Also: Wikipedia is the world's most popular web news destination | iPhone Nano on the way? | The biggest comedy project on the web
Web metrics firm Nielsen//NetRatings has tweaked its web traffic reports so that page views is replaced by "total minutes" on a site. The idea is to provide a better measurement for how long a user engages with a site, rather than how many pages they flick through.
Part of the reason for the shift away from page views is the increase of technologies like AJAX, which update information without needing to reload the page. Page minutes are more reliable, however, because they are "independent of site design", says NetRatings.
Using this new metric, MSN and Windows Live clocks up the most audience minutes; during May the network of sites recorded 4.24bn minutes from web users from 21.664m unique users. eBay came second by some way with 1.8bn minutes and 14.74m unique users followed by Google with 1.37bn minutes and 26.818m unique users.
NetRatings calculated an average visit of 3 hours 15 minutes for every UK web user on MSN's sites over the month. The bulk of this time is driven by the MSN and Windows messenger applications.
"Total minutes is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of web sites using rich internet applications and streaming media, but also of web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications," said Scott Ross, director of product marketing for NetRatings' NetView service.
Ranked by minutes, the list UK's 10 busiest web channels are dominated by communication tools such as instant messenger and email and gaming also makes an appearance. (Release)
Wikipedia is the world's most popular web news destination
And on more NetRatings figures, Wikipedia sees more unique users every month than any site in the news and information sector with 46.8m visitors during May 2007. Wikipedia has actually topped that sector every month this year, beating the New York Times, BBC and, ahem, the Guardian amongst all the others. Traffic to the site has increased 72% in just under a year, equivalent to 20m users. It is certainly a web staple, but I do think a direct comparison to news sites isn't quite representative because they have very different functions. But let's not be picky. I'm a fan, although I have lost count of the number of people that tell me they regularly go in and edit their date of births to make themselves a year younger. Somewhere out there is a hardcore Wikipedian, diligently editing them back to the correct date... (CNet)
iPhone Nano on the way?
Is Apple working on a smaller iPhone modelled on the Nano? Do we care any more? Who am I kidding - of course we care. Reportedly a patent was filed on 5 July for a smaller, cheaper iPhone which is already on its way into production. This version would have click wheel navigation like the current iPod (an extremely space-efficient and intuitive navigation tool, it has to be said) and would sell for around $300. That should mean it sells for £150 but of course it won't be the case, because we live in Britain and just love to pay top whack for just about everything. Or it could all be total rubbish. (IGN)
The biggest comedy project on the web
Steve Coogan's production company Baby Cow has launched an interactive online daily sitcom which is to be written by its web audience. "Where are the Joneses?" is based around Dawn Jones, a who discovers she was conceived after a donation by a sperm donor and travels across Europe to trace her 27 siblings and find her father. The plot, scripts, location and characters are all composed by the viewers using a wiki, an online document that anyone can edit. The production company then treats each script, latest sketch and character idea and a short film is produced for each daily episode, and there's also a Flickr photo feed and Twitter micro-blog for the main character.
Owen Gibson has the long view on the thinking behind this, but Baby Cow co-founder Henry Normal also said that this is just one experiment in exploring new platforms for comedy. Ford is covering half the cost the full cost of the production but, perhaps unsurprisingly, there's no big promotion campaign here - it's all word of mouth. By the time the project finishes in 70 days, 13 half-hour episodes will have been created, and Normal said that makes this the largest comedy project on the web. Baby Cow's other online projects have included Channel 4's 4Laughs site and web comedy shorts for Paramount.
