Is your audience dumber than a pile of bricks? Google’s new reading level results give publishers and online advertisers a glimpse in to whether readers struggled through 4th grade English class or polished off textbooks for dinner in college.

I ran a few popular news websites through Google and came up with some interesting data points. Perhaps the secret to Gawker’s successful blogging empire is that their audience isn’t even as sophisticated as Sarah Palin? After all, FoxNews.com has even more intermediate and advanced text content than NPR.

Future ideas for Google’s rating tools: estimating individual users’ IQ based on public social network profile content, gmail reading level, and demographics.

I through in a science site as a baseline to “higher end” content:

Intentional focus, exceptional management, and robust balance can go a long way to keeping you in business. Often what appears to be a dead end is simply a navigable roadblock.

Curiously since entering the industry full time around 6 years ago I’ve seen a lot of different people share in the same small pool of mistakes. Most of these mistakes are the result of a complete lack of focus, exceptional mis-management, and a total personal life imbalance.

Cynicism aside, the industry is only getting more interesting, not less. I thoroughly enjoy the dynamic of a rapidly evolving environment that makes the “veterans” heads spin. These mean more opportunities not less. When markets have big shakeups it becomes evident who are the innovative thinkers, and who just got lucky and followed somebody elses’ instructions. If you don’t find innovation fascinating, your in the wrong industry.

Here is a way to practice innovative thinking over the holidays: take the Groupon challenge and think about how you could re-invent your business model so it could reach a $1 billion valuation in the next 16 months. And for 2011, don’t forget what I wrote in this post.