

Segment.io (YC S11) Lets Developers Integrate Multiple Analytics Services - jamest
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/25/yc-backed-segment-io-lets-developers-integrate-with-multiple-analytics-providers-in-hours-not-weeks/

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bherms
Seems interesting, but I was tasked with integrating several analytics
packages at my last startup and it certainly didn't take months to do. All I
did was write a few javascript wrapper functions and stick the various mapping
in there:

function track(event, category, options) {

    
    
      _kmq.push(...)
    
      _mxp.push(...)
    
      .
    
      .
    
      .
    

}

edit: Also, I'm interested to see how eager startups are to add yet another
$150/mo to their analytics bill when nearly every service starts at that
level... While it may not sound like a lot of money, a few analytics engines
can add up really fast, especially for a bootstrapped company.

~~~
bradgessler
Google Tag Manager (<https://www.google.com/tagmanager/>) does this.

~~~
ry0ohki
It's brutal and tedious to add non Google things to track to their Tag
Manager. Feels like an engineering written tool, Segment.io's "flip the
switches" is way better for the people that use these types of tools, ie
marketers.

~~~
scottkrager
Hmmm...I'm not an engineer and I love Google Tag Manager. It's not the most
intuitive interface, but after a few hours, I can't imagine ever managing
scripts anyway else. No need to bug my CTO just to add a conversion pixel?
Heck yeah.

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mvkel
The prospect of it taking _hours_ instead of _weeks_ is still too steep of an
ask.

Basically, if it's going to be me just checking each analytics service in its
own tab vs. needing to dedicate hours of development resources to pool
everything together, I'd rather just stick with what I have.

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jameshart
Am I missing why anybody would want to use multiple analytics services? Isn't
this just creating a challenge for yourself to integrate the analytic data to
understand end-to-end behavior?

~~~
pkrein
there's a surprising variety of tools available, and they each accomplish
different things.

for example:

mixpanel and kissmetrics are great for tracking custom events and learning
deeply about engagement and conversion inside your app.

but you're still going to want hittail or google analytics to analyze your
referrers.

and you probably want customer.io, vero, mixpanel or klaviyo to do targeted
email marketing, which is great for improving activation and retention.

so i'd say why _wouldn't_ you want to use multiple analytics services? maybe
our definition of "analytics" is just broader :)

~~~
jameshart
I already have too many places where analytic data lands up. I can see a
business case in building tools to help me consolidate the data in my facebook
engagement stats, my SEM referrals, my email clickthrough rates, my ad
impressions, and my page level analytics.... but I don't see why I want to
reflect single events into multiple analytic services. Maybe it's because I
work with an analytic solution that just captures arbitrary events so I can
just log everything in one place, so I'm missing the problem with working with
services that are less flexible.

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Kudos
This seems like it could be a great way to get their own analytics platform
off the ground.

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jamesdeer
We use Segment.io at GatherContent and it works really well.

Using it with

* Intercom * Mixpanel * Vero * Errorception

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pbibalan
With so many companies providing analytics services it's no wonder that a
mother API would be very handy to make use of the distinctive features of each
one. I was wondering which other verticals this model can be applied to? I
know Zappier is integrating multiple APIs when there is an existing logical
flow for example. And what happens if the third party services don't provide
API access how would you approach that problem? Would you need to make a
partnership with each one of them? I am assuming that all the analytics
services Segment.io is using already provide API access.

~~~
ddt
I think anyone who doesn't provide programmatic access to their analytics app
is going to fall by the way-side so quickly there wouldn't be much demand for
them to be integrated into Segment.io. I'd be interested to see an example of
an analytics service that doesn't offer API access.

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ricardobeat
Why not push for an interoperable standard from analytics vendors?

~~~
ceslami
Segment.io is, in a way, creating one. That said, an interoperable standard
would not make it any easier to .push to all of your analytics vendors.

The (hosted) product seems especially useful to non-technical staff, who don't
necessarily care about standards and protocols.

~~~
swalberg
I'm reminded of the engineer that saw 20 standards that did almost the same
thing, so he created one standard to unify them. And then there were 21
standards.

~~~
damncabbage
It's good to know <http://xkcd.com/927/> has reached parable status.

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sgrove
These guys are onto something big with this, extremely excited to see how
quickly they can move with it. Please keep sharing updates/integrations with
us on hn!

