SA news organisations on Google Trends

There has been a bit of a buzz surrounding Google Trends and their alleged intention to take on Alexa in the tracking, trends and statistics game.I've chatted to Vincent about this and he seemed underwhelmed by the entire concept.I have a different perspective. I am quote excited about the comparative search terms and vague unique visitors per month.From what I can gather, the basic premise is that you can compare what users are searching for and visiting with one website as the focus.The graph below is a comparison of four news websites in South Africa. News24.com, IOL, Mail & Guardian Online and The Times Online.click to enlargeUsing the above graph as an example, Mail & Guardian Online is the focus of the graph and data you are able to see the graph, regions, also visited and also searched for. The key to these comparative graphs is the colours. Note the colours carefully and pay attention because they are important.Mail & Guardian Online is clearly blue and the little button says that the statistics are ranked by/according to Mail & Guardian Online.I can see that people who visited Mail and Guardian Online also visited The Times, searched for vuyo mokoena and South African newspapers.I think this is useful information.What can you do with information like this? It's habitual I think. You can know what your target audiences habits might be. I say might be because there are never any certainties. But we can know with a greater sense of surety (read confusion) than previously. This means targeting. Targeted advertising, targeted content, themes, links, relevance.To me, this is potentially more important than knowing what your users are clicking on in your own site. Why? Because things are different and evolving online, especially in the online news media market. Mail & Guardian Online have implemented a system of cross referencing and external linking. These links directly provide our potential opposition websites with links taking users out of the Mail & Guardian Online in to a different news organisations website. Now if we know which opposition our users prefer, how frequently they visit and what search terms took them in to or out of our websites and our oppositions then the chance exists that the word "opposition" is being used unnecessarily.It could be possible down the line that news is customised by the organisations, users, competitors, advertisers and anyone else in such a way that the flow of information suits each individual in a broader context.

Invasive online advertising

What do you think of this advert?Visit Mail & Guardian Online now to have a look at the advert.I am in two minds. Initially I hated the concept, but then, it's not so bad really. It's effective, interesting and different. Plus it can be closed at any moment if you can find the relevant button.

My first Mail & Guardian Online project: Sports Leader

I've been at Mail & Guardian Online now for just over two weeks. I'd love to say that the first two week have been quiet, tame and took the form of an introduction to the business, it hasn't. Not conventionally at least.On my first day working with Matt and Vince I was thrown in to the deep end and tasked with setting up Sports Leader. At that point I didn't know my arse from my elbow let alone how to call up top sports personalities, intellectuals and commentators and ask them to join a platform that hadn't even launched yet. It was tough. I got bat. The success rate is very low on cold calling the sporting elite let me tell you.I made many phone calls and sent out many emails. Eventually it started to pay off. I managed to get hold of some fantastic sports people and through the help of Mr Trapido we have some fantastic rugby names on the site. There are more to come, many of whom you will know, recognise and want to hear from but more on that in another post. We have tried to be as diverse as possible when it comes to the sports that are represented on Sports Leader, the big ones obviously being Soccer (Football), Rugby and Cricket. However we are proud to say that we have many alternative and extreme sports appearing on Sports Leader.Within two weeks (or just under) we managed to sign up close on 30 sporting personalities and fans.Speaking of fans I feel I need to mention that there are some fans contributing to Sports Leader. This was a very calculated move on our behalf. No one owns sports, not even the sports people and no one can ever claim to. The people who have the strongest opinions and often suffer and celebrate more than their teams are the fans. How can you have a sporting platform without having the fans on board? You can't and we don't. What we have done is create an interesting juxtaposition of fanatical opinion from armchair commentators and practical insight from industry players and professionals, an important balance when it comes to sport.

So with this blog post I mark the completion of my first project at Mail & Guardian Online.