Twitter website traffic has overtaken both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for April 2009, as picked up by PaidContent and expanded on by ReadWriteWeb.
Which is a handy stat, but….
Are we really comparing like for like, or is this as misleading as comparing print and online figures?
For starters, we’re looking at website traffic, and although publication has numerous ways to be accessed online, I’d risk assuming that Twitter’s proportion of mobile and desktop client access is greater than that of the newspaper sites – which probably means the numbers went past the paper sites long ago.
And where’s the measures of interaction for comparison? While not every Twitter user is interacting, and newspaper sites are building in increasing routes to conversations and communities, surely it’s the engagement, interaction and effectiveness of Twitter versus other sites which is of as much importance? Even when it’s breaking news, e.g. Mumbai, the ability to converse with both the source and others is built into Twitter to a far greater extent than the paper sites.
Finally for a comparison – what amount of data is being generated by the different sites?
That’s surely of major importance considering the changes happening in general searching:
First hands on test with Wolfram Alpha
Google search tools moving closer to ‘real-time’
And considering the current wave of new and improved Twitter search tools:
Oh, and major changes to Twitter Search itself.
Whether or not the current buzz and celebrity/mainstream adoption continues, or whether a backlash increases along with the pretty high drop-out rate from people trying Twitter for the first time, it’s the levels of data and engagement which are key to the longterm success, and routes to monetization for Twitter, rather than sheer mass audience numbers. Particularly when the types of both advertiser and advertising which are going to be most effective will also be quite different from traditional publishing outlets.
No comment needed on NUJ comment
Happened across this post, via Antony Mayfield.
Regardless of the actual post, what really caught my eye was in the comments by Chris Wheal:
First:
‘Let me reiterate a principle of journalism: You contact the subject of a story and put the allegations to them before you publish.
Had you done so – contacted the NUJ or me, as you know I chair the Professional Training Committee – you’d have had an explanation.
The story would have been much less interesting. It would have been: Tired NUJ training chair, angered by poor journalistic standards on blogs, asks committee to engage with bloggers to try to raise standards.’
Followed by:
‘The NUJ believes that journalistic standards should apply across all media. If that sounds out of touch, and old-fashioned then sorry, I must be a dinosaur.
The NUJ fails to police those standards as well as it would like in the tabloid press due to the powerful media owners, weak industrial relations legislation, lack of a contractual right to refuse to do unethical stories and a host of other reasons.
The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards.‘ (emphasis mine).
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to add anything, except: