Comments on: How much traffic do the Edmonton Journal and iNews880 get from Twitter?

By: Chris LaBossiere

Chris LaBossiere — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:58:54 +0000

Mack:

Great post. I find it interesting, and am personally fascinated with the impact of things like Social Media on Traditional Media.

What is fascinating in all of this analysis, is that Edmontonian’s who did use Twitter to access their news, paid NOTHING for that access. I ignore advertisements, I stopped subscribing years ago, and yet I feel more informed and have greater access to real-time news and broader opinion than I ever did.

I believe that Twitter and Facebook can help make or break a journalist or reporter, but sadly it can’t save the business model of a traditional newspaper.

I personally believe that we will see new institutions in the next 5-10 years that will replace the existing for-profit model. Likely much higher-end investigative journalism and editorial content, but at a much higher per publication costs or subscription cost for non-published media.

By: Mack D. Male

Mack D. Male — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:01:41 +0000

Robert – As I mentioned, I’m not sure about the NADbank stats. I’m also not sure the mobile site had such an impact. Reading a tweet on my mobile device, I’m not thinking “oh EJ has a mobile site so I’ll click that”. Twitter clearly has a lot of mobile users, but during the day? Between 9 and 5, when most people are on Twitter? I’d guess they’re probably at computers.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:07:37 +0000

Nice high level analysis. Unfortunately there are a lot of grey areas when comparing apples to oranges. Does NADbank count mobile users as web site visitors? The Journal’s launching of a mobile site last September obviously had a major impact – look at the Journal chart for the year and there is a big jump in mid-September that is sustained throughout the year. I think that is beause of the mobile site, not the number of Twitter users or the switch of URL shorteners. I suspect Twitter’s impact would be felt more in the growth of the Journal’s mobile site than it would be in terms of their UV and page view numbers for their regular site. Just my opinion.

By: Mack D. Male

Mack D. Male — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:54:11 +0000

Paula – great point. Just links tweeted by the Edmonton Journal account are included. However, that means that if you also tweeted a link that @EdmontonJournal tweeted (the same aggregate bit.ly link), then the stats are included in the above.

It would be interesting, but much more difficult, to include stats from you and the other Journal and iNews880 reporters who tweet links. That’s why I mentioned that my analysis probably underestimates Twitter’s impact.

By: Paula Simons

Paula Simons — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:47:51 +0000

Thanks for this, Mack. Most fascinating. But tell me….were you only counting links “tweeted” by our Edmonton Journal tweetbot, or were you also counting links tweeted by individuals like me or Trish Audette or Sarah O’Donnell? I intuitively feel that my own readership has gone up since I started tweeting links to my own stuff, but I have no “evidence” — beyond the intuition of my own ego.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:07:37 +0000

Very cool analysis/comparison… nice work!