Apples to apples comparisons of user counts
Saw an interesting article in my hometown paper, the Seattle PI: iLike surpasses six million users.
They are great guys, and I am very bullish on their growth prospects especially given Last.fm’s early exit from the space. That said, I want to point out the fact that by adding apples to apples user counts from both organic on-site numbers and also off-site numbers from Facebook, the PI is really confusing the two.
Ultimately, counting pageviews or unique users from widgets is a great way to fool VCs into thinking you have traction when you really don’t. This is just something to be aware of, as companies get more and more traction on social networking sites.