One of the great things about Internet publishing is that Websites like ours become better and better reference libraries as they age. Since we launched Light Reading in February 2000, we've amassed more than 26,000 documents on our sites – Light Reading, Byte and Switch and Unstrung. Finding information in any of these documents is a breeze, thanks to our search tools.
Another great thing about Internet publishing is that it's possible to collect detailed statistics on how many people read what documents – something that's impossible to ascertain with print publications.
So, what were the most popular news items on Light Reading in 2002? The following list gives the top ten out of a total of nearly 1,200 documents:
No. 10: Juniper Nabs Unisphere for $740M 21,563 page views
After a year filled with so much doom and gloom, it's interesting, if not vaguely heartwarming, to find a positive event – the multimillion-dollar acquisition of Unisphere Networks by Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR) – among our most popular stories. Of course, we should mention that Light Reading predicted this event (see Juniper Scoping Out Unisphere?). Not that we're trying to blow our own horn, here...
No. 9: Cisco's Russo Resigns 22,003 page views
Anything with Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) in the title automatically equals loads o' mouse clicks. In addition to this one, Cisco stories also came in at No. 3 and No. 7 on the countdown. What's more, several Cisco stories just missed the top ten, including Cisco Eyeing Sonus, which garnered 19,195 page views.
No. 8: Black Friday: More Layoffs Loom 24,370 page views
Frightening factoid: Thousands more people have lost jobs in this industry than have read this story. Gulp.
No. 7: Cisco, Sycamore Circling Lucent's ATM 25,091 page views
A good rumor always makes people sit up and notice, particularly when it involves three (once-)leading players. We have yet to discover if this particular rumor is true, or just the product of the fevered imagination of a few insomniac financial heads...
No. 6: Telecom Downturn: Just Beginning? 26,221 page views
Was it the title that shocked readers into taking a closer look at this story? Certainly the prospect that the telecom winter is far from over is enough to strike fear in the hearts of even the stoutest Light Readers. Dr. John McQuillan, cochairman of the NGN Ventures conference, is the gloomy groundhog who poked his head out, spotted his shadow, and said we'd better get used to things the way they are.
No. 5: Lucent Fat Cats Gorge in 2002 26,721 page views
Stories of excessive executive compensation packages always get our goat – and our readers' too, it seems. But Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) is by no means alone in rewarding its top brass richly while the company sinks like a lead balloon. To really get in the mood of righteous indignation, we invite you to go on and read 2002 Top Ten: Fat Cats as well.
No. 4: Ex-Employees Take Aim at Accordion 29,208 page views
We puzzled for a while over why a story about a startup found itself so high on our list. In the end, we figured it was because of its positioning – as the lead story on our Supercomm preview site for several days – that pushed it up the charts. Testament to the power of these mini-publications. (PR folk take note...)
Accordion, sadly, didn't reap the benefit of all those mouse clicks: The company Website is out of commission, and we'd bet our boots it's out of business, if only we could find any takers.
Who's Cisco Systems Inc.'s scariest competitor right now? It's probably not Juniper Networks Inc., Nortel Networks Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., or even Alcatel SA.
FutureWei is the new North American communications equipment subsidiary of Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. The company officially launched last week with a splashy booth at the Supercomm 2002 tradeshow, hiring a gaggle of lithe, silver-spandex-clad models to hand out product literature and generate buzz.
By most accounts, it worked...
Click on the link above to read the rest.
No. 2: Light Reading's Top Ten Private Companies 35,125 page views
Whatever readers may think about Light Reading's ability to differentiate between a silk purse and a sow's ear, it seems they're still interested in our ranking of the up-and-coming startups in optical networking. Or perhaps they're just eager to see us fall flat on our face. Picking winners among startups is no easy task, particularly in this climate, but at least we're brave enough to try.
