution with chat in the last month. That’s probably why they throw this new launch so fast !
Eric - if by “so fast” you mean “it’s taken damn near 2 years for MM to do anything”, then I suppose you are correct.
People interested in web analytics open APIs, plugin architecture, give Piwik a try: piwik is an open source (GPL license) web analytics software, aiming to be an alternative at Google Analytics
http://piwik.org
Cool! When converting it detected that I am using blogger, the message “We’ll put a “Stats” tab on your Blogger dashboard” was displayed.
This is great, it means that soon it will be possible to check my MeasureMap stats from the Blogger.com dashboard!
It is nice to see how Blogger.com keeps up with WordPress.com. I hope they will integrate FeedBurner in a similar way.
Hopefully, the MeasureMap service won’t have as many unscheduled outages as Blogger. (Down as I’m typing this.)
–rj
I think the new Google Analytics Dashboard resembles MeasureMap screenshots. Perhaps Google will relaunch MeasureMap with an update to FeedBurner stats at the same time.
You guys know that Jeffrey Veen, one of the guys that set up Measuremap, re-designed the Google Analytics user interface, don’t you? Any similarities between the two are therefore more than a little coincidental.
Slightly confused as to how it differs from analytics myself…
*sigh* Google hath forgotten us yet again.
Measuremap.com is down as well… I really wonder what has happened to yet another brilliant Google idea?