Part of the BBC's web revamp included adding an embedded, Flash-based media player and not before time - I'd lost count of the number of stories I'd abandoned trying to view because of problems with plug-ins and updates.
The BBC said today that the new player had driven a 50% increase in both user numbers and views. Daily users numbers risen from 528,000 to 762,000 while the number of video plays each day has increased from 636,000 to 978,000. And the number of clicks through to video from a text story have risen from an average 2.5% to 20%.
The report on exploiting security flaws on Facebook has notched up 303,000 views, a report on the Burmese cyclone 248,000 and Ronnie O'Sullivan's 147 break at the World Snooker Championships has recorded over 157,000 views so far. No figures for America's grammar-correcting cowboy, alas.
None of this is any big surprise: embedded players are far more user-friendly. But really - what took them so long?
The BBC has also responded to feedback from users over the launch, which included complaints about video playing automatically when the homepage loads, but also said it is working on a data portability feature that will allow users to transfer preferences between computers at different locations. At the moment, the cookie-based system recognises IP addresses rather than people and hey, we're more than just a number.
