Following in the very successful footsteps of the 2006 Executive Committee, is yet another highly acclaimed group of individuals who will be taking the OPA to the next level. Chris Borain, CEO Primedia Online, has been elected as the Chairman of the 2007 Executive Committee.
Chris is joined at the helm by Deputy Chairman: Matthew Buckland (Mail & Guardian Online), Head of Finance: Paddy Browning (Independent Online), Head of Monitoring: Elan Lohmann (24.com), Head of Marketing: Justinus Adriaanse (Private Property Listings) and Head of Measurement: JP Farinha (24.com)

The OPA wishes the new team all the best!!

SA wary of online dating - Beeld
Johannesburg - A survey has shown that South Africans are wary of internet romance.

Despite numerous websites for online matchmaking, the international research group Synovate on Wednesday revealed that only 12% of all South African internet users had tried to find love on the internet.

Reaching the Underserved Female Majority
If 51 percent of car buyers are women and 85 percent of all vehicle purchases are influenced by women, what percent of your marketing and advertising budget are you willing to devote to attract, sell, retain and increase loyalty with this majority of the American auto buying market?

Pageview Soon Worthless, Worthy Replacement Metrics Few - Marketingvox
Yahoo Ajax-powered functions As a metric, the pageview is going extinct, according to Micro Persuasion's Steve Rubel, because it fails to capture the myriad ways consumers engage in online activities in the Web 2.0 era. Case in point, Yahoo's pageview numbers fell last year as it turned to newer technologies, such as Ajax and Flash, though its sites remained as popular as ever.

Worst Website Measurement Mistakes - iMedia Connection
Worst Website Measurement Mistakes - iMedia Connection Web analytics guru Brandt Dainow explains why he doesn't bother reporting total page views anymore, and why you shouldn't either.

This article is about the most common mistakes people make when they are measuring their website. It also happens to be the worst mistake. In my view, it is probably the single leading cause of online business failure, yet almost everyone makes this mistake.

The mistake is to measure overall activity and ignore the bottom line. Overall activity, such as the number of people who are visiting your site, matters only so much as it influences online sales or inquiries. Measuring something like overall page views is almost completely irrelevant unless you happen to be the technician managing the server. This is not entirely people's fault because much of the software available can't measure what matters. When it can, measuring the technicalities are always more complicated.

Piper Jaffray Says 'Communitainment' Explains Rise of Social Content...
A new report by Piper Jaffray entitled "The User Revolution" describes how users are going from simply exchanging information, to sharing information, ideas, content and entertainment, all within a social context, as part of a process dubbed "Communitainment".Piper says that as Communitainment rises, users will move from traditional media forms, to spending more time with niche internet sites, MediaPost reports. Piper estimates that half of all media consumption over the next decade will be related to Communitainment, up from 30% in 2006.

Jupiter: Micro-Biz Execs Heavy Online Users
A new study by Jupiter Research has discovered that micro-business executives - those working at a company with fewer than five employees - are among the heaviest internet users, ClickZ writes.

The survey of 449 micro-business executives found that micro-biz executives spend 17 hours a week online, compared with 15 hours a week for all internet users. Jupiter also reports that such executives spend more time online than they do watching television (14 hours per week).

What's Your Site's Personality Type?
In designing brand sites, automotive manufacturers and their agencies face an interesting challenge. How do you create a space that serves the client's business needs of representing the product and brand, while also meeting the objectives of the consumer to incite one of the largest considered purchases of them all?