No. 1: 50 Worst Company Names 63,204 page views
The stunning margin of victory just proves what we've known all along at Light Reading: Readers want a garnish of giggles – and, if possible, heaping helpings of Phartronics – with their regular diet of heavy-hitting news analysis.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories If you want to talk about the real criminal promotion of an incompetent by John Chambers then you need look no further than Carlos Domingues.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories We are now in 2010. Ever since the tele-com bubble burst in 1999 bandwidth usage has increased almost 100%/year and all tele-com stocks have declined almost 10%/year after the abrupt drop by almost 90% in the two years following 1999. Every home today has at least 24 Mb/s compared to dial-up at 56kb/s back in 1999. Today every tele-com stock is worth zero. Light Reading continues to survive and Bobby Max continues to post. Lastmile is stuck with worthless investments.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories re: Another great thing about Internet publishing is that it's possible to collect detailed statistics on how many people read what documents ---- The statistic doesn't tell that. It tells how many page accesses there were (including a double count for open then print?), and this in turn is greater than the number of separate people. Furthermore, they may or may not have read all, part, or essentially none of it after a quick scan with their Bull$#!+ filter on. What it really tells is how captivating the title was.
Do you have statistics on page views of replies to the comments to the article? Does that correlate to page views of the article itself?
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories We can count lots of things -- the stats are pretty detailed. The same page shows up as a different url depending on where it is accessed from on the site. If it is a link from the home page, it has one type of url, if it is linked to from another document, it has a different url. Print this page is different again, as is e-mail this document. Adding these up takes a while, because each month data is listed separately. I chose to not to include the print-this-page and e-mail-this-doc options to avoid the kind of double counting you hinted at.
In answer to your second question, yes we can count how many times each message on the message board is viewed. It will not necessarily correlate to the number of times the article is viewed because it is possible to access the message boards without going via the article first. But I vote to skip this bit -- my job is to write stories not crunch numbers.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories LR: Sometimes response to messages on the message board at LR leads to a lot of infighting/filthy language/disgust/suicide/death. Fortunately all those who joined LR are are still alive today. How about the best of humor of 2002 concerning, only messages from the readers. I am sure that you have the data base to get this through. If you have a problem let us start with Bobby Max. Thanks
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories Must be a nice fantasy you live in. Stuck out here in the middle of three of the US's major east coast cities I'm lucky if I get 28.8Kb from any of the local ISPs or 34Kb from one which requires long distance dial-up. In so far as DSL or cable modems are concerned, the former is not available and the other would require I pay Comcast over $250 to run a cable for which they would gladly further charge me @$50/mo access to. OH, sure then I suppose I could allow the same exhorbitant raping of my monthly finances for a satellite receiver after I also pay for the box. I think before you spout off garbage tones of "Everybody has at least 24Mb service" you should come stay on the farm for a while, because I don't have it nor does over 1/2 of the population of my county or the counties surrounding me. Furthermore, if memory doesn't fail me then 56Kb is also a load of the same bovine scatology keeping in line of the present mis-information. I thought that 53Kb was the maximum then allowable by the FCC even though maufacturers presented the 56 Kb dial-up fax/modem cards on the general public. Last-mile has yet to come anywhere close to the gibberish you intend passing as research data or fact. In fact, at present I would sooner suspect they have overpriced their services within the same market they hope to attract. Most people I talk to at very best pick-up and drop those services on a fairly regular basis. Many more opt to remain with dial-up, even at rates between 34 Kb and 52Kb than you seem to want take account of and even when those other "premier services" are avaiable to them.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories I think the fall of both the titans, ie heads of the five families, Nortel, Lucent, JDS, Corning and Alcatel, walking away from billions in phony company investments. Engineers painting blue skies with worthless and unexecutable intellectual propety. Guys like Fahri Diner, who recently showed up in the silicon valley, rich and haughty, should be taken to the nearest jail and put on a bread and water diet...
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories The stories prented here are indeed facts and it offers an interesting preview of things to come. The telecom appears to be in larger trouble. In fact, a very interesting picture of the magnitude of downturn emerges. There have been material misrepresentation of the market sizes of various segments of the industry. To give an example, some analysts claimed that the availabe market size of the edge router business would be $15 Billion by the year 2003. The fact is that the edge router market in the year 2003 will be no more than $3.5 Billion or so. The outrageous have encouraged VCs to fund very weak and undeserving companies. These companies are closing down but there is still a large number of companies around. Thgis is specially true in California where a large number of companies have emerged with copied technologies with no product distinction. Corona Networks and Accordian Technologies. Both of these companies have CEOs with first line management experience and not much technology experience. It is simply amazing these two companies have received an enormous round of funding. According to the author of the Most Popular Stories, Accordian Networks has closed. Corona is breathing its last and it can expire any time. Thereare literally thousands of examples of clores like this in state of California. I have my theories about the vanishment of these companies. It would be interesting to look into the culture and experience levels of these companies. I am sure a clear pattern would emerge.
