Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
New York Times has fewer print readers than Twitter followers
New York Times has fewer print readers than Twitter followers
As we reported a couple of days ago the New York Times Company is celebrating an increase in traffic to one of its newspaper websites since the introduction of a paywall in August. Which bodes well for the success of the paywall planned for its flagship title.
Not so good for its print circulation figures is the news that more people are following the New York Times on Twitter than are actually buying the paper.
A study by Journalistics has ranked the top 25 US newspapers by Twitter followers. They looked at the primary Twitter account rather than combining several accounts run by the paper or any star reporter’s personal account.
The last set of figures released, on 31st March 2010, put the New York Times’ print circulation at 951,063 and reports this week say revenue from circulation is in decline.
However, with 2.6 million followers, the paper’s Twitter account is a roaring success. Particularly when you compare it to its rivals. It’s well ahead of the Chicago Tribune on 845,000 and the Wall Street Journal on 464,591.
So what does this tell us? That New Yorkers are into social media. That people around the world are interested in their stories. That they provide a steady stream of links to quality content.
Interestingly if you look at their website they don’t push Twitter at all; there’s nowt but the usual social bookmarking tools at the bottom of each article whereas Facebook is given a prominent top-right spot on the homepage.
So how do UK newspapers square up? Let’s use the same format of looking only at the primary Twitter account rather than the combined total of accounts to avoid distorting the figures; Caitlin Moran and India Knight of The Times have around 70k followers between them and The Guardian has more Twitter accounts than you could eat.
Here’s how the newspapers rank today in terms of Twitter followers.
Financial Times: 214,925
Telegraph News: 20,844
The Indy News: 15,229
The Guardian: 14,118 (this is their primary account, although Guardian news has 94,718)
The Times Live: 13,184
Daily Mail Online: 9,913
Telegraph: 6,816
The Sun News: 4,529
Daily Mirror: 3843
So the Financial Times comes out on top. But with not quite enough Twitter followers to beat its circulation figures of 390,227. Not just yet.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Keep the funny but put something behind it of value
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Best Google Home Page Ever, I think, I've only been here twice
Facebook and Others Caught Sending User Data to Advertisers
Facebook and Others Caught Sending User Data to Advertisers
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on what could be a major scandal brewing for Facebook, MySpace and other social networks: despite assurances to the contrary, the sites have apparently been sending personal and identifiable information about users to their advertisers without consent.
Large advertising companies including Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media were identified as having received information including usernames or ID numbers that could be traced back to individual profiles as users clicked on ads. The data could potentially be used to look up personal information about the user, including real name, age, occupation, location, and anything else made public on the profile. Both of the aforementioned companies denied being aware of the “extra” data they were receiving and claim they have not made use of it.
The WSJ goes on to report that since raising questions about the practice with Facebook (
) and MySpace (
The Journal found that Facebook went farther than most in sharing identifiable data, by sending the username of the person clicking the ad as well as the username of the profile they were viewing at the time. This news could hardly come at a worse time for Facebook, a company that currently faces a privacy backlash potent enough to make the cover of Time Magazine this month.
Outside of Facebook, the other companies named in the article maintain the data they send to advertisers contains the user ID of the profile a user is visiting when they click on an ad, and not the user ID of the visitor themselves. Both Google and Yahoo made strong statements refuting the idea that they would ever make use of any such personally identifiable data. Yahoo VP of global policy Anne Toth said of the allegations, “We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiable information to us. We have told them. ‘We don’t want it. You shouldn’t be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it.’”
What do you think: is this another privacy-related stain on Facebook as well as other social networks, or much ado about nothing?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Target is reinventing its consumer electronics department
Monday, May 17, 2010
Robot Priest Marries Couple in Japan
Robot Priest Marries Couple in Japan [VIDEO]
Procedurally, the ceremony of marriage is a very linear affair. The priest says some things, then the groom and bride say some things, kisses are exchanged, and the couple is married.
Is it odd, then, that Satoko Inoue and Tomohiro Shibata decided to employ a robot called i-Fairy to marry them? Now, perhaps; but in a couple of years, especially in Japan which is already home to 800,000 industrial robots, it might become a regular occurrence.
The bride, Inoue, works for Kokoro Ltd, the company that makes the i-Fairy, a robot usually employed as a museum guide. The husband, Shibata, was a client of the company, so in a way, the robot brought them together. “It’s true that robots are what caused us to first begin going out, and as suggested by my wife, we decided that we wanted to try this sort of wedding,” Shibata said.
All it took was new software, and the robot presided over the marriage without problems, as you can see in the video below. So much for robots not understanding the meaning of love.
