A Quick Intro and Poll
ThisNewz is a project I’ve been working on and as it has gotten more functional I’ve thought more about what the next steps should be. (visit ThisNewz)
This blog is an experiment in crowd-sourced feedback. I’m only doing it because I want to hear what you have to say!
A little background, then I’ll ask for your input in a poll and through the comments.
I created ThisNewz.com because I’m a news junkie, and fascinated by social networking. At the core, it’s a real-time search engine focused around breaking news and and topical information. It’s built with a mix of custom code and open source systems. The design/layout needs significant work.
On top of this core, there’s a home page with breaking news, a real-time search engine, a trends page, and numerous topic pages.
Traffic comes from a variety of sources: here are the metrics I’m monitoring closely and their trends: numbers are for the previous 7 days, then compared to the prior week
Visits: 4,605 - up 33%
Pages: 5,547 – up 37%
Pages/Visit: 1.20 – up 3%
Bounce rate: 88.40% – down 4%
Time on site: .36 – up 6%
New visitors: 95% – down 2%
So, directionally everything looks good. However, traffic is highly dependent on a few sources, including Google Search, and they may not be reliable going forward. Pages per visit is low, so it’s a stop and go experience right now. I am not yet tracking outbound traffic.
The top page for traffic this week was:
http://thisnewz.com/M/N/ko/kourtney-kardashian.html (the images on these pages are automatically sourced from flickr, restricted by Creative Commons)
I’ve had a blast pulling this together, and now need to make some decisions as to where to take it: Here’s the poll – please vote! I’m really only doing this because I want to hear what you think.
Thank you! Looking forward to the conversation!
