Top 10 newspaper websites in May
Keeping track of how many people visit websites is something that should have been hashed out long ago. Yet for years keeping tabs on such matters has produced results that can vary wildly for each site depending on who is doing the measuring.
Nielsen Online and comScore, for example, are two companies that rely on panels of people to determine the popularity of a website and are often criticized for under-counting visitors. Many critics claim that panels barely account for people’s Internet habits at work since often companies do not allow outside software to be installed on work computers. (Nielsen and comScore require panelists to install software on their computers.)
This has been a problem for newspapers websites since many read the news during the work day hours.
ComScore, though, had announced a new methodology that relies on panels as well as counting direct hits from a website’s server. Eighteen of the top 20 newspaper entities are now on board with the new methodology. Here are the top 10 ranked by uniques for May.
Hulu’s rise continues…
Hulu, the video site owned by NBC, News Corp and Disney, is safely ensconced in the No.2 most viewed video site in the U.S. according to latest February data from comScore. And Hulu is making progress not just in the quantity of views but in the quality of views: Users watched a record amount of video per person during the month. The average Hulu users watched 23.3 videos at 2.4 hours of video per viewer. This compares with the average online video length at 4.3 minutes.
It’s all very promising for the powers at NBC Universal, and its new owners at Comcast, as well as News Corp and Disney, who have been reported to be considering charging to view some of the videos on Hulu. One imagines they’ll probably add more cable content as part of the TV Everywhere initiaitve.
It’ll be more interesting to see how Hulu’s viewer numbers perform in March as it will be the first month after Viacom pulled its Comedy Central videos, including the hugely popular Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Our bet is that Hulu’s continuing growth will offset most of the losses from viewers of Jon Stewart.
Of course, YouTube remains by far and way the top dog with 11.9 billion videos viewed in February compared with 912.5 million videos on Hulu. Microsoft came in third with 623 million videos and Yahoo sites had 455 million.
from Commentaries:
#Twitter business math: Counting backward from billions
$140,000,000 = Projected 2010 revenue in U.S. dollars according to Twitter February 2009 financial forecast leaked to TechCrunch. (*2)
100 million = Projected number of Twitter users in fourth quarter 2010 according to leaked spreadsheet. (*2)
75 million = Twitter members in May 2009 based on rough calculation of worldwide users, extrapolated from comScore and All Things D data (*3, *4)
I’m curious how they plan to make this revenue jump:
$4,400,000 = Projected 2009 revenue
$140,000,000 = Projected 2010 revenue
Swine flu: not so bad for CDC.gov
Too bad the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t charge for its information or make money off its website — they could have made a pile of cash on the swine flu scare. (You know, if it wasn’t a government site.)
Web traffic measurement firm comScore says traffic soared at CDC.gov last month, as people visited the website amid concerns over the H1N1, or swine, flu.
In April, CDC.gov saw a 142 percent increase in traffic, or 5.7 million visitors, making it the top audience gainer among websites, comScore said. “When news of the swine flu pandemic erupted, many Americans turned to the Internet as their primary source of information for how to keep themselves and their families safe,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore Media Metrix.
Social networks also continued their tear last month, growing 12 percent to nearly 140 million visitors. That’s about three-quarters of the U.S. online population, comScore says, so chances are someone you know is either is Twittering, Facebook-ing or on MySpace. Twitter jumped 83 percent to 17 million visitors, while Facebook grew 10 percent in April from the previous month to reach 67.5 million visitors. MySpace had 71 million visitors.
Keep an eye on:
- Will The Boston Globe’s biggest union balk at the New York Times Co offer? (The Boston Phoenix)
- Web entrepreneurs may no longer need venture capital dollars (The New York Times Bits blog)
- MGM scrambles to restructure its $3.7 billion debt pile (Financial Times)
Photo: Reuters
Too many people have a very short term window on the H1N1 virus. People either ignored or have forgotten that just a few short weeks ago Mexico was in the grips of new influenza virus that was hospitalizing young adults. The various health organizations around the world ramped up to respond to a virus that appeared to be serious, Everyone needs to remember that at this point medical science knew next to nothing about the virus. Imagine trying to respond to a virus threat when you don’t know how easily or quickly it spreads, you don;t know how it spreads, you don’t how deadly it is and you don’t know if it can be treated with anything and it seems to cause severe illness. The WHO and others would have been criminally negligent if they did not alert the world to a possible serious threat.
