business & economy

Also in this section:
US-RP free trade rushes to ratification here, still uncertain in USA
First big canal expansion contract goes to canal administrator's relatives
Trying to attract tourists back to the USA

Persistent poverty
The Panama News readership figures
Business & Economy Briefs

Read it and weep, loser!

There's this pathological liar who likes to claim all sorts of things that are demonstrably untrue about his supposed domination of the local Internet scene, both as to English-language websites and as to email groups that he controls.

"We are the #1 site. Period. If any English language website is getting more traffic than we are, please tell me about it," he says. "We are now averaging 3,000 visitors per day... who made more than 88,000 visits to the website."

Actually, June was a problematic month for The Panama News. A change of servers kept us offline for more than four days, production was a bit chaotic and June is usually a slow month.

However, we smashed most of our readership records last month. Did the loser really get more that 3,000 visits per day in June? Well, we got an average 5,404 visits per day. Did the loser really get 88,000 visits in June? Well, we got 140,519 --- even with several fewer days.

You can generally see the score by Google rankings, but the loser whines that "With regard to Internet Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and the - the algorithms used to rank websites place significant emphasis on age. Older websites get higher scores and rank better even though their content is stale, the sites are never updated, and they get almost no traffic." (Sic.) He lies, to his advertisers and to his potential advertisers, in the face of all the evidence.

Let's set the record straight: The Panama News is the top English-language news website in Panama, by a substantial margin.

Here in Panama it's arguably not a crime for media to misrepresent the number of people whom they reach, and it's a common practice. The Panama News believes in a better way, full transparency. That's why we have been regularly publishing our download data for years. We leveled with our advertisers and readers before the loser came along, and we will continue to do so after he's just an dim memory.

See, to a lot of people who do business in Panama, only pendejos practice transparency. Then there are pathetic gringo hustlers who come here and think that they'll get rich quick by becoming caricatures of dishonest banana republic oligarchs. But we are one of those little businesses that operates on the philosophy of showing clients and potential clients what they get and giving them an honest measure at a fair price. We hold our own that way.

US-RP free trade rushes to ratification here, still uncertain in USA
First big canal expansion contract goes to canal administrator's relatives
Trying to attract tourists back to the USA

Persistent poverty
The Panama News readership figures
Business & Economy Briefs