7th
This is another great post from Fred Wilson. It touches on a topic that has always frustrated me when hearing statistics about companies that have free products.
I can not tell you how many people have said to me, “We are growing at 5,000 users a day” or “We are over a million sign ups and growing at 10% a week”, yet their products are free so the amount of sign ups, growth, etc., is all bullshit. All that matters is how many ACTIVE users do you have. Because when you are a free product people do not cancel, they just stop using it.
So be careful as Fred points out when looking at statistics because they might not always paint the most truthful picture.
I love the line about lies; “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”. You can use numbers to tell any story you want.
In the realm of web statistics, there are three numbers that are great…