Compete finally updates for July: the blogosphere continues to sleep at the wheel

July numbers have started to come in and we can finally make our public comments...of course, we prefer Quantcast data because compete is largely bullsh!t, because per Google Analytics, FunAdvice had 5.9 million uniques in July, and more than 4.4 million of those were unique visitors from the US.

Still, the
compete.com stats for the 3rd, fourth, and fifth largest question and answer sites in the US are instructional at the very least, as they highlight an important trend: Answerbag, as we know it, is failing.

If we cruise on over to Google trends to bake off the difference between FunAdvice and Blurtit, you'll see a startling fact, if you didn't know how the various sites in our category are growing: blurtit isn't growing organically. Mindcom internet, the company behind Blurtit (they won't even list their founders on the about page...what are they hiding?), is simply attempting to arbitrage their way to the top. It's not sustainable and as we've been catching up with a marketing budget of zero, it's clear that this isn't a sustainable strategy.

What does all this mean?
1) Build your product - if the media pays attention, great. If not, it won't hurt.
2) Focus on your members, not online marketing.
3) If you continue to ignore their requests (check the answerbag blog for some real gems...members there have been requesting a private messaging system for years, and FunAdvice launched Fun Mail in 2006)...it will bite you in the ass, in the end.
4) Fake, bullsh!t accounts to auto spam your sight (cough, answerbag's latest update, cough) will alienate users, piss them off AND set the precedent that you don't care about them, only questions that could generate the highest ad dollar per view.

Oooops....if you see me walking down the street and we started doing some of these things, feel free to slap me. Hard. I'd deserve it.