Geekadelphia founder Eric Smith, of Quirk Books, on his Textual Healing novel podcast

Geekadelphia co-founder Eric Smith in an artistic favorite of his friend Michaelangelo Ilagan.

Eric Smith is a friend.

Let’s not hesitate in sharing the disclosure. A figurehead of Philadelphia’s young blogging scene, there aren’t many people involved in web communities in this city who don’t know Smith.

But Smith, 27 (though he turns 28 this Sunday), is involved in enough cool projects that intersect with technology, the web and Philadelphia that it’d be something of a sin to not share them.

He is the newly minted chief of social marketing for indie Old City-based Quirk Books — famed for its Pride and Prejudice and Zombies title — after ending a three-year tenure at the helm of popular arts and entertainment blog uwishunu, and spends his weekends and nights, well, he spends them playing.

“I like to have fun,” Smith says, in what is much more an ethos than a cliche for him.

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Ten Philadelphia competitors and their January Web traffic

Click to enlarge.

Perhaps one of the most influential realities of the Web is metrics. The details of traffic and audience online have so rapidly become expansive that they have likely not yet been entirely harnessed.

Arguments still rage around the accuracy and importance of a myriad of Web analytics, but, away from page views, an increasing standard is to compare sites by their monthly unique visitors, though that number’s efficacy has no doubt come into question.

Until now, very little attention has been paid publicly to comparing Philadelphia’s many competitors by way of traffic comparison. With the first numbers for 2010 released this month by public Web analytics company Compete, Technically Philly decided to compile the first such digest.

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Philly’s favorite Web designs chosen by our readers

Last week, we announced a contest in partnership with Mogo Media to give one of our readers a free ticket to Mogo’s Adobe Flash training seminar on Fri., Feb. 26. Based on a random drawing, we’d like to congratulate Sarah Lindsay who we’re hooking up with that $129 ticket!

Don’t miss out. If you still would like to attend the seminar, Technically Philly readers get a special 10 percent discount if they register with coupon code “TECHNICAL” (case-sensitive).

After the jump, see some favorite Philly-based designs as chosen by Technically Philly readers.

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