We are honoured to be listed among Australia's best web 2.0 applications this week. Ross Dawson produced a list for the prestigious Business Review Weekly showing our most internationally successful, innovative sites.

Two of our sites, FactBites and NationMaster, made the grade.

Geoff Evason put together a list ranking according to Quantcast traffic data alone. The list seems to have disappeared though, so I've reproduced it myself:

1. 1134 retailmenot.com
2. 6423 bugmenot.com
3. 18686 nationmaster.com
4. 41362 uvouch.com
5. 48887 minti.com
6. 53051 redbubble.com
7. 74603 atlassian.com
8. 76818 mebeam.com
9. 87651 spyk.com
10. 129624 swapace.com
11. 148185 blocklayer.com
12. 165573 fwditon.com
13. 195584 inthemix.com.au
14. 199477 globalsurfari.com
15. 203200 pikistrips.com
16. 222399 rememberthemilk.com
17. 280084 rocketreader.com
18. 332987 factbites.com
19. 426879 mig33.com
20. 522232 blogarate.com

THe middle column is rank according to Feb08 Quantcast data. This puts us in 3rd and 18th places. No matter how you cut it, Rapid Intelligence is one of Australia's top independent publishers.

Respected US education magazine, District Administration has just made StateMaster its Web Site of the Week. We're chuffed here at Rapid.

A big stat update is on the way soon, by the way. This is for both NationMaster and StateMaster.

Mary Ellen Bates just gave us a nice review of NationMaster at SearchEngineWatch.

As researchers and information professionals are called upon to provide not just information but intelligence, NationMaster.com is a great resource for gaining new insights from the available information.

She mentioned StateMaster too, which was nice.

I look forward to seeing what the traffic looks like. I remember a few years back we got a flood of email asking quite a range of detailed questions about our sources, then checked our stats to see we'd been on the front page of conspiracy site, Rense.com. :)

Everyone here at StateMaster would like to extend a big Thank You to Volunteer Editors, Moderators and others who took the time to review the site, checking all corners for pesky broken links and typos. From College Station to Park Slope (and from Oslo to Toronto for that matter) your attention to detail has really made a difference in the quality of this resource.



Though Zero Hour for StateMaster’s launch is fast approaching, we still appreciate your feedback and comments.



Thanks again for your commitment!

Or "If I say something weird, will you leave me and never come back?"

A big issue with running stat sites is providing relevant, useful info that users understand while not cutting down what the users see until they can't question you.

On NationMaster and StateMaster, there are thousands of stats, so you're always confronted with contradictions. Figures seemingly don't make sense when you put them altogether. Our competitors like the CIA World Factbook have so few stats that inconsistencies can't arise. It's the easy option.

Our correlations feature wasn't as much of a hit as I'd hoped, because people looked at the data and said "wa? Murder rate correlates to gun ownership that makes sense. But look it correlates even more strongly to orange juice consumption!"

In a world without sites like NationMaster, we just leave it to experts to select which stats are most relevant. Of course an expert is by definition someone more knowledgable of the domain, so they will be able to digest the info more readily. But when more statistically significant figures are lying around and are not used, everyone should have access to them so they can ask why.

Now with SEO Sleuth, I chose to show every search going to every site. Now, any webmaster can tell you that people come to your site looking for pretty different things to what the site offers. And looking at the terms as a whole may give you a distorted view of what the site's about (but perhaps a good view of what parts of the site are of interest to searchers). But yeah, we're left with the same problem; people give a quick "that doesn't look right" and leave the site. One thing I considered was linking to the actual searches to prove it, but I didn't want to be republishing such sensitive data. So once again, the quandry.

Since NationMaster.com exploded onto the scene some three years ago, there have been faint voices in our minds that have grown louder as the critical success of the world's largest stat database for comparing countries was affirmed over and over again. That voice said something simple but powerful: 'you can do more with this formula'. So early on, we focused our sights on US states.




It frankly surprised us that with such a tremendous amount of complete and timely data emanating from US governmental agencies, NGO's, and research institutes that a project of compiling all of this data into one easy-to-use database had not yet been undertaken. Perhaps we were missing something; perhaps no one cares about statistics on the percentage of African Americans in the Army, or the number of inmates executed by the electric chair in Florida, or what New York's expenditure is for elementary and secondary education. But the more we talked about the possibilities of StateMaster.com, the more folks around us became excited as well. It was apparent that the web was missing something, not us.



So here are the fruits of our labor: StateMaster.com, which is launched with 2,613 stats, hundreds of maps and flags, and our unique visualization technology which allows you to see critical data in new and revealing ways. But this is only the beginning. We will be adding new stats all the time, as well as new state information, maps and flags. So be sure to check back in with us, and if you are interested in helping us out with this project consider being a Volunteer Editor. From all of us here at StateMaster and NationMaster, thank you for your tremendous support!

StateMaster, a free online resource for comparing US states, has been released today. We have translated our winning formula of statistical comparisons, graphs, maps and flags to the 50 states of America, giving our users another level of data at their fingertips. With over 2,500 stats on StateMaster, you can find information on anything from binge drinkers to p>race related hate crimes.

Detailed state profiles, as well as thousands of maps and flags, are also included in the database, making us a one-stop resource for information about US states.

Visit StateMaster Now!

Keep in mind that our Volunteer Editor program will also be implemented for StateMaster, bringing together a community of folks interested in data and general information on US states. Let us know if you are interested!