I'm a huge fan of Quantcast. I've blogged before that it may be the best free tool for online marketers.

And now it's even better.

Two weeks someone showed me that whenever you are looking at a web site, to see how much traffic it has, that there are two arrows that PREVIOUS and NEXT, so if you are looking at the 100th most popular web site, you can click on NEXT and see the 101st most popular.

For many years I have wanted Ancestry.com to go international, since the world population is more than 20 times larger than the U.S. population. I felt that a Rootsweb-type model could be done in virtually every country of the world, followed at sime time, by an Ancestry-type subscription model. The one (a user generated content model) would lead to the other (a premium database model.)

Note: I left the company in February 2002 and have no inside information about the company or its plans.

My friend Spencer sent me a link to Quantcast.com this morning and I tried it out and then made in the centerpiece of my training today at the Provo Labs Academy.

I asked the question in my last post, "Will Compete's toolbar become an essential tool for internet marketers." After 15 minutes with the tool, and after watching the excellent Flash presentation about what this service aims to do, I answer with a resounding, "Yes!"

My favorite slide in the Flash presentation was this:

Bill Gross, one of the world's most prolific entrepreneurs and an inspiration to me for more than 10 years, officially launched Compete.com today. (See the Alexa Chart for Compete.com.)

I just downloaded the Compete toolbar. The graphics indicates that 2 million people are already sharing their clicks so that we can all know better what sites are popular and what sites we can trust.

It is interesting to look at the 5-year Alexa chart of MyFamily.com--a web site that was a high-flying pioneer in user generated content, photo sharing, free voice chat, and viral marketing; but which has been neglected in both development and marketing for nearly 5 years.

I just got an email from Ancestry announcing new affiliate commission and better support for affiliates starting on August 1st. The new commissions include 5 tiers and get top affiliates up to 50% commissions. Plus, the call center now has a way to track phone calls and credit affiliates for generating the calls.

A few highlights from the Shutterfly S-1:

• $83.9 million in revenue last year with net income of $28.9 million (But $24 million was from a one-time tax benefit recognized in Q4 2005. The revenue growth is strong year over year.
• They have stored more than 900 million customer photos in their archives.
• They have sold 300 million prints in 11 million customer orders.
• 84% of their customers are female.

This is a bit surprising to me.

No company likes anyone to break news for them. Companies like to control their own news and get their own press coverage. The blogosphere is upsetting to corporate executives everywhere. Many bloggers have lost their jobs over what they have written. It's an interesting time.

Against that backdrop, I felt compelled the other day to mention that MyFamily had layoffs and no media (and only 1 blogger) had reported it.

One of my favorite free web services is Google Alerts. I have more than 200 keywords that I track now. I find more value in this than in RSS feeds, which subscribe me to lots of content that I don't really want. Almost all of my Google Alerts give me content that I really do want.