Monthly Archives: April 2008

“The chart makes the growth look impressive – and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites.”

“By the time the letter W entered the Latin alphabet in the seventh century, ampersands had enjoyed six hundred years of continuous use”

“Flush with all that Knight money, Holovaty and his small team are working on taking what was pioneered in Chicago and applying it to other forms of public documents and data. Everyblock currently has sites serving Chicago plus New York and San Francisco”

“Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports – the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet”

“The news industry is a resilient bunch. Newspapers, in particular, represent some of the United States’ oldest and most respected companies.”

“With the arrival of the Internet, the ability of nonjournalists to ‘publish’ their words and link them with those of other like-minded scribes has altered forever the balance of power between those who control the means to publish and those who…”

January 2008: “Internet spending estimates are from AdRelevance. All others from Nielsen Monitor-Plus.”

“The inverted pyramid might still have a place in journalism, but it doesn’t make sense as the dominant writing style on the Web.”

“During my talk, I reviewed the results of our newspaper and magazine studies that examined the Web 2.0 features these media properties include on their websites.”

Bivings presentation on the internet and US newspaper and magazine sites.

US: “Below is the average time spent per person for the month of March ranked by March 2008 uniques.” Data from Nielsen Online.

“Uncontrollable urge to share most mundane experiences – or, more commonly, lack of experiences – with Twitter followers. Generally involves consumption of food.”

Ben Popken, The Consumerist: “The secret is to be reader-centric in a fundamental way. The content is driven by the readers and reacted to by the readers. We’re really just a curator of consumer-generated content.”

“The website as we know it is breaking apart. Widgets, API’s and feeds take information to other places outside the domain. In a network culture we like to take our information with us. Your mobile phone, desktop, widgets, websites, digital television,

“It seems to me that the first stage for any journalist or budding journalist lies along two paths: subscribing to a reliable collection of RSS feeds (and email alerts); and exploring a collection of networks. The first part is passive; the latter, more a

“EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the state of Delaware against Craigslist, the online classified advertising company in which it owns a minority interest.”

“US mobile media and entertainment revenue will grow to $6.6 billion in 2012 from $3.1 billion in 2007, according to Analysys Research’s ‘Mobile Media and Entertainment in the US: Forecasts 2007-2012′ report. “

“The Mirror Group’s websites reached 4.4 million unique users in March, its debut ABCe figure has confirmed.”

“eMarketer projects US user-generated content ad revenues of $824 million in 2012, up from $162 million in 2007. By 2012, this total will represent 1.62% of US online advertising spending, up from 0.77% in 2007.”

“The Guardian’s ongoing site redesign continues this week with the launch of an all new sports section, complete with embedded video and enhanced photography. “

“Revenues for interactive classifieds and verticals will grow from US$3.9 billion to US$14.7 billion during the same forecast period, representing a 30.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). “

“All of us need to do our bit to free up information. And you can start by emailing your local council”

“We’ve upgraded from the frankly archaic Movable Type 3.2 to its newer version MT 4.1.”

“The scoffers can scoff all they want, but here at RWW our use of Twitter so far has included: the discovery of breaking stories, performing interviews, quality assurance, and promotion of our work.”

“Should the internet’s new breed of ‘citizen journalists’ have the responsibilities of journalists or the rights of citizens?”

“The cloud, that huge bank of online power that lives somewhere and everywhere, is fast becoming the lifeblood of the internet economy.”

“Google’s App Engine is the latest service to reduce operating costs for Web startups.”

“a new Beta homepage will be launched next month which will give you a sneak preview of some things in the pipeline.”

“For the past couple of years my local daily paper, the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera, has been running a site called MyTown where local people can contribute their stories and photos and host blogs.”

“For all the talk of ‘digital this’ and ’2.0 that,’ one part of the advertising world remains defiantly analog: the buying and selling of ad space and time in traditional media like television and print.”

“They share a webby characteristic that’s radically different from the typical newspaper: They link. To the competition. Like crazy.”

“Mirror Group Newspapers is set to become the latest newspaper group to publish its internet traffic data in the industry standard Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic figures.”