H1N1 for now has not been too serious outside of Mexico. This is a blessing. It provided a kick in the pants for a planet that was only partly prepared for a serious flu pandemic. Nay sayers should remember that medical science can still not explain with certainty why the Mexican cases were so severe compared to elsewhere. The other thing to remember is the ability of the flu to mutate. As the virus travels the southern hemisphere this summer it is entirely possible for it change to cause more severe illness. If it does not and we prepare for a threat that does not come we can be grateful we dodged the bullet this time. If we don’t prepare and it comes back like gangbusters a lot of needless illness will occur. I know which path I want the WHO and others to take. Perpare, prepare, prepare.
iPhone apps: Gaming and advertising paradise?
This may seem obvious to anybody who’s sat beside an iPhone user on the subway but ComScore’s latest research confirms it anyway. Games are one of the hottest iTunes Apps downloaded, and those who download them are well-paid social-site viewers ripe for some kind of new advertsing scheme.
According to the research firm twelve of the 25 most popular mobile apps were games including oldies like Hangman and Pac-man, and newer titles like “Cube Runner”, ”Crazy Penguin Catapult“, and (the top game) Tapulous’s “Tap Tap Revenge”.
It cited Stylem Media’s “Backgrounds” applications as most downloaded of non-games, just ahead of social network apps like Facebook and MySpace.
ComScore did not measure how much advertising already comes along with Apple apps, but did offer stats that seemed to say: “psst… there’s lots of advertising opportunity right here. “
Among the facts about Apps Store shoppers:
- Apple app users are a “particularly desirable audience” for advertising with a higher-than-average income and a fondness for online media.
- About 35 percent of app users are part of a household with an annual income of $100,000 or more while 54 percent make $75,000 or more, according to the research.
- They are also at least three times more likely to visit entertainment, social networking and communications sites than the average Internet user, ComScore said. It named online destinations such as AOL Instant Messenger, Hulu, Twitter, Digg.com, iMeem MTV.com.
Google finds panacea to the ill-advised email
How many times have you smacked your forehead in frustration after sending a bawdy e-mail to your boss that had been meant for a friend?
Until now, there had been no way to retrieve the missive. Even if the person’s on vacation, it’s only a matter of time before – as the saying goes – your nether region is grass. Enter Google’s Gmail Labs and “Undo Send”. If you enable the feature, every time you hit ‘send’, a button allowing you to ‘undo’ the send will pop up along with confirmation that the e-mail has been sent. You have five seconds to decide.
Etiquette hounds coach you to leave the “to” blank while you write an e-mail (especially if it’s a subject you feel strongly about) and not forward an e-mail without permission. As author and business consultant Tim Sanders says, “you never need to send an e-mail that’s regrettable.” But it happens all the time.
With Google’s snazzy new tool, if you click “undo”, the message is brought back to the first, “compose” screen. But it hasn’t won over everyone.
“That’s a really small window,” said Sanders, who was part of a May 2006 study on how people use e-mail. The study, which included 16,000 people, in part examined which e-mail messages were regrettable and why. “We make a lot of mistakes over e-mail that sabotage our lives,” Sanders said. “You’d need [the waiting period to be] a day to really prevent yourself from making mistakes.”
If you feel the same way and want, say, a drop-down menu where you can set the amount of time you want the undo option to last, let Gmail Labs know by sending them feedback. You’d be building a delay into a technology that is prized for its speediness, but it might save you your job.
These are just the sort of tricks that are increasing Google’s market share. Google saw a 32 percent worldwide increase in unique visitors to its Web sites last year, according to comScore. The total number of visitors topped 775 million – compared to Microsoft’s 20 percent increase to 647 million visitors and Yahoo’s 16 percent increase to 562.6 million visitors
Advertising works for Hulu, kind of
The jury is out on whether advertising will ever work for online video sites as they strive to become real profit-generating businesses. Well, it’s worked for Hulu, but not in the profit-generating kind of way — at least not right away.
