Again, Nick is beating on me and FM without calling us first for comment/clarification. The professional and gentlemanly response is best exemplified by Chas Edwards, who runs sales and market development for us. To quote from his email to Nick:

Nick--

I just read your post on FM's inflated numbers claims, http://valleywag.com/tech/cold-stats/john-battelles-inflated-numbers-218455.php.

We're in frequent dialog with the Comscore gang (and have recently become paying customers!) in an effort to find a better alternative to server logs when we talk about the aggregate reach across our family of sites. But we're still not satisfied with the data. In a chat with Gian and Magid at Comscore earlier this month, even they admitted that accurate measurement of small sites (or even large sites like Digg and Boing Boing, which skew towards tech savvy young men) is a code that hasn't yet been cracked by anyone. I'm sure Comscore will eventually get this figured out, and we're doing all we can to help them.

It will be a great day for all of us when the audit firms get this right -- and capture the reality that upscale, web savvy consumers are gravitating toward Gawker, Gizmodo, Digg, Boing Boing, Dooce and others, instead of the traditional favorites from a decade ago!

Best,

Chas

Chas, for the record, I agree entirely.