Seat at the Table » 18 http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog C-Level PR Counsel Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:57:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 News Sites Continue to Dominate Online Reading (but search is strong) http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/06/02/news-sites-continue-to-dominate-online-reading-but-search-is-strong/ http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/06/02/news-sites-continue-to-dominate-online-reading-but-search-is-strong/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:59:16 +0000 Ephraim Cohen http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/06/02/news-sites-continue-to-dominate-online-reading-but-search-is-strong/ Core to communications is getting information out to the public.  Traditionally (as in, pre-Web 1.0), that was the domain of professional news organizations.  However, with the growth of UGC content in blogs, Twitter, podcasts and other Web-centric properties, you might often hear the argument that news organizations are losing control of news distribution.    While an interesting theory, so far, people’s news surfing habits are not backing it up.   For example,

We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following:

  • Web sites and aggregators dominate with 52% of respondents get their news from news web sites and 28% from aggregators like Google news.
  • Twitter is rising as a news distribution source with 7% of respondents getting news that way (and it’s still early). Email is still a strong option at 10%.
  • Print is still important as 37% read a print paper daily and 20% cited print when asked about reading opinion editorials.
  • Mobile platform is not only a strong news delivery tool, but is a platform where interest in using news applications (38% said they used applications) allow for branded applications vs. web browsing (35%) where users may easily move to another site.
  • No one type of news site or source dominated in terms of the type of result people click on when searching for information.

    Here are some of the charts from the polls along with quotes:

    What sources are used for reading daily news:image

    “I still enjoy browsing through a REAL newspaper over coffee!!!”

    “I actually get 90% of my news from reading the New York Times every morning on my commuter train. Actually a combination…newspaper and the net..still nothing like reading the hard copy”

    “I then use the aggregation of Yahoo! News and the NYTimes.com to fill in the holes. I, of course, get virtually all the news of my industry from very specialized newsletters and email alerts.”

    How do you read news on a mobile device
    image

    Polls On How People Find and Read News Online

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