| skinnyrattler said: For those not around when IOI used to post on GAF: He got a bad rap because he would make claims he never would back up. ie most of his numbers. I'm not the official word on this but have been around gaf and the resultant sales age. From what was percieved, he was just another poster with no ties nor contacts to get these types of numbers. NPD is just another tracker but they have methods that are divulged. How does IOI get his numbers? Nobody knows. Maybe he thinks it's a trade secret but if you don't know the source, how can you be sure? Could he ever prove that his numbers are legit? I haven't been to this website for awhile but it's not the case where people hate IOI just for the hell of it. They just didn't like him making up numbers w/o any sources. There is a hell of a community on GAF that tries at guessing at these numbers and never pretends to be anything but guesses. For the most part, people saw IOI as a big guesser who has made his site into something more. Why would he do that? I don't know and all my reasons would be guesses. But I remember a big defense IOI put up was that his site was simple, didn't involve finances etc. Now, I can't move on this site w/o seeing an ad. But I'm just making a guess. |
Regardless of what happened in the past the numbers posted for hardware are consistently in line with what other tracking firms put out (before they put out their data) and that holds true even when numbers come out different from what most might expect. Is it perfect? Nope, its also not claimed that it is either.
I agree where the numbers come from is important but regardless of that, a simple forum poster doesn't provide this kind of data at your fingertips on a moments notice on any forum afaik. You truly cannot deny that the features available on this site are far more powerful than anything else you can get without paying a monthly fee. So there is definitely a value to the service being provided here even if you choose to believe its nothing more than a regurgitation of NPD numbers.
As for methodology, to my knowledge the explanation NPD gives of their methodology is simply to say "We collect data from x% of retailers and use statistical inference to adjust for the remainder of the market.", where x fluctuates as they add and lose retailers. Which to my knowledge is precisely what ioi has said in the past. Anyone with a basic background in statistics understands that you don't need very large samples to get statistically meaningful data so it really wouldn't be difficult to sample 300 locations in the US and produce a sound statistical model. The difficult part is tweaking the model to account for regional market nuance and fluctuations.
As for the ads, he requires no money from anyone to come see any part of his site or use any feature. As someone who has built webservers from the ground up from hardware to software I can certainly understand a need to support bandwidth and server costs. If he should ever require users to pay or restricts features to "premium access only" you will have an excellent point and one I would agree with wholeheartedly.
It may very well be the case that ioi in the past was a simple forum poster with no extra knowledge. But that certainly doesn't preclude him from ever building a tracking service of his own and I think anyone who follows the data anywhere near as close as I have over the last 6 months would have a hard time questioning that that is exactly what he has done. But thats the sort of thing you have to see to believe and each person should trust the numbers or not trust the numbers for their own reasons. I say that because I know I wouldn't believe some guy telling me what to believe either so the only thing I can really do is tell you to approach it with a fair minded viewpoint.
Just give it a chance and you just might be surprised, after all...what do you have to lose but a bit of time...and you're posting on the internet so thats sort of moot really 
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
