Month: July 2007

Pew: 57% of Internet users watch video

pewlogo.gifThe Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a study this week that indicates:

-57% of Internet users have watched online videos and MOST of them share what they find.

-Three-fourths of broadband users who have high-speed connections at both home and work watch online video.

-Advanced features such as recommendations and ratings are used mostly by the motivated minority of online video watchers.

However, only six percent of online users say they watch adult videos. Of course, that may account for much of that “motivated minority”…

Nevertheless, the lesson to be learned here is to make sure your video has the tools needed to go viral, meaning robust recommendation and rating features. Much more commentary from Steve Yelvington, Melissa Worden and Mindy McAdams.

Online News Association seeks award screeners

magnifyingglass.jpgInterested in checking out some of the best online journalism projects? The Online News Association is looking for screeners to assist in the selection process for the annual ONA awards.

And, says ONA board member Anthony Moor, if you do enough screening, ONA will give you a complementary conference registration (a $349 value, wowser!). Deadline for screeners to complete their work, which will be forwarded to a judging panel for final judging, is Aug 17. 

While I try to stay on top of who has rockin’ sites, it’s sometimes hard to dedicate the time. Screening entries for the ONA conference is a great way to get a quick sampling of solid online journalism work and get some ideas for your own site.

So check it out!

[Photo by ereneta]

Blogger takes long view, makes metrics discovery

ProBlogger Darren Rowse made an interesting discovery when he took a closer look at his blog’s metrics: one of his blog posts received more traffic from StumbleUpon than from Digg — but he had to take a long view of the data.

What made Rowse’s revelation interesting was that, in the short run, he received nearly three times more traffic to the post in question from Digg than from StumbleUpon. However, when he checked back 43 days later, he discovered that StumbleUpon surpassed Digg’s total traffic by more than 1,000 views.

The Lesson: My guess is that most of us news types like to check how hot a story is either the day it breaks or within the next few days. However (for those of you whose content sticks around the site for a while), make sure to check the metrics a few months later. You may be surprised at how much traffic you get in the long run, as well as where it’s coming from.

[Via JournalismHope]

Almost official: Nielsen drops page views as primary metric

ajax canVarious news outlets report today that Nielsen/NetRatings will begin using time spent on a Web site in lieu of the much-maligned page view as its primary metric to determine a site’s success. This move that has been expected for some time now due to the growing use of Web 2.0 technologies.

According to an excellent Computerworld report:

“It is not that page views are irrelevant now, but they are a less accurate gauge of total site traffic and engagement,” [Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen/NetRatings] said. “Total minutes is the most accurate gauge to compare between two sites. If [Web] 1.0 is full-page refreshes for content, Web 2.0 is, ‘How do I minimize page views and deliver content more seamlessly?’ ”

This means a few things for news sites:

1) An emphasis on user friendliness and engagement will trump site designs that are designed specifically to increase page view numbers (photo galleries that load new pages for each image, multi-page stories, multi-page photo narratives). Which leads us directly to…

2) Drink some of that Ajax-y Kool-Aid (that does sounds rather toxic, doesn’t it?). Ajax, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is often loathed by the money people for not bringing in page views since it wonderfully loads content without reloading pages (see Netvibes, the new Yahoo! Mail, Flickr, Google Maps, to name just a few) .

3) Video and engaging interactive features are going to be an even more important component of a site’s success. Big Flash features are notorious for not necessarily getting big page view numbers for the large amounts of staff time to produce them. Perhaps now, they’ll be more worth it — if they’re good.

4) Greater attention needs to be paid to the quality of the content. Getting a reader to go to the end of a long story *may* be more valuable than trying to get them to read lots of three-paragraph stories.

5) Get users talking to each other on your site. Before, a user posting to a message board was just one or two page views. Now, you’ll be able to benefit from the entire time that user is composing and editing his message.

And surely there is much more. I’d love to hear your two cents in the comments.