Even more most read
Post categories: ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News website
| 12:37 UK time, Thursday, 19 February 2009
We've made a change to the "Most read" and "Most watched" headline lists which appear on all News website story pages and the front page.
As of yesterday we've increased the number of most read and most viewed headlines visible in this list from five to 10.
These headlines are themselves a popular and well-used feature. They are, in effect, your agenda, the things which News website users actually find most important and interesting at any given moment, as revealed by the .
I sometimes get asked whether this feature dictates our news agenda - whether it affects the front page running order which represents our editorial view of what's most important and interesting through the day.
The answer is it that it does inform what we do - but it's just one of many criteria our front page editors will be thinking about and discussing with other ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News editors across our TV and radio outlets as they order the stories of the day, along with overall significance, interest and news value.
The journalists writing for the site keep a close eye on the ever-changing "most popular" list because it can be a good place to spot emerging interest in stories which we can then develop, and it can also help us assess how successful we've been at highlighting and headlining what we see as the key stories of the day.
The change we've just made is an experiment to see if we can measure the relative importance of this feature in increasing your engagement with a wider array of stories, and potentially increasing the amount of your precious time you spend reading and watching things on the site.
We'll be monitoring the effects over the next few days and will assess them next week. I'll let you know what we find out.
Comment number 1.
At 19th Feb 2009, mancbranch wrote:Is there any reason why this hasn't been done on Most Emailed?
I don't bother with the audio/video stories as I tend to use the site on computers with no sound, so I use the other two lists to see what is happening, it seems unbalanced now.
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Comment number 2.
At 19th Feb 2009, SheffTim wrote:A similar feature for the blogs would be useful too.
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Comment number 3.
At 19th Feb 2009, JonChr wrote:The problem with "Most popular"/"Most read" is the same as the often made criticism of the equivalent feature on any given Have Your Say page.
That is, the feature has a built-in positive feedback. Every viewer who clicks on one of the "most popular" links adds to the "popularity" of that story, so once a story appears on that list its stats will run away exponentially.
In Have Your Say, anyone who writes an early comment is very likely to be read many times and appear on "Most commended" at the expense of later and perhaps more considered comments.
Is there some way you can exclude clicks from the links themselves from being conutes in the stats?
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Comment number 4.
At 19th Feb 2009, dennisjunior1 wrote:Steve:
I am very glad that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has increased the number of stories from 5 to 10...
~Dennis Junior~
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Comment number 5.
At 20th Feb 2009, MarcusAureliusII wrote:You people would blare the trumpets to justify your existance if you cut your toenails or changed your underwear. On most blog sites, they don't make a fuss over ever little nickel and dime change. For years the technical reliability of your site stank. What would have been straightened out in any large private company with a decent IT department in a matter of days or their personnel would have been fired and replaced took you years. That's what you get when you are a government owned quasi monopoly unaccountable to anyone who will exercise any real oversight. In competition with anyone in private business having comparable resources at their disposal to that of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ would sink to the bottom like a stone in nothing flat. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is overfunded, underworked, and overepaid.
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Comment number 6.
At 20th Feb 2009, dotconnect wrote:I just love the way Marcus can take almost any positive blog post and skilfully craft an anti-³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ rant from it!
JonChr - yes I agree with you about the problem of the built-in positive feedback. I should think what you suggest (preventing clicks from the Most Read list from being counted) is possible, but that's just my humble view from the outside.
Had to laugh at Steve's remark that the Most Read lists inform the general news agenda. Given the frequency of 'Man has penis chopped off' -type stories that shoot up the rank (as it were), I can only imagine how different ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news would be if they let users dictate the agenda.
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Comment number 7.
At 20th Feb 2009, Briantist wrote:dotconnect: It is noticeable that the "most popular audio and video" tends towards the cute and funny "YouTube" style videos.
Have to agree with you about MarcusAureliusII. Might have to recommend him to ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere...
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Comment number 8.
At 20th Feb 2009, dotconnect wrote:See what you mean Briantist. Currently number 1 audio/video: "Baby meerkats unveiled in Sydney". Have to confess I'm as guilty at clicking those as anyone though!
As for ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere - first I'd heard of that one. V. funny (and good choice of URL)
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Comment number 9.
At 23rd Feb 2009, Steve Herrmann (³ÉÈËÂÛ̳) wrote:SheffTim: That's something we'll be looking at.
Jonchr: As far as we can see now, the main driver of these rankings is still front page placement, and there seems to be a fairly good rate of turnover - in other words things aren't generally getting stuck there for hours at a time.
MarcusAureliusII: Not a vote of confidence from you then...I normally try and mention it here if we are changing something on the site - even if it's not a huge deal.
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Comment number 10.
At 9th Mar 2009, Always Blurting wrote:What has happened to your editorial control and basic grammar. Who is Bill Crosby (Ted Kennedy birthday celebration report)? And what about "Christening" instead of "christening" please(Jade Goody story)?
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Comment number 11.
At 16th Dec 2009, Linda Abrams wrote:It's good to know that the most read and the most viewed headlines are increased to a list of 10. I can get much information to those headlines which belongs to the most read and most viewed. That's interesting.
Linda Abrams,
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