Let us discuss these companies individualy.
Item # 10. Juniper acquired Unisphere so as to compete in the edge router market. It allows to compete effectively with Cisco and other companies. Other companies, just to mention a few include: Avici, Cisco, Nortel, Juniper, Redback, Alcatel, Riverstone Networks. Then there are start-ups, to add a few names, in this category are: Laurel Networks, Allegro Networks, Crescent Networks, and TiMetra Networks, Procket Networks, Hyperchip. and Charlotte's Web Networks. It is not clear if Allegro would survive in this harsh market.
Item # 9. Mr. Russo resignation took place under very suspicous circumstances. He was supposed to report Mrs Ullal whose experience is far less than that of Russo. In fact, Mrs. Ullal has no experience in the optical industry. Mr. Russso is often credited with establishing program and has brought close to 4% of the Cisco revenue emanating from the optical business.
Mr. John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, has appointed people to high positions whose qualifications and experience do not match the position they occupy. It is not clear as to how he got approval from the Cisco Board. Merit and merit alone should be considered for offering a position. When this kind of thing happens and CEO forces resignations and offers poisition to less deserving people, our country suffers and bleeds continously. So employment-at-will is very powerful tool that prompts adhoc hiring of incompetent people.
I believe that Cisco's products should be discarded for the same reason that the US Government used to discard from countries where child labor was used. Promoting and sheltering unqualified people is a corrupt activity which the american people do not condone. Some day the companies would discard Cisco's products as hiring less qualifieds people is a criminal activity and should not be rewarded and is no less reprehensible than the use of children to make carpets in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and many other countries.
Item # 8. Only workers lose the job when downturn occurs. The people in the management keep drawing their salaries until they have stolen the last scent. This poractice is very wide prevelent in start-ups as well as established companies.
Some examples are in order. Xerox, Motorola, Unisys, Novel, Lucent & its spin-offs and Unisys. There are thousands and thousands examples where the company lays off its workers but keeps the management rank so that they can draw free salary a few more years. This wide scale corruption must be minimized otherwise other countries would not buy our products on the grounds of human rights violations.
Item # 6. Americans workers have tolerated widespread corruption in spite of severe injustice in matters related to inequitable treatment treatment in multiple ways.
Item # 5. Lucent Management has done wild things. It is unimiginable that Lucent management would loot the company. Neither Mr. Schackat ( chairman) and Mrs. Russo (President & CEO) have no concscience. They looted the company as there was no watchman at Lucent. During the tenure of Mr. Schacket, he has made millions and millions of dollars while the company was crumbling. Every Tom Dick and Harry became VP with unrestricted charge cards and freedom to travel with no purpose
Item # 4. I am sure the Accordian CEOis still on the payroll. VCs do not care as it is not their money which is at stake. There was no reason to fund Accordian by VCs. The CEO did not much experience in technology or management. I think Vcs should pay back the investors in full.
Item # 3.I believe that Huawei will tsurpass Cisco because cost and features in the product. They can beat Cisco in terms manufacturing and design costs. They seem to be very adept in marketing and custumor needs.
Finally creating markets through the current war efforts would not make us any money.
re: 2002 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories engelhardt:
1. It was a joke - 2010 hasn't arrived yet.
2. 56Kbps modems can operate at 56Kbps in the download direction in a laboratory. They *could* operate at 56Kbps in the real world if:
a) The FCC would permit modem transmit power to increase, and
b) The telephone line in use has no impairments.
Neither of the above conditions are likely to happen, so the best you can ever hope for is the equally mythical 53Kbps.
BTW, $50/mo is the going rate for DSL/cable even if you live next-door to a central office in a major city, so it appears that "stuck out here", wherever that happens to be, you're not as bad off as you think. The $250 installation hit is a snag for sure, but it's one-time, and is certainly much less than the real cost to run a cable to your home. Compared to the average family's entertainment budget, $50/mo is not a lot of money for something that is entertaining as well as useful, IMHO. I have DSL and am very happy with it, particularly for downloading multi-hundred megabit files, such as product demos and games, which I never would have even attempted with dial-up.
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