There was a great post on TechCrunch today about how the redesign of Yahoo has helped push up the time spent on the homepage by 20 percent. But what I found interesting wasn’t so much the effect of the tweaks Yahoo made as the quantification of their success afterward. Specifically, the idea of PageYield.
The whole focus of the redesign, and across Yahoo in general, says Bhat is to increase what he calls PageYield. The yield of a page on Yahoo is measure of how engaged consumers are with that page. (As opposed to PageRank, which is how Google scores pages on the Web in its search results). PageYield is a measure of how much time is spent on each Yahoo page and how many pageviews it gets, but also how much downstream traffic the page generates, and how often people come back.
So often when we look at building websites, we’re focussed on metrics like page views and unique visitors and time on site. But I think this concept of PageYield gets to the heart of what a website really should be aiming to do: get users to interact with it. A great page on a news site gets users to read an article, play a video, make a comment, and share to Facebook or Twitter. If the user just skims the page and moves on, so what? Sure, both count as page views and eyeballs, but if the engaged user is infinitely better.
And not just from a usability standpoint. It also makes sense if your website has an ad-supported business model. If they’re engaged with everything on the page, it follows that they’re far more engaged with advertisements, too.
This last Tuesday I appeared on WordPress Weekly, an internet-based radio show, to talk about what we’re trying to do here on InJersey.com — and in general about the whole hyperlocal news trend.
It was a fun show, and I’m grateful to the host Jeff Chandler for featuring us (even if he did keep referring to me, erroneously, as Todd). Here’s a replay:
You can download the show as a podcast on iTunes here.
November is shaping up to have a slew of big hyperlocal events. After launching InJersey and attempting to pilot Gannett NJ’s efforts in this arena, I’m going to try to make to all of these. Of course, given that it seems there’s a new event every few days, it’ll be challenging. At some point next month, I’m going to have to actually try to work.
Anyway, here are the biggies on my list:
Nov. 9 – New Media Women Entrepreneurs, Washington D.C.: A day-long gathering of blockbuster speakers, all of them women, and almost all of them working on hyperlocal news sites. Although I may not be able to make it to D.C. for the event, I’d particularly love to hear Debbie Galant, of Baristanet.com, and Lisa Williams, of Placeblogger.com.
Nov. 11 – Hypercamp, NYC:This is one I absolutely won’t miss. I’ve been working with Jeff Jarvis and his team at CUNY (“New Business Models for News”) to set up a day-long event devoted to how to improve the quality of hyperlocal news sites, and also how to monetize them once they’re built. Should be an amazing lineup of speakers, including Jarvis himself.
Nov. 14-15 – WordCamp NYC: While not technically hyperlocal, since InJersey is all built on WordPress MU and BuddyPress, as are most of the blog-based hyperlocal sites out there, this is going to be a very important event for me. It’s arguably the biggest and best WordCamp event outside of the San Fran one.
Nov. 18 – Citizen Journalism Conference, Monmouth U, West Long Branch, NJ:I’m scheduled to speak at this free half-day event being put on by the Citizens Campaign, a non-profit aiming to help promote citizen journalism and civic engagement. My panel’s discussion: “The New Media Climate: How the internet is transforming journalism and its impact on local government & politics.”
Should be a wild couple weeks. If you’re planning to go to any of these as well, drop me an email and let me know.
Cool hyperlocal innovation @infreehold: Using Google Moderator as a way for residents to submit questions to candidates http://bit.ly/4xwYQy#
Anybody in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, or South Jersey need a kick-ass Pottery Barn console table? http://tinyurl.com/y858quz#
@markcorrea Believe me, I've pimped out my fair share of CourierPostOnline links here. Gotta spread the love. in reply to markcorrea#
@markcorrea Besides, that extra Twitter love may have been the thing that caused APP.com's php server to spaz — 5 times! So you're welcome in reply to markcorrea#
How the stupid Starbucks taste test ruined my day and how Via will, no doubt, destroy our civilization http://tinyurl.com/yhdylgr#
I’ve been working on MU for a long time, ever since I started blogging at LoHud and helping to administer the blogs there. And while I’m about as big a WordPress fanatic as you’ll find in the newspaper business, few of my colleages (much less family and friends) have an interest in the nitty gritty of how the blogs work.
That said, I wanted to post about MU — and specifically, the WPMU DEV Premium site — today for two reasons:
1. There’s a contest involved, and I’m a sucker for contests
2. There’s been a debate raging for the last couple weeks over on wpmu.org that is really intriguing, and I wanted to give my $.02 here
I know I shouldn’t take this personally, but failing the Starbucks Via taste test this morning truly unnerved me. Actually, pissed me off is more like it.
They handed me my samples and asked, which is the fresh-brewed coffee? I thought, and sipped, and thought some more, and then pointed right to one of the two little cups. Which, sadly, turned out to be the new instant brand.
An hour after failing the test, I think I know why this experience rattled me. Sure, it’s a complete validation of Starbucks’s new instant coffee. It tastes delicious, I admit. But what bugs me is that there’s just something inherently wrong about a human being not being able to differentiate between freshly made coffee and artificial, freeze-dried, packaged stuff.
What’s next? Splenda being indistinguishable from sugar? Soy milk tasting the same as regular? Turkey bacon assuming the taste, texture, and shape of regular bacon?
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Michael Pollen, but, well, it just seems like it’s not healthy for us to live in a world where we can’t distinguish fresh from artificial.
That said, at $1 per packet, this new Via instant is hella cheap. It may be a sinister ploy, but I’ll get off my soapbox now since I’ll no doubt be buying the stuff in bulk before too long.
