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PageYield: The new metric for measuring online audience engagement

Posted by Ted on Oct 29, 2009 in

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.

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Ted’s Twitter Updates for 2009-10-25

Posted by Ted on Oct 25, 2009 in

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InJersey Featured on WordPress Weekly

Posted by Ted on Oct 22, 2009 in

via InJersey — Blog

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.

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Code Monkey Like You

Posted by Ted on Oct 19, 2009 in

I realize I’m not a developer, per se, but given how much time I’ve spent hacking together websites and code for work, this struck a nerve with me.

Thanks to Margarita for sharing this.

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Hip hip hooray for Hyperlocal events in November

Posted by Ted on Oct 18, 2009 in

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:

    2009 NMWE Summit

  • 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.


    Call for local bloggers for a NewBizNews event | News Innovation

  • 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.


    wcnyc-baruch

  • 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.


    Events - Citizen Journalist Conference

  • 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.

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Ted’s Twitter Updates for 2009-10-18

Posted by Ted on Oct 18, 2009 in

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Ted’s Twitter Updates for 2009-10-04

Posted by Ted on Oct 4, 2009 in

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WPMU DEV Premium and the pay-plugin conundrum

Posted by Ted on Oct 2, 2009 in

I don’t often blog here about work-related things, but I’m gonna do so today, just this once, to talk about WordPress MU, the blog software I manage to run Gannett NJ’s blogs on APP, CourierPostOnline, Daily Record, MyCentralJersey, and The Daily Journal.

WordPress MU › Blog Tool and Publishing PlatformI’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

(more…)

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Curse you, Via!

Posted by Ted on Oct 2, 2009 in

IMG_1169

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.

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Blind Cats and other things that make me smile (but shouldn’t)

Posted by Ted on Oct 1, 2009 in

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.

spiritcat-300x209

Almost makes me want to adopt another — until, that is, I smell the cat urine still embedded in my carpet.

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