Monthly Archives: June 2009

AOL Canada relaunches front page

New AOL Canada front page

AOL Canada has launched its new portal front page, which I previewed a couple of weeks ago.

Pepsi is running full takeover ads on the new page, including the left and right gutters.

Media in Canada has a good rundown of the new design which, unfortunately, is not reflected in the rest of the site – at least not yet.

Another problem with the design: clicking away to a story, then back to “Home” often takes the reader to aol.com rather than aol.ca.

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Iran coverage boosts CNN’s iReport traffic

Andy Plesser of Beet.TV quotes a statement by CNN that page views for its user-generated iReport site reached one million on Monday, driven by coverage of post-election protests in Iran.

To put this in perspective, iReport (which was launched in February 2008) averaged 316,000 page views per day in 2008 (9.6 million per month) according to Nielsen Online data reported by CNN. The main news site, cnn.com, averaged about 35 million page views per day, according to comScore numbers quoted by TechCrunch in November.

Plesser says that over the past week, “some 5,000 Iran-related videos and photos have been uploaded to iReport” and that “about 150 of these citizen contributions have been used on the air or on CNN.com after being vetted and verified by the network.”

In a video interview Wednesday with Plesser, iReport senior producer Lila King talks about how the network uses multiple iReports to corroborate information, and how iReport has become part of its world news coverage.

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Americans spending less time on top newspaper sites

According to Editor and Publisher, the average “time spent per user was down for more than half the top 30 global news and current events sites” in May 2009 compared to May 2008.

But that’s only telling part of the story.

The data come from sites measured by Nielsen Online, and only reflect US-based users.

Moreover, many sites saw increases in average monthly time per user, chiefly Google News, BBC, the Huffington Post and Cox Newspapers.

While it’s true to say that newspaper sites, in general, didn’t fare well, neither did some major broadcasters (including Fox) and online portals (e.g. AOL).

In the table below, sites are ranked according to total unique users (not time spent per user) during May 2009.

     Site — May ’09 (hour:minute:second) — May ’08

  1. MSNBC Digital Network — 0:21:40 — 0:29:00
  2. Yahoo! News — 0:18:25 — 0:22:12
  3. CNN Digital Network — 0:35:50 — 0:38:48
  4. AOL News — 0:24:01 — 0:35:27
  5. NYTimes.com — 0:27:34 — 0:28:52
  6. Tribune Newspapers — 0:09:31 — 0:08:59
  7. Fox News Digital Network — 0:32:39 — 0:43:16
  8. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division — 0:22:20 — 0:19:49
  9. ABCNEWS Digital Network — 0:09:36 — 0:09:34
  10. Google News — 0:22:12 — 0:12:28
  11. McClatchy Newspaper Network — 0:09:24 — 0:12:41
  12. USATODAY.com — 0:12:11 — 0:13:00
  13. washingtonpost.com — 0:10:58 — 0:16:04
  14. CBS News Digital Network — 0:07:14 — 0:08:00
  15. Advance Internet — 0:10:33 — 0:14:27
  16. BBC — 0:13:02 — 0:09:13
  17. WorldNow — 0:10:54 — 0:17:55
  18. Hearst Newspapers Digital — 0:20:00 — 0:17:45
  19. MediaNews Group Newspapers — 0:10:57 — 0:12:13
  20. TheHuffingtonPost.com — 0:14:57 — 0:08:50
  21. Daily News Online Edition — 0:05:47 — 0:06:16
  22. Topix — 0:05:20 — 0:04:40
  23. New York Post Holdings — 0:10:57 — 0:08:02
  24. Cox Newspapers — 0:16:01 — 0:12:58
  25. NBC Local Media — 0:04:04 — N/A
  26. Boston.com — 0:10:06 — 0:09:40
  27. NPR — 0:07:37 — 0:07:31
  28. MailOnline — 0:06:47 — 0:08:44
  29. The Slate Group Websites — 0:09:53 — 0:07:37
  30. Telegraph — 0:03:50 — 0:05:03
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CBC program explores the future of news

News 2.0 on CBC Radio

CBC Radio launches a two-part series tomorrow on News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media

What is now called the “mainstream media” has lost its control over the tools of its trade, and its importance as a centre of social and political influence. The business and philosophical model both appear to be broken, perhaps irrevocably.

There is much to celebrate about this democratization of the media, but there are also reasons to be concerned about the loss of an independent, professional journalistic filter at a time when everyone can be their own media. Can online communities of “citizen journalists” be counted on to help us make informed choices as citizens and consumers? What’s lost, and what’s gained when “News 1.0” gives way to “News 2.0?”

Hosted by Ira Basen the series includes interviews with Clay Shirky, Chris Anderson and Andrew Keen. Partial transcripts are already available at the address above.

The program airs tomorrow at 11am and next Sunday at 10am as part of Sunday Edition on Radio One.

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Online video viewing up 68%

Online video viewing has increased dramatically over the past year, according to US data from Nielsen Online.

Online video usage in the USA - May 2009

The Nielsen chart above shows an increase in the number of viewers, but even stronger growth in the number of minutes that each viewer spent, on average, watching online video. This made me wonder about the growth in total minutes of online video, so I decided to work it out:

May 2009: 133.8 million viewers x 188.7 minutes/viewer = 25.2 billion minutes

May 2008: 118.6 million viewers x 126.7 minutes/viewer = 15.0 billion minutes

The change in total minutes of online video is 25.2/15.0, or an increase of 68 per cent.

(I derived the May 2008 numbers by reversing the percentage changes provided by Nielsen.)

YouTube was by far the leader in video delivery, with more than 95 million unique visitors last month, and more than six billion video streams.

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Twitter reschedules maintenance to keep Iran news flowing

Protest in Iran

From Anderson Cooper’s blog at CNN.com.

…senior officials say the State Department asked Twitter to refrain for going down for periodic scheduled maintenance at this critical time to ensure the site continues to operate. Bureau’s and offices across the State Department, they say, are paying very close attention to Twitter and other sites to get information on the situation in Iran.

and

…officials say the internet, and specifically social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, are providing the United States with critical information in the face of a crackdown on journalists by Iranian authorities.

Twitter, as vital national security infrastructure?

» Cyberwar guide for Iran Elections

» June 20 update: Twitter on the baricades: Six lessons learned

» Photo by Hamed Saber on Flickr, June 15, 2009

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Why are so many journalists clueless about Twitter?

Blogger Rachel Sklar admits to a pet peeve which I share: journalists who write disparagingly about Twitter while having no idea what it is or how it works.

I recall a freelance writer whose first tweet a few months ago was along the lines of: “Hey, my story about Twitter just got published.” No trace of irony.

There are plenty of great examples, but I’ll leave it to Rachel to excoriate some of the worst.

Two troubling questions remain: why is the standard of reporting around Twitter so dismal, and is there a similar problem with coverage of other topics?

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