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.

What has web 2.0 done to us? Passive time vs Active time

I just watched an interesting video over on Vinny's blog. A great video to watch inspite of the video itself being old.I picked out one very interesting concept from the video that caught my eye. This was the difference between what we did with our time before the "web2.0" boom and what we do with our time now.The difference is simple and quite profoundly true. Before the massive concept of User Generated Content (UGC) we would spend our free time passively. Watch TV, go to a pub, read a book. And sure we are still doing these things. But now we as a generation are much more active with out time.We blog, we interact on social networks, we create videos to upload and we search for any and all information using the search engines available to us. Everything is more active with nuances of "passive relief" in our daily habits.What I mean by passive relief is the need to break away from the activity. It is tiring earning YouTube, Myspace, Digg, Blogger, Facebook and others all their money. And I really mean that. As users we are earning all of these sites their cash. If we don't like a website or concept it will crash through lack of UGC. If we do, it booms and the creators get loaded. Simple.But invariably this will become web 2.0's antic disposition. The greatest strength and one of the distinct differences between web 2.0 and web 1.0 is UGC. What would YouTube be without user gerenated videos? It would me nothing, or it would be a media organisation employing people to produce video much like The Times here in SA.What do you think? Will UGC be the climax and downfall of web 2.0? Will there be a downfall of web 2.0? Or are you already on the bandwagon trying to create wealth via web 2.0?

Ibiza and the no-Axe-jet

Jason is in Ibiza. Bastard.Looks like he's having a blast even though there was NO AXE-JET!!
Brought to you by: The Times Multimedia

The Times And Video Embedding

I am curious to know if The Times is going to be releasing their video for other sites/blogs to embed?I know that their are some contentious issues surrounding this topic, however I do feel that it would definitely help to promote The Times and their multimedia team. I think that The Times is doing a great job with their new media ventures and holistic approach to media integration.Surely it must be somewhat beneficial to release their video production in order to enable others to embed the videos? Would it not be beneficial for SA Rocks to feature the latest video from The Times on the Lion King production? I think it would. This is not possible at this time however, unless I am missing something?If I am missing something could someone please let me know so I can catch up?!Since I am talking about The Times and I haven't made an attempt at blogging about the topic yet, here goes:The Times is meant to be an integrated platform for readers to access hyperlinks, video, podcasts, photographs, written stories and more. Why then, is it so difficult to access the multimedia aspect of the website? Yes you can tell me to click on the "Multimedia" tab in the navigation menu, fantastic, and then? Then you have a long list of video stories that appear but no video. You need to then click on the headline of the story and get to the story page and then search for the video which is tucked away in the top corner away from the main body of the story. The video is also strategically placed above an advert of some sorts to fool you in to thinking it's an advert.I am not an all knowing web designer/users but I know what I like and this is not it. I would like to see the main video placed within the body of the text, top or bottom and possible on the left of the screen as the main feature, since I am viewing what is coined as a video story.The Podcasts on The Times website are even more difficult to find. After clicking the main "multimedia" tab in the nav menu you then have to strain your eyes to find the submenu containing the podcast link which takes you to a blog format website. Why are the podcasts not featured on the main site?There are vodcasts on the podcasts page which I find somewhat strange. I really love the content on the site, I think that the media producers are doing a phenomenal job, as are the eds and the rest of the team so don't think that I am slating, I am just interested that's all.