~~~
d0m
Mind to share your mind about how "they are onto something big"? Unless there
is a hidden feature somewhere, I really don't see how it's big or why YC
invested in it. Sure, it's useful. Sure, it's cool. But I'm afraid that it
doesn't solve a big enough problem. Obviously, I'm saying that based on my own
experience and knowledge:

\- As a developer, integrating the various analytic libraries is trivial.
Installing it? (npm install mixpanel) is mostly trivial too. Yes, it'll take a
couple hours, but it will still take several hours to set up Segment too. (One
might argue that's not true, but that's wrong. Even if you include the
Segment.io code, you still need to provide a bunch of options and understand
very well all the other analytic libraries.)

\- As a manager, I don't want yet another 30$ or 150$ / month when I'm already
paying that for the other analytic services. Also, I know for a fact that I
can easily find a dev to set up all the analytics for less than 200$.

\- As an investor, I ask myself: What's their unfair advantage? It seems like
everyone could do such a service and even provide an open-source version of
it.

So, yeah, I'm a bit lost. I feel it's a big like Grove.io. I really liked the
idea and found it very useful. But I didn't see how it'd work as a business.
But then, there are hundreds of huge companies that I don't even get their
business model. (Twitter?) So, please don't take this comment as a rent, but
more as an eye-opener for me to learn about where I'm thinking wrong : )

~~~
sgrove
I think that's completely fair.

The main problem with analytics/metrics is that they're all useless - or very
close to it. Each of them is horrible about getting data _out_ in order to
correlate it with other services.

If segment.io can consolidate metrics data, provide uniform interfaces for
getting data in/out, and can start partnering with other services that
_should_ be using this data but _can't_ (there are several dozen), they can
turn useless metrics data into immediately (possibly automatably) actionable
data.

Just a personal vision, and I have no idea if that's where they're goin or
not, I just know that needs to happen, and the team behind segment.io has the
chops to pull it off.

~~~
bialecki
You might want to check out our service, Klaviyo, and specifically
<https://www.klaviyo.com/features/integrations>. We do exactly what you're
describing around connecting your data with data from the all services you
use. I definitely think it's the future and the future is coming sooner rather
than later.

I also agree that metrics are not nearly as powerful if you can't tie them
directly to action. Which is why we built our own, fully featured email
solution so you can go from metrics, to important people to engagement
automatically.

That's where we think things are headed and it's going to be incredibly
empowering.

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josh2600
Congrats on hitting TC.

If you guys haven't read Peter's piece on Thorium it's worth noting that these
guys aren't just about analytics: <http://rein.pk/thorium-reactors/>

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Uchikoma
Excellent, would use it (the backend stuff), would need to be in the EU though
:-(

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adambratt
Love what you guys are doing. Crazy quick turnaround on customer/developer
support too. I found an issue in the python API and it was fixed and pushed
within a couple hours.

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bravura
What is the correct way to instrument SCALABLE website analytics if you have a
massively-trafficked (almost facebook-size) website?

Are there any resources on this topics?

~~~
chaz
You can sample, too. Cookie the user with a random number, like 0-1023. If you
want a ~1% sample, wrap the analytics call in a Javascript if() statement
where it's executed iff n < 10.

You can do this server-side, too. Record all of the data, but skim just a
small percentage for a high level view of what's going on. You can always dig
into the data later for a more in-depth question.

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codydjango
Waiting for it to supports gaming analytics like flurry and Apsalar. Awesome
support service, too!

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DanielRibeiro
Seems amazing, but I'd not love to see some screenshots of the product.

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irollboozers
congrats on the launch!

i wonder if they will be able to fix the leakiness problem across all
analytics platforms... somehow none of my analytics reports are ever accurate.

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karamazov
This looks great - I'll be trying it out.

------
eps
Metalytics.

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iomike
would love to see it for enterprize-level tools, like webtrends and omniture.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Shoot us an email at friends@segment.io we've working on support for these
types of big guys, and are looking for users to test them out for us.

