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Competition 2.0 - Who Are Print Media Websites Competing With Online? News & Media Post 2 of 3
March 06, 2007
Saddam Hussein's execution - aired around the world through blogs and on YouTube - made YouTube a primary news source for millions of consumers. Newspapers were once the domain for breaking news, but often the medium and time constraints prevent printed press from reacting quickly enough to break news.
This second of three in a series of posts about our recently published News & Media report looks at the changing landscape of competitors online, going beyond the competition presented to ad sales by classifieds providers to look at the where consumers are turning for their news. (The first post on Digg.com's growth is available here.)
The post takes a look at two of three case studies presented the report. The first on Saddam Hussein's execution and the second on the Israel-Lebanon conflict from the summer of 2006.
News Story Case Study: Saddam Hussein's Execution
On 29th December 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed and a video of his execution rapidly spread across the Internet. In the four weeks to 6th January, the top term relating to the execution was "saddam hussein" followed by "saddam hussein execution".
The following table show the websites receiving the highest volume of visits from these queries.
With search engines accounting for 29% of upstream visits to websites in the News and Media industry, it is important for news organisations to know which websites are receiving visits from searches for key events. The above table highlights that Wikipedia is a key competitor to news websites that offer analysis and background information.
This example also illustrates that relatively unknown players can rapidly rise around particular events. For example, Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese news website, saw its market share of UK internet visits rise 4.5 times on 30th December 2006 compared with the previous day. The website's rank increased from 609 in the News and Media industry on 29th December to 175 on 30th December.
2. News Story Case Study: Israel-Lebanon Conflict
The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict started on 12th July 2006, and continued through early September. UK Internet users turned to the web for background information.
The following chart illustrates that the share of UK internet searches surged for "hezbollah", "israel" and "lebanon" in the weeks after the conflict began.
Analysis of the search terms used during the conflict reveals that UK Internet users went online for background information, with searches for maps, history and news about the region dominating searches.
Wikipedia was the favoured source for information in most searches related to the conflict. The #1 website receiving visits from searches for "israel", "lebanon" and "hezbollah" in the four weeks to 12th August 2006 was Wikipedia.org. Searches for "lebanon crisis" and "hizbollah" (a common misspelling of Hizbullah) also sent visits to Wikipedia. The free online encyclopedia was used for background information during the conflict - background information that was also in many cases available in the detailed analyses created by the leading nationals and news organisations in the UK.
Again, the full report is available here.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 04:34 PM
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I think people in their quest to live the fast-paced in-the-know lifestyle are almost forced to transition away from the "yesterday's news" of the newspapers. But there will still be a core audience of people who like the feel of paper between their fingers in the morning, and instead of forecasting doomsday for the old media, I think they still have a little bit of life left in them.
Posted by Brian Laks | March 6, 2007 09:50 PM