Hulu jumped to become the fourth most-watched video site in the United States last month thanks to a major advertising spot during the Super Bowl, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore in this Reuters story. Those spots featured Alec Baldwin telling viewers about Hulu’s “evil plot to destroy the world” by turning people’s brains to mush.
Comscore said Hulu’s viewership grew 42 percent to 34.7 million unique visitors watching around 333 million videos.
The irony of Hulu’s “ratings” success on the back of a TV advertisement during one of the most watched events on the planet is not lost on us. Like many other Web video sites Hulu isn’t quite bringing in millions of dollars in profits for its owners yet, but this might be a start.
Google’s YouTube is also on the hunt for revenues and profits to match its huge popularity. We’re not sure if advertising on national television will help as it already has three times the number of viewers that Hulu does. YouTube’s issues might have more do with the reluctance of mainstream advertisers to make major commitments to advertising on its site which is dominated by user-generated clips rather than professionally made ones. Hulu, which only features TV shows and archive movies, has had more success with advertisers.
Even if YouTube decided to advertise during the Super Bowl, it might not have the same return on investment. As the New York Times explains here, Hulu paid next to nothing for Super Bowl ad spots worth nearly $3 million as this year’s football extravaganza was broadcast by part owner NBC.
Hulu rocks and that’s the simplest way of putting it. I used to think about getting dvr but rethought it after seeing all the available programs on Hulu. It would be even cooler if it would run off the iPhone.
from Fan Fare:
Hulu gets social
Video streaming Web site Hulu.com marked its one-year anniversary on Thursday by announcing new social networking features, as the site seeks to gain ground on other Internet entertainment hubs. The Web site, a joint venture between General Electric Co.-owned NBC Universal and News Corp., launched "Hulu Friends" which integrates functions from social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, as well as e-mail providers Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, and allows users to see what their friends are watching, share new videos and leave notes for each other. Hulu, which allows visitors to view television episodes and movies on their home computers, still has a long way to go if it hopes to catch up to video sharing giant YouTube.com. Internet tracking site comScore reported this month that YouTube accounted for about 43 percent of all videos viewed over the Internet in January. By comparison, Hulu.com had only a 1.7 percent share of all videos viewed. The Google-owned YouTube has reached out to mainstream entertainment companies, including Universal Music Group, as the site seeks to add more premium entertainment on its site. But unlike YouTube, which mostly has short video clips, Hulu allows users to view entire episodes, and it has positive trends in its favor.
Research firm Knowledge Networks reported in February that use of third-party video hosting sites such as Hulu to access network television shows doubled since 2007 among Internet video users age 13-54.
Yahoo Big as Ever in Japan
Yahoo’s island of strength in Japan looks as impregnable as ever.
In January, Yahoo increased the number of searches performed on its Japanese sites by 13 percent year-over-year, and continued to hold the top spot with a 51.3 percent share of searches conducted in Japan, according to market research firm comScore.
Google, which is the No.1 search firm in the U.S. by a long shot, saw its search share in Japan slip to 38.2 percent, from 39 percent in September. Total searches on Google sites in Japan increased 5 percent year-over-year in January.
Yahoo’s star property in the land of the rising sun is actually a 34 percent stake in a joint venture with Softbank. The Japanese partnership is one of several that Yahoo has forged overseas, such as its deal with China’s Alibaba Group.
Some analysts speculate that Yahoo may unload some of these investments as it seeks to fill its coffers with cash and cut costs amid the industry-wide advertising slump.
YouTube tops 100 million U.S. viewers – comScore
Whether it’s the recession keeping people searching for cheap entertainment or just the gradual shift of consumer eyeballs to the Web, YouTube‘s popularity continues to grow. The Google-owned site topped 100 million U.S. viewers for the first time in January, industry tracker comScore said on Wednesday.
YouTube viewers in the U.S. dialed up more than 6 billion videos in the month. Overall, more than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 101 videos each in January. The average viewer watched around six hours, comScore said.
And YouTube continues to dwarf its competition, with a nearly 43 percent online video market share. Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, ranked second with a 3.7 percent share.
Consumers seem to be fleeing traditional TV for sites like YouTube because they can see things there they just can’t see elsewhere. And new stars emerge everyday, including impersonators, airport hysterics and teenage rappers.
