The Top Websites Are?

Here's a common refrain you might hear from people working in Mainstream Media:

MSM runs our most popular websites

as Simon Sharwood posted in my comments section yesterday. 

I'm not sure who the "our" is Simon (WW or AUST?), but according to Alexa, the Top Ten websites certainly don't come from MSM.

In fact, the only site in the Top Ten that has any affiliation with MSM afaik is MySpace, which was recently acquired by the very savvy folks at News Ltd. I'd call that a win for NM and anyone who has spoken to anyone at News Ltd management lately, knows that they are VERY excited about this little acquisition. 

The Alexa Top 20 includes only two MSM - BBC and CNN. NYT comes in at #25. Washington Post #76. FOX Sports #87.

So... a mere 5% of the Top 100 websites, leaving out MySpace, are from MSM.

Where does the "new media" rank? Well, leaving aside Yahoo, MSN and Google which obviously dominate, and can be considered "old new media", we have MySpace which comes in at #5, and Blogger.com at #10. The rest of the Top 100 is mostly made up of either NM sites or "dot com" and "web2.0" sites, with a few banks, etc.

So the lesson for today is - get the facts. NM is starting to dominate our attention. MSM is declining.

Yes... MSM might have the $$ and the reach to survive. Might. But in times like these, a lot of it is up for grabs. Go read "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.

Another common refrain I hear from MSM is this one that Simon also threw on the table:

I bet if you go back into the archives, fifty years ago people were predicting that TV would kill newspapers by taking away all their ad revenue.
Didn't happen, did it?

Simon's right, of course, in that TV didn't kill newspapers. Or radio. These new medium did, however, take a VERY large share of total advertising spend, which newspapers previously had much to themselves. Of course, the total pie has grown considerably in that time as well.

In the same way, online advertising this year is already bigger than radio advertising in several countries around the world, after little more than ten years.

There major difference I see between the TV v Newspapers debate and the NM v MSM debate is this: MSM has always existed in a controlled environment. Only a small number of companies ever existed which could own newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc in any geography. These numbers were kept low through government regulation, oligopolistic activities and through the pure cost structures of those businesses.

New media, however, faces none of those limitations. At least, they don't today. That's why we have 30 million blogs. That's why we have 30,000 podcasts. All of those new forms of entertainment and information are stealing away people's attention from "old media". Don't believe me? Go re-read the Alexa rankings. MSM has 5%. Five. Not fifty. Not fifteen. Five.

And we are just getting started.

Comments

[Rob Irwin]

30 million blogs... 30 million podcasts... yeah, the numbers are there, but how many are actually good? How many blogs are sitting out there with two entries? Or haven't been updated since July 2003? Even if something IS up-to-date and IS good, how many people are reading/listening?

These are key questions which come to my mind when someone tosses up a big number as supposedly irrefutable proof that NM is taking over.

As I say, time and time again, MSM aint going anywhere. It might change. It might evolve. Yes, it would be silly to suggest it wouldn't. But I don't see the day coming where the mainstream audience suddenly turns to Steve Smith*, 14, of Kentucky for their daily dose of entertainment news instead of a full-on MSM publication with a dozen journos and access to the stars. It's called mainstream for a reason.

And there's the thing. People - and I'm including you in this Cam - who get wound up in the world of blogging and podcasts start to think its bigger than it is. Because, hey, if you've switched off a lot of MSM and are taking views from bloggers, every else is right? Nuh! Not by a long shot. And when a lot of those bloggers you're reading are getting the guts of their information through the MSM anyway, they're only acting as filters, moreso than an actual replacement for real journo's.

That's why I think NM and MSM will continue to co-exist until the end of time... because NM simply doesn't satisfy "the mainstream" like MSM does. And the day a blog or podcast DOES satisfy the mainstream... well, is it stating the obvious, or do I have to point out that it would then be MSM itself? ;-)

* Not his real name.

[Cameron Reilly]

Rob, I don't think I have EVER suggested that MSM or large corporate media companies are going to disappear. All I've ever said is that new media is going to take away audience attention from MSM (how much remains to be seen) and that the economics (and therefore the business model) of MSM is going to change dramatically as a consequence.

You other mistake (again, a classis MSM mindset) is to ask "how many are actually good?"

Good is subjective. Steve's blog might be crap to you but good for me. Doesn't matter. What matters is I start reading it. Which means I read less of... something else. Which means the something else (MSM) doesn't get to sell advertising based on my readership. Which means they have a little less money to pay your salary. To build that skyscraper you work in. To return dividends to their shareholders. Etc.

[Rob Irwin]

Ah yes, but while my solitary definition of "good" might not matter in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to 100s, 1000s or 100,000s of people deciding what's "good" - it still equals whether someone has a readership or not.

(And, like I suggested, something can even be quite good and not have a big readership, which comes down to a variety of reasons, too...)

