Great to see this post, Lisa. I've just been wondering recently, where are the people in the “community community” who are thinking about analytics. I think there's a huge opportunity for folks who work on designing communities, social media, and Web 2.0 marketing initiatives to advance the practice by integrating with strong analytics work (and usability as well). Behavioral targeting is a great fit with community, espeically large communities.

Web analytics is a lot bigger than measuring conversion, as you ably point out, and usability up front makes a huge difference, in terms of understanding how users perceive community sites. I've been involved with some bg successes along those lines recently.

If I can tout my employer for a sec, ZAAZ is really good at analytics and usability. We're just getting really engaged with ambitious community offerings, but we have some really exciting stuff coming out this summer and fall. The convergence of those disciplines is producing a ton of excitement and interest, and I think we'll see more people in the social media world getting on board.

The products you mentioned all have their strengths. Too often, though, there's an unadressed gap between data and analysis. Our angle has been to match the product to the client's need, and our offering is about translating data to action.

Great post, very insightful. I'm really enjoying your blog.