*Author’s update:  the Compete.com data should be dismissed.  Darren Rowse of Problogger states that his site receives upwards of 500,000 uniques, not the 28,000 uniques as reported by Compete.com.  Shame on me for trusting Compete.com.  Anyone have a (much) better public web traffic tool?

There are many, many sites that produce helpful content for bloggers.  How does a blogger determine which blog is right for them?  To help out our readers who blog themselves, I figured I’d dive deep into two blogs that have been indexed by Pinyadda for over 6 months: ProBlogger.net (PB) and Copyblogger.com (CB).

Since June 1st, here is some data for both PB and CB:

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One thing we take very seriously at Pinyadda is the success of online publishers, especially our favorite ones. In order to help publishers capture as much value from their digital properties as possible, we have decided to start a series of posts in which we find one simple improvement that could be made to a publisher’s website  to help them capture more value either by building community, expanding their audience or making more cold, hard, sweet sweet cash.

With our headquarters located right in the heart of Downtown Boston, most of the Yadda Squad members are pretty big fans of Boston.com, the online destination of The Boston Globe.  It is the go to destination for all things Boston – Sox, Celts, local news and events – you name it, they’re usually on it. So for our first post in the series, we’ve decided to go with Boston.com.

Many of you have heard all the buzz around Chris Nolan’s recent movie Inception.  It is a wildly exciting, action packed thriller about Leonardo DiCaprio manipulating people’s dreams and blurring the lines between reality and the world of the mind’s subconscious.  On July 15th the day before Inception’s opening, Wesley Morris, one of the Globe’s movie critics, wrote a solid review of Nolan’s flick.  The timing of the piece was a perfect way to facilitate Boston.com reader’s to go see the movie on opening weekend, so my first thought was, why doesn’t the Globe integrate with Fandango or some service to directly sell movie tickets on their site?

So after a little investigation, I found some software in the section “Things To Do” called Zvents, which lists different types of events by location, such as movies by theater, concerts, etc.  Clearly outsourcing some of the work that goes into this type of information gathering and architecture is useful, however here are a few things I think could be improved to help Boston.com see more revenue from their great movie content: (more…)

(Recommendation: Watch the YouTube video below while reading the rest of this post, it makes my writing seem exponentially more epic and cool)

When we first introduced the concept of the News Graph about a month ago, we received a lot of excitement around the power of the concept and what it could mean moving forward as it is brought to life.  The Yadda Squad has been speaking with people involved in all aspects of the convergence of technology and media, from journalists to designers, and engineers to investors.  One topic of discussion that everyone seems to find interesting is comparing the areas of value creation in the old news and media industry model of the physical print world to the areas of value creation in today’s new media landscape.

SO – in order to effectively and successfully move forward in developing better business models for new and old media, I decided to boil down all of the conversations, and in one moment of clarity it became obvious that what it all comes down to is ACDC.  Yes, ACDC – but not the band. While I am sure Malcom and Angus Young most certainly have some solid insights regarding the future of news, I am talking about an acronym of the points of the news process that have been thunderstruck by the digital disruption: Access - Creation - Distribution - Consumption. (more…)

MediaBistro wrote this morning about an announcement from KQED, an National Public Radio member station in Northern California, detailing their launch of their a companion web property at KQED.org. According to the release, the launch is part of a larger initiative to transform KQED into a full-fledged media platform:

“Eight new staff members, including six journalists, have recently joined KQED to expand KQED’s local news coverage. The results will be immediate as KQED Public Radio, one of the Bay Area’s most popular stations and among the most-listened-to public stations in the country, expands its local newscasts from six to sixteen beginning July 19. The newscasts will span the entire day from 6am to 12:30am. In addition, KQED News plans to add additional radio news reports and Interactive features in late August.”

There’s been no shortage of philosophical musing about the prospect of the NPR model emerging as a way forward for local journalism outfits, but the KQED expansion is one of the first real-world examples to watch. NPR itself has done well to manage the online transition, providing listeners and readers alike with high-quality content that works well on the web. At a first glance, the KQED takes significant cues from the NPR homepage, offering visitors the ability to listen live, find individual programming for on-demand listening, and read original content that’s often related to the other audio and video content on the site:

The newly launched KQED.org

The NPR.org hompage.

While KQED is in a unique position of strength among its NPR affiliate brethren, its ability to create value for web visitors seems to point to an emergent truth: radio and television outlets seem to have had an easier time bridging the digital transition than their peers in print journalism. And this shouldn’t be entirely surprising. After all, the web is an inherently multi-dimensional medium. Written content can coexist alongside audio and video content on the web, and when it’s done right the results are engaging and impressive. Newspapers have begun to embrace this reality and many are beginning to find innovative new ways to get multimedia content that compliments their print stories.

The KQED and NPR are focused on the same task, but with one key exception: the written content is there to support and enhance their multimedia content, not the other way around. KQED is good at producing audio and video content. They’ve learned how to create the element of ’story’ using these tools, and the experience translates well on the web. Creating written content to fill the gaps and augment these stories has seemed to come relatively easy to them. So what can newspapers learn from KQED, NPR, and the public radio ecosystem in general? In my  opinion, there are a few key takeaways:

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