Best of the web – May 2012

1. Prosodic raises $1.4m for Facebook analytics platform

The Next Web tops our chart for the second month running, this time with news of Prosodic bagging a $1.4m investment to fund the continued development of its Facebook fan engagement analytics platform. “Basically, the startup’s technology enables brands and publishers to learn when they can reach their Facebook audiences, pinpointing exactly when they tend to be online and interacting with the popular social networking service.”

2. How to rock your Google Analytics

Ed Baxter of Ignition Search has some handy tips for getting the most out of Google’s free web analytics service. He shows site owners how to block Google Analytics from tracking them to make sure they are not polluting their own data; how to set up alerts for big shifts in traffic; and how to segment visitors to understand different visitor types.

3. Top 50 #analytics Twitter influencers

Preceding our own ranking of #MRX influencers by a few days, SAP published this list of the most popular users of the #analytics hashtag on Twitter. Big companies dominate the list.

4. The future of knowledge

IBM’s Business Analytics Blog interviews author Stephen Baker, who cautions readers to treat what is said on social media with a pinch of salt. “Analysing people’s behaviour instead of what they claim their behaviour is tells a completely different story about that individual,” says Baker. “Most of the time people will say something that is designed to make you feel better and make them feel better about themselves.”

5. Analytics implementation super hero

Cardinal Path’s Stephane Hamel gives a rundown of the skills companies should look for when hiring an analytics implementation specialist.

Also, check out:

6. From co-creation to collaboration

7. Redefining ‘non’-profits with predictive analytics

8. Three ways to use Pinterest for marketing research

9. The end of the world as we know it

10. Why storytelling is the ultimate weapon

_{Best of the Web is a roundup of the most-shared links on Twitter, based on analysis of all tweets generated by the MR community (as defined in our last project to map the MR Twitter network – see here for more details). Analysis by Dollywagon. Data was collected in the four weeks to 30 May.}