It was a bit surprising. I had recently emailed with Jim Sterne when it came to the German branch. The DAA had also contributed a foreword to my web analytics book. It’s a bit of a shame.
For those who don’t know: The DAA was previously the WAA, the Web Analytics Association, and it created the most widely used definition of web analytics. Although that definition has long been missing from the website, most researchers who copy quotes from other papers didn’t seem to care.
But how is it possible that such an organization, despite the importance of data, is shutting down? It could be, for example, because many have installed Google Analytics & Co., but the data is not actually being used. In my last paper, which unfortunately isn’t public yet, it was found that most users don’t even realize that embedding the GA code alone isn’t enough to work data-driven. And maybe it’s also a bit due to the DAA itself, that it didn’t manage to make its relevance clear.
I had only been a member out of nostalgia in recent years. I had used my student status to lower the membership fees a bit.
The website is already no longer accessible.