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.

• RT @TechCrunch Middle Eastern Media Giant Backs Upcoming Music Video Site VEVO http://bit.ly/c4Iuc #
• Shameless self-promotion: I'll be talking BuddyPress, Hyperlocal & InJersey on WordPress Weekly with @wptavern & @jefflee Tues. 8PM EST #
• RT @TechCrunch The Barnes & Noble Nook reader to be revealed and available tomorrow for $259 http://bit.ly/3NtCxr #
• Loved appearing on @wptavern last night. Best thing to come out of our hyperlocal powwow: The need to add p2 (aka Twitter-lite) to our sites #
• Want to host your own Twitter? There's P2 for WordPress. Also Blurt: http://blurt.it/ #
• InJersey's New Somerset Hills Site Launches – http://shar.es/1KVzm #
• RT @incherryhill Live Video: Cherry Hill Library “Meet the Candidates” event | Cherry Hill http://bit.ly/1Dc6ME #
• RT @incollingswood Pregnant Woman Survives Coma With H1N1 | ABC News | Collingswood http://bit.ly/1kXoAl #
• RT @incollingswood Photo gallery of Pres. Clinton in Collingswood | Collingswood http://bit.ly/syvhP #
• RT @incherryhill Candidates square off on budget | Cherry Hill http://bit.ly/3bwxQx #
• RT @TechCrunch More Details On Loopt’s Acquisition Of GraffitiGeo And Its Plans For The Future http://bit.ly/3Fubds #
• RT @incherryhill Basketball star will meet fans at mall | Cherry Hill http://bit.ly/3rHNHm #
• RT @incherryhill Phils ‘phans’ with fly threads | Cherry Hill http://bit.ly/NjGcu #
• Speaker list for WordCamp NYC finalized, and hey, wadaya know, I'm on it! http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/speakers #
• @toryjohnson Tory, did you hear about this event? http://tinyurl.com/yg2ak7w All about hyperlocal journalism and the women making it happen #
• After living in Haddonfield for 1 year and two months, we finally finished unpacking tonight. Woo hoo! #
• The SEC has a WordPress blog: http://tinyurl.com/ygg3js5 What's next: the Ben Bernanke blog? #
• How to install Windows 7 on a Mac: http://bit.ly/4yrVYS #
• @ChangeEvnglst Welcome to the neighborhood, Sidney! in reply to ChangeEvnglst #

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.

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.

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.