In a time where most of the entertainment happens in the internet there is a craft creeping up the companies which is tied into metrics. Companies love metrics. Why? I explain below.
First: if you read this you are being tracked by Google. It just so happens that blogger.com is owned by Google and they just look at you where you came from before you read this and where to go when you leave. They also like to peek around your previous visits what you did there and save from which country and provider you came, and which OS, resolution etc. you were using. Don't worry though, the info is anonymous, so they don't actually know "its you". Its all about statistical analysis.
This information gathering is used by business intelligence to judge their strategies. But here is the catch. Metrics tell you WHAT happened, but rarely WHY it happened.
Again: WHAT happened. Is this enough to base your strategy upon? Hardly. Without understanding the WHY you might be completely wrong. You might be obsessed with the difference of correlation and dependence. This gets even pro's confused when they see data, so don't worry if you mix those two up all the time.
Why do I write this? Because here is an excellent article about why marketing might be so mislead by metrics right now. Go ahead and read it, its excellent:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/can-social-media-sell-soap.html
And as promised above here is my explanation why companies love metrics: because for the first time their suits understand what's happening - every single day-
Yes, you read that right. Often in the past marketing did some magic and was great, but management didn't really understand the fundamentals. The same was with game design in the past. It was considered sometimes black magic why certain game designers always seem to hit the good stuff. A mystic. Now with online games you clearly can see what element sucks and which rocks. Its all in the numbers.
But did you notice here what I did write above?
Let me quote myself from above: "their suits understand what's happening"
But not WHY. Think about it. This will change how companies operate in the next few years. Its already happening and the metric companies lead the pack. You have to go with them and hopefully teach them that people who know WHY are still important.
Cheers Teut