My friend Margarita has a great blog on the Courier-Post website about her fat cat — and other animal handicaps. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s a must-read. I’m particularly fond of this recent post about a blind cat at a local shelter.
Almost makes me want to adopt another — until, that is, I smell the cat urine still embedded in my carpet.
TurkeyMonkey is a blog devoted to Ted Mann’s thoughts on water sports, refined sugar, and, naturally, anything to do with monkeys. Why TurkeyMonkey? Well, for starters, SpiderPig was already taken.
Last Thursday I attended my first TweetUp at Tortilla Press in Collingswood. It was a great event and has, among other things, inspired me to bring more Twitter goodness into other areas of my online life -- including, for starters, this long-neglected blog. As you can see, I've launched a new WordPress theme by the [...] […]
You might see some Wikipedia articles appearing in your Google News searches. Cue aghast reactions. Really, though, it's not that big of a deal. Internet users gain their info from a variety of sources - never from just one - unlike the way traditional newspapers fed their news content to their readers. Besides I passed biology [...] […]
To anyone who doubts the importance of Facebook in the web economy these days, that headline alone should be reason enough to make you a believer. According to Compete in the last month alone, traffic to Facebook.com grew 8 percent, reaching 82.9 million unique visitors. As TechCrunch points out, it's almost beside the point to compare [...] […]
Happy Friday! "Media workers are the heaviest drinking professionals in England, consuming the equivalent of more than four bottles of wine or more than 19 pints of beer a week, according to government research." via Media has heaviest drinkers, poll finds | Media | The Guardian. Can't refute that. But what about the U.S. stats? […]
We've been working long and hard for several months now on what we're calling our "hyperlocal project." Yes, indeedy, more town-centric citizen journalist goodness. Trust us, it'll be awesome. More on that in the weeks to come. In the mean time, we're still polishing up the site, and one bit of spit shine that would really [...] […]
This article courtesy of MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press. Cheers! PHILADELPHIA - Convicted former news anchor Larry Mendte has filed a defamation suit against The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News and several of their columnists. Mendte says he was defamed in coverage of what he calls a "romantic" relationship with co-anchor Alyci […]
Go go creative commons and go go licensing fees. MediaShift takes a look at iffy fair use rules and the wobbly future of news copyright on the Web through the epic toils of AP's legal staff. I've always tried to follow the fair-use-doesn't-exist rule. The Copyright Act stipulations take too long to translate and are a little [...] […]
Did you know there's a newspaper (or a few) per continent including Antarctica? Or how about the lyrics to "The Washington Post March" (born and raised in Fairfax, Va. and even I didn't know that!) Check out this list of nine things you probably didn't know about the news. My favorite: "You've probably heard the New York [. […]
Done as of yesterday. "The Bulletin retained its predecessor’s famous slogan, 'In Philadelphia Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin'..." via RIP Philadelphia Bulletin | Newspaper Death Watch. Check out the Bulletin's website here. Will they make something of it? Doesn't look promising... [Editor's note: Updated 1:15 p.m.] […]
Check out the new toy being deliverd this month to the private Caribbean island of Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Unlimited. For $25,000 you can rent Branson's underwater airplane for a week. ''Unlike all conventional submersibles which use ballast to sink in the water, the DeepFlight submersibles uses downward ‘lift’ on the wings to fly down t […]
- Was watching the playoffs this weekend with friends when that old Philly vs. New York saw reared its ugly head: Philly and South Jersey feeling second rate when ever it compares itself, or whenever we're compared to New York. What a croc. But in that vein, its worth pointing out something we've got that New York [...] […]
- I think the Day 8 season premier last night of '24' found Jack Bauer using a Nexus One cell phone. Did anyone else spy the familiar silver-ringed camera lens on the back of his mobile while he was talking to CTU when the helicopter exploded? Maybe Jack was trying to reach Google's customer [...] […]
- A new season of '24' brings Jack back for 2 hours Sunday night (and 2 more on Monday) to set the stage for the season. If you wanna be like Jack, while you're ducking and reloading and running from place to place to place, you'll need a good watch. After all, in Bauer time, [...] […]
- Oh, this isn't good. Going straight into consumer caution mode here: Nexus One may have a rampant hardware defect. And Google is providing woeful customer service, according to reports in most all media - blogosphere, techpress, mainstream press. And Nexus One has the highest costs of any subsidized phone. Strange that Google claims this phone 'r […]
- Reports are growing that right out of the box, the Nexus One is having issues. First issue is that people can't get them out of the box: Mobile phone users are complaining that Google isn't shipping fast enough. And people who received one, they're having real trouble getting support. Google's response to these issues: You have to [...] […]
We're taking down the Christmas tree today and right about now I wish I had studied my differential calculus a bit more. Wonder if I could do that with my washing machine. […]
-Listen closely and ... pffffft ... you can hear air coming out of the new Nexus One smartphone from Google. Great Gods, when it was released for sale Tuesday afternoon, the Earth didn't quake, clouds didn't part and angels didn't sing. You only heard Google touting it. To cut through 2009's relentless hype and verbiage surrounding this [ […]
- The controversial Google Phone was publicly approved by the FCC today. Thanks to all the GadgBloggers who have been wrestling mightily with this for some time, but the expected game changer of a Data Only phone is not present here. Not yet, anyhow. Here's some pictures courtesy of engadget. Images purport that this mobile has 3D [...] […]
Just about tech blog in the U.S. is currently bitching about yesterday's news that AT&T will NOT be supporting many of the newest features on the iPhone 3G, like MMS and tethering. Instead of echoing their gripes, I'd instead like to kindly point you to a petition to get Ma Bell to please, please join the [...] […]
