Alexa, the Internet-traffic measurement site owned by Amazon.com, has revamped its famously inaccurate rankings. Its argument for why website visitors and publishers should trust it now? Because it says so — a claim likely as trustworthy as its old rankings. [Alexa.com]

If traffic to a candidate's website were any guide, which it's not, Barack Obama would have the presidential election sewn up. barackobama.com's attracts as many visitors as his four main rivals' sites put together. Of course, in a web election, he'd be up against Ron Paul.

A loyal reader and apparent Facebook enthusiast notes in his Facebook status, "so valleywag apparently has a bigger boner for FB than i do ... weird, huh?" I can only assume this comment comes in response to our chart yesterday showing Facebook's vast superiority to the gang of also-rans Google has rousted up to support OpenSocial. But here's the thing. No way do we have the biggest boner for Facebook. That prize goes to Alexa. Care to inspect for yourself?

No one should be surprised that Jason Calacanis has taken issue with my analysis of the paltry traffic to his new search engine, Mahalo. Ever the promoter, Calacanis jumped right into the comments. But I am a bit disappointed that this is the best spin he could come up with: "Being in the top 20,000 on Alexa rank is a darn good for a one month old site." Really, dude, you're better. Let's review this list of Web pages which outscore Mahalo on Alexa:

NICK DOUGLAS — It's springtime for Hitler on the Internet as erupts (okay, continues as usual) in war. Let's run through who's been stomping on whom (MySpace on Photobucket, the rapaciously opinionated blogosphere on Kathy Sierra), and whether any of the aggressors have been brought to justice. (Hint: no.)

"Ask.com has reached an agreement to provide search and sponsored listings for Lycos, the fifth most popular U.S. Web portal, the companies said on Wednesday."
— Reuters, November 1