“Trinity Mirror has appointed David Higgerson as the new head of multimedia for its regional newspaper division.”

“Cheng’s strategy is three-pronged: improving the development of new editorial products, refining the subscription model and changing the way the business works internally.”

“Over half (56%) of internet-using newspaper readers researched or purchased at least one product they saw advertised in the newspaper in the last month, with a 30% overlap between the two groups”

“Perhaps Internet metrics should come with a warning label: ‘handle with care’.”

“The BBC has opted for a registration system for comments on blogs and forum areas citing protection against spam as a deciding factor in making the change.”

“When University of California at Irvine researchers delved into usage patterns, they found study participants who labeled their blog-reading time as ‘chilling out’ and ‘doing nothing’…”

“One way to start is by writing headlines that will appeal to search engines. Here’s how to start…”

“ABI Research, which predicts that online video ad spending in Europe will grow to $2.46 billion in 2012 from $200 million in 2008.”

“we’ve been hard at work making quotations in news articles easy to search and browse. You can now more easily keep track of what your favorite politician, actor or sports star is saying. You can even search within their quotes for specific topics.”

“The latest figures – released on Thursday evening – show how rapidly it is growing in the UK, earning $803 million (about £407m) in the first three months of 2008, about 40% up on a year ago.”

“Google reported revenues of $5.19 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, an increase of 42% compared to the first quarter of 2007 and an increase of 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.”

From Henry Blodget’s earnings call notes: “We will become world’s largest display publisher. 90% of our pages can handle display ads… Can integrate video, search, display, Feedburner, etc.”

“If I don’t read most of the updates, I find Twitter disorienting – it is like picking up a book and trying to read it backwards.”

“Trinity Mirror’s 17 paid-for regional newspapers in Scotland will be the next to relaunch online under the group-wide programme of developing newspaper-branded websites.”

The Birmingham Post on Twitter.

“If the news is that important, it will find me.”

“Sometimes I feel like my vision of the future is slowly coming true in front of my eyes. Yesterday I discovered that the Birmingham Post features writer Jo Ind has started incorporating Del.icio.us social bookmarks into her articles”

“The Birmingham Post has splashed its print and online editions with a news story sourced from the ‘army’ of bloggers it recruited as part of its online revamp in February.”

US: “Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66.4 million unique visitors on average (40.7 percent of all Internet users) in the first quarter of 2008, a record number that represents a 12.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago”

US: “While more people than ever may be visiting newspaper websites, they are sticking around less this year than they were in 2007.”

“Available at beta.dailymail.co.uk, the beta version contains stories from the Mail’s news, sport, entertainment and Femail features section and is updated from 9am to 7pm on weekdays.”

“Facebook has opened up the Mini-Feed so users can import updates from other web services, starting with Flickr, Picassa, Yelp and Delicious.”

“What do you do when launching a new special section to ensure you get clicks?”

“We have new data that shows that the number of frontpage tech stories is halving every year on digg.”

“Without Original Reporting, How Long Can the Aggregation Party Last?”

Graphic showing 2003-8 advertising revenues for TV, national newspaper, internet, ITV and Google.

US: “Newspaper-owned Web sites maintained a three-to-one lead over other local competitors in advertising market share last year, capturing 26.9 percent of the market, according to data from Borrell Associates”

“the real change has been the amount of traffic that the paper receives from search engines”

“Modeling brand ad sales as an enterprise sell”

Nielsen AdRelevance figures

“BBC future media and technology director Ashley Highfield is quitting to become CEO of the Project Kangaroo online TV platform, marking a return to the commercial sector after eight years.”

Q1 IPA Bellwether report: “27 percent of companies increased online ad budgets while just five percent trimmed them back”

“This guide only deals with elements which have a specific, human-readable meaning.”

“The Internet is decomposing into a vast array of micro-services that we, the end user, stitches together to make our own unique web experience. It is the de-portalization of the Internet and it is very real.”

“Given that most traffic comes from search engines, this roughly equates to the websites where Media UK outperforms a media owner’s own website – by coming high, if not #1, for the media owner’s keywords on Google.”

