If you missed it, CNN put 25 people (1/3 registered republican, 1/3 registered democrat, 1/3 registered independent) in a room and gave them the ability to rate, in real-time, how the speaker is making them feel at that specific moment.

For example, if Barack Obama is speaking and as a poller, you don’t like what he’s saying, you turn your dial down, registering a negative rating. If, by contrast, you love what he’s saying, you turn your dial up, registering a positive rating.

Those ratings are then aggregated and shown as a line graph in real-time as you’re watching the debate on TV.

Sounds cool, right? As a TV viewer you get to see, in real-time, what the sample group (segmented by gender) is feeling at that exact moment. Cool. So what happens when it’s over? Incredibly, nothing.

Where are the results?

Why can’t they segment the results and tell us how specific topics registered with the specific cross-section of people polled?

Which topics registered most negatively/positively among registered republicans, democrats, and independents?

Soledad O’Brien, CNN reporter and focus group leader, mentions that the data will be crunched by MIT “number crunchers,” but we never saw any of it. If they reported any of the data, I missed it and someone please set me straight.

Sorry, I know this is a rant. I know they never said it was an official opinion poll or that the data really meant anything. It was a focus group. The problem is that they didn’t present it as such on the screen.

For example, if I didn’t tune into CNN before the debate, what would I think of the men/women bar graph at the bottom of the screen? I would have no clue. For all I know, they are polling hundreds of debate watchers. On the left of the line graph it said something like “Ohio independent voters” or “Ohio non-committed” or something like that. Beyond that, it doesn’t give the viewer any clue as to what the heck the lines mean. If I missed the ten minute explanation before the debate, I’m instantly confused. Show me a link to a website that describes what the line graph means!

At the end of the debate, publish the results!

I want to see the data segmented by topic, party, and gender. They clearly had the data, but elected to just use the pretty graph and not give us a true analysis in the end.

I understand it was cool to see. I just want more substance.

Disclaimer: I wrote this post right after the debate. If the results were posted somewhere and I missed them, please let me know.

Disclaimer 2: <sigh>I didn’t mean to say stupid. Now I feel badly. Again, I wrote this after the debate when I was mad there were no real results.</sigh>

Since first impressions are always the most important (especially on the web!), and since this is a new blog, it’s a perfect time to truly think about content and try to get some good conversations started.

Discussion themes for August? Let’s see …

1. What is website analytics? What *isn’t* it (or what should it *not* be)?
2. What types of analytics packages are there out there and what are some pros and cons of each?
3. What are the challenges higher education sites face when talking about usability and web analytics?
4. Usability and analytics going hand-in-hand.
5. The importance of website goals for usability.
6. How business and website goals should directly tie into your analytics strategy.

I’m sure that list will get tweaked over the next few days.

… and the posts begin …