ReadWriteEnterprise

It's no exaggeration to say that, sometimes, anonymity is a matter of life and death. Which is why it's important to know just how trivial it is to track down an "anonymous" blogger using their Google Analytics code.

Andy Baio, who runs the popular linkblog Waxy.org posted Wednesday about using simple tools like eWhois and Statsie to unmask several bloggers.

If any company has a comprehensive view of Web browsing behavior, it's Google. Not only does the company see plenty of traffic to its own properties, but thanks to Google Analytics, the search giant has plenty of insight into average site metrics Web-wide. Not only that, Google shares the data from sites that have opted in to share their data anonymously – and KISSmetrics has packaged up the results into a handy infographic. Among other things, it shows a drop in Windows users browsing the Web and referrals driving less traffic in 2011.

In the old days, somebody running a business had a cadre of middle managers who aggregated data about the performance of different parts of the business. They would typically write monthly reports highlighting trends, issues, and exceptions. In a modern, web-enabled, web-centric business, this role is served by the online dashboards provided by various services. The challenge today is aggregating and integrating those services. I see this challenge in the real world from running ReadWriteWeb's business operations. This gap seems like a good start-up opportunity. Perhaps somebody is already filling it?