I stumbled upon the Open Web Analytics Project… interesting…
Found this site in blogistan: The Open Web Analytics Project.
Peter Adams, former CTO of LookSmart (NASDAQ:LOOK) wants to “make analytics free.” While I already thought we had a rather awesome free tool, it looks like Peter may also want to “make analytics open.” That’s inspired me to alert you about his work in my blog.
I quote:
“Open Web Analytics (OWA) is an open source web analytics framework written in PHP. OWA was born out of the need for an open source framework that could be used to easily add web analytics features to web sites and applications. The OWA framework also comes with built-in support for popular web applications such as Wordpress and MediaWiki. As a generic web analytics framework, OWA can be extended to track and analyze any web application.”
While I haven’t dug into this project deeply, I’m intrigued on the surface for a number of reasons:
1) Free. OWA even has a wiki.
2) Open and Interoperable. Supports a PHP API, PHP invocation, HTTP API, and Javascript.
3) Integrated with WordPress and MediaWiki. New media features are provided out of the box. RSS tracking is present. There’s Google Maps integration (visitor plotting), and it outputs Google KML files (for Google Earth).
4) Event-based framework. Composed of ”event types and event handlers“ that perform a specific analytic or logging function. “Events are composed of an Event type and a message. An Event’s message could be an array, object or any other data type.“
5) Provides developers with a feature set including a full model-view-controller based framework, a extensible module and plugin framework, an object relational mapping layer, and a lite templating layer. Database-driven configuration. There’s even a heatmap (ClickHeat project).
OWA provides an interesting model for how vendors can move toward technical openness. To me, OWA is another sign of how innovation outside of the “top vendors” pushes our industry forward to adapt to the rapidly-evolving internet and the future need for system and business actuation from integrated analytics.
If this innovation can generate scale, it has the potential to be disrupting, but right now it still seems a bit esotericly technical and overly dependent on one person (but that’s how Linux started isn’t it…). The average marketer wouldn’t know how to get started with it, but the Web 2.0 geek would know how use it.
I’m looking forward to seeing if new mashups provide open access to their analytics using OWA…
One to watch…
Eric T. Peterson added the following ...
Judah, nice find! I just downloaded the code and will try and get it running on WAD for you and I to play with.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how web analytics data collection and reporting can be separated … with an eye towards the “universal tag” that many folks have debated over the years. Perhaps the OWA framework will allow for this separation.
Cheers!
E.
Diarizing » Open Web Analytics added the following ...
[…] Judah stumbled upon the open web analytics project and i installed Open Web Analytics as soon as i read his post. […]
playing with Open Web Analytics » Instant Cognition » open source added the following ...
[…] to Judah for reminding me about OWA. I’m sure I ran into a reference to it several months ago but they hadn’t built […]
Judah added the following ...
Steve: I couldn’t agree with you more. As big time fan of open source, FSF, I even enjoy Stallman! I would suggest you send an email to Peter, and start adding your thoughts in the mix. You are a very talented individual and the “fun” you reference will only come sooner with your input!
Eric: Good point about the Univeral Tag. In addition, I’d like to see us all thiniking about an RDF (resource description framework) for web analytics. And thanks for getting it working for we Web 2.0 geeks…
Diarizing: I’m glad I helped to make the introduction, and please make sure to update me here on how it’s progressing.
Clint: Also good to hear your installing and using it with few troubles. With your experience and knowledge, I’m looking forward to reading your reviews on your blog. In fact, I plan to instantly cognate them. 
Stefano added the following ...
hi Judah,
i tried it as wordpress plugin and, after i found out a bug (fixed in a couple of hourse! wow!), i’m collecting data 
i hope i have chance to try it with a programmer to see what and how we can get other (customized?) data from owa.
thanks again.
Judah added the following ...
Ciao Stefano: Excellent to learn that you are finding OWA useful. I have been receiving their mailing list and Peter does fix bugs really quickly — faster than vendors! I’m eager to see if the OWA community grows and the technology builds momentum. Please let me know how you extend the technology. Buona fortuna!
Zeeland added the following ...
OWA is cool, not so complex like google analytics, but smart. I hope for some nice OWA plugins next times.
See you
Zeeland
Steve added the following ...
Came across it myself via linux.com last week:
http://community.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/05/22/1332241&tid=5
Which has an interesting ending observation:
“If you’re running a WordPress blog, the OWA plugin is a must-have if you care how much traffic your site receives and where it comes from. I use it in combination with Google Analytics, and really like having both tools to see as much as possible about my site visitors.”
The key there being “reporting”. Getting people away from reporting into analytics & action is hard. A name change won’t do it alone.
BTW: By “free” I suspect the answer is “freedom”. The code is GPL2.0′d.
While Peter’s goals and my own projects goals appear to be similar, albeit via very different directions/focus; I’ve seriously contemplated having a chat with him to see if we could, in some way, work together to our mutual benefit. But it looks early days for his stuff, so I’ll hold off for a bit and take a wait and see.
Where it gets really fun, is when all these different projects start working closely together. Then the fun *really* starts. Plugging into each others API’s and so on.
Interesting times….