“Iain Martin, former assistant editor and deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, has been appointed head of a new integrated online and print department for comment and community across Telegraph media’s titles.”

“Unique users is not a good measure of our growth, though.”

“It has not changed much in years and cannot seem to get its 2.0 version out the door. This despite the fact that Schachter’s team of engineers has been working diligently on improvements since last September. “

Right Media: “Ad exchanges recorded a down-turn in the number of leaderboard ads being traded across their sites between March and December 2007.”

“The latest research from Italy on the flocking behaviour of birds seems to pile on the evidence against trends starting with a handful of ‘Influentials’.”

Canadian Newspaper Association: “Print advertising revenues fell by 2.4 per cent while online revenues increased 29 per cent over 2006.”

“Put a note on your calendar six months from now to look in the box. Then pull it out, six months later, and see if it’s anything you really needed. Usually, you can just dump the whole box, because you never needed that stuff.”

“An unlikely row has erupted in France over suggestions that the semicolon’s days are numbered; worse, the growing influence of English is apparently to blame.”

“Among the features of our new look is the ability to make up a url combing two “tags” to see if we have any articles or videos matching the combination.”

US hyperlocal launches

Hyperlocal sites from the Dallas Morning News

“Find out what’s going on in your local neighborhood from people who work and live there.”

“For me, Twitter has of late become a faster and easier and more accessible way to let the news ‘come to me’.”

“I’ve been using my RSS reader more selectively of late, as a place to browse around when I have the time rather than looking at it as a mountain must be climbed everyday. My day-to-day strategy is to use Techmeme and Twitter…”

“Here are some links to great blog posts in my opinion for journalism students, would-be journalism students and recent j-school grads. I hope you find them helpful and thought-provoking.”

“One problem I’ve had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it’s too press-centric.”

“Which do you think will have more active users in three years time: e-readers or whatever twitter turns into?”

“The new sites are being built by American social network specialists ONEsite. Stage one of development will replicate the design and features of the existing sites, so regular users will not notice much difference at first.”

“The detailed breakdown of the IAB spend figures is now available – these show that online recruitment classifieds (ie ads on job boards) were worth £286.8 million in 2007 (£142 million for H1 and £144.8 million in H2).”

“There are a number of new or re-energized hyperlocal efforts out there, trying to crack the code.”

“As well as comparing the newspapers with each other, I wanted to compare them with three Google-powered search services”

“Over the course of the next several months, I will walk through many of the interesting aspects of the creation of several of today’s major forms of media — including newspapers, magazines, television, movies, and books.”

“Almost nine out of 10 UK web users watched video online in December, according to comScore, whose data revealed the dominance of YouTube.”

“50% of the 500 readers surveyed said this would be ’somewhat or very beneficial to good journalism online’. In comparison only 27% of the 1,250 newsroom editors interviewed felt the same way.”

“As the internet spreads there are more and more places where we can simply ask those who are living through the events what they think of them and seek insights and analysis from those who know the people and the places involved.”

“I’m not sure if this is a bad thing (errors go uncorrected?) or good (twitter-style newsrivers?). “

“I had a quick look at how Martin was running his contest and ran a quick experiment of my own to see how we’re likely to fare.”

“OJR checks in with former Cincinnati Enquirer editor George Blake, another print journalist who has made the move to an online start-up.”

“UK online advertising trade body, the Internet Advertising Bureau, said spending rose 38%. It predicted more double-digit growth this year as the web shrugs off the economic turmoil hitting other media, to overtake TV advertising revenues…”

“the Internet’s share of ad market grew from 11.4% in 2006 to 15.3% last year, making it the largest advertising medium behind TV (21.8%) and display ads in the printed press (19.9%)”

IAB/PwC Adspend Study H2 2007: “Market share was 16% for second half of 2007 as online exceeds forecasts “

“In its annual Census of members, AOP reports that digital publishers experienced a 52 per cent increase in total revenues in 2007 over the same period last year.”

“A couple of days of really quite spectacular data about last year’s growth from the AOP and the IAB.”

AOP: “revenue from online advertising increased by 33 per cent last year and 80 per cent of those questioned said the current online advertising model was ‘a sustainable revenue stream’”