IAR Bits and Bytes

WebSideStory Debuts New Hitbox Tools

Internet analytics company WebSideStory has launched a new reporting tool for its HitBox analytics platform users that allows them to create customized reports. The company also launched a data warehousing service.

With DecisionBuilder, HitBox licensees can use an Excel form to create customized reports, making it easier for executives to drill down into their site data on their own. While HitBox’s Web interface contains innumerable parameters for report-generation, the new tool, which is a downloaded plug-in, will allow even more flexibility, according to Michael Christian, a senior vice president at WebSide Story.

“We’re letting our tech do the talking and we’re giving our clients unlimited reports,” he said, pointing out that users will have the safe and familiar environment of Excel to use for querying the database.

DecisionBuilder is priced at $15,000 per license, with an unlimited number of users and reports.

In addition, WebSideStory launched Decision Mining, which is being billed as a complete outsourced data warehousing option. The service allows customers to expand and build upon the information HitBox gleans from user interaction. It comes with a managed data warehouse for the information, a data feed down to the individual browsing session, and user-defined reporting through DecisionBuilder. Decision Mining costs $20,000 per license, with an unlimited number of users and reports.

FTC Spam Meeting Sets Prelim Agenda

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set a preliminary agenda for its upcoming spam symposium.

Timothy Murphy, the FTC’s chairman, will keynote the meeting, which is scheduled to feature sessions on everything from spam’s economics to the efficacy of blacklists to federal and state legislation.

The email marketing industry has a number of representatives on the three-day conference’s dozen panels. Michael Mayor, NetCreations’ president, and Anna Zornosa, Topica’s chief executive and president, will hold forth on best practices. Bigfoot Interactive’s chief executive, Al DiGuido, will sit on the economics of spam panel. Representatives from the E-mail Marketing Association, Direct Marketing Association and the Federation of European Direct Markets will also participate in the conference.

The FTC called the three-day forum to address the many challenges of unsolicited bulk commercial email. With nearly 30 states moving to enact legislation against spam, support has grown in both the public and the email industry for federal action.