Because, ultimately, without a readership, the fictional Steve Smith isn't making any money. Fullstop. And, even if he was, do the ad rates of NM really compare to the ad rates of a national newspaper or radio network? I doubt it. So, who wins?

Where will advertisers look to put their dollar? I think an argument can be made that it will be increasingly investing in direct mail, events and other things that they feel will touch their audience without using the press if/when MSM stops generating the audience they want, and if NM remains a cute niche market, primarily the reserve of tech geeks.

OK, 10 second ramble over. I'm off for an EQ2 session.

[Cameron Reilly]

Okay, I don't know what EQ2 is. Something to do with Her Majesty? I'm guessing you're probably a monarchist, right Rob? :-)

And no dude, it doesn't matter a DAMN whether or not 1,000,000 people think Steve's blog is good. It only takes one. You know how AdSense works, right? Google doesn't care how many readers Steve has. Neither do their advertisers, they pay on a CTR. On his blog and a million others who might only have one reader.

30 million people are blogging Rob. Do you REALLY think they are blogging to make money? Do you really think my objective with this blog is to make money from the advertising on this blog?

Okay I'm off to... do something.

[Rob Irwin]

Also, before I forget:

"according to Alexa, the Top Ten websites certainly don't come from MSM."

To which I say, come on!!! The top three sites -- Yahoo!, MSN and Google all make extensive efforts to pull together the best news sources from the MSM and are used HEAVILY by people to read the news. And it's mainstream.

So I think you're trying to pull a shady one here, Cam. Technically what you say is right but you know -- because you do it yourself -- that these services are key for people browsing MSM news content.

[Cameron Reilly]

nah Rob, there is a HUGE difference between new media sites scraping MSM content and people actually GOING to the MSM websites for their content. A HUGE difference. MSM companies like to talk about "the brand"... "oh we have the most respected brand for news, blah blah, we've been around for 100 years, blah blah... we have the best journalists blah blah etc".
What this proves is that, ONLINE, people don't give a damn about the brand. If they did, they would go there for their news. But they don't. They go to other services that consolidate information from everywhere.

[Rob Irwin]

I know -- and obviously there is an ongoing debate over whether that is actually legal or not. Be that as it may, when you click through to the story, you end up on the MSM site, so its still getting the hit, which ends up in the advertising figures... so are MSM really losing eyeballs in this way?

[Cameron Reilly]

Good point mate. They will be getting the hit IF people click through. But I know I, for one, probably only click through to a small percentage of stories. I scan the rest. And the key issue here is that MSM sites aren't getting the traffic directly because their "brand" doesn't carry the value (with the online audience) that they think it does. People are accessing information in a different way. We go to Google, to MSN, to Yahoo, where we can read MSM and NM and access other services.

So... again the point of this post was to argue Simon's claim that "MSM runs our most popular websites" which obviously doesn't stand up to investigation.

[Simon Sharwood]

Cameron,
it is not my refrain. It is Neilsen NetRatings' refrain.

Here is their top ten web site owners for Jan 2006 in Australia:

Microsoft
Google
Yahoo
Telstra
eBay
Australian Federal Government
News Corp. Online
Fairfax Digital
Apple Computer
Time Warner

Google and Yahoo! are, I argue, straddling the line between NM and MSM, because the media content they carry is nearly all re-purposed from MSM.

I would love to see a breakout that says how much of this traffic is for flickr, for example, so we can gague how much of the Yahoo! traffic is NM-led. But I suspect it is small.

Of course now we are in the realm of slinging incompatible sets of facts at each other, which only underlines how silly it is for hostility and name-calling to continually rear its head in the debate.

Although this call for calm will not prevent me fron saying that arguing that blogger.com is a single destination is just lazy thinking.

[Cameron Reilly]

Simon, doood, no name calling intended on my part. Just trying to establish the facts, ma'am. I don't get Neilsen's report, can you tell us how they define "top website owners"? And how they measure it?

Why is blogger.com lazy thinking? It's new media, is it not? My point was that, globally, people are going to more new media websites than old media and blogger definitely is the former.

[Cameron Reilly]

oh and your point about Google and Yahoo being MSM because they carry MSM content I can understand, and it's kind of right TODAY, but the point is they are NOT MSM companies. The content they carry is up to them. And people are going to THEIR sites, not the MSM sites, so all the talk of the power of the MSM brands doesn't stand up.

[Simon Sharwood]

Aaaaarrrrgh! I hate this kind of argument in the context-less vacuum of cyberspace, where a comma becomes a slur and reductionism rules.

So I'll play very briefly.

Dunno how Neilsen compile their numbers, but they are all online and easy to access at http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to

On the whole MSM/NM thing. I reckon that people trust MSM to present them with well-researched information they need to know in order to avoid becoming dangerously ignorant. Citizen media cannot yet provide that kind of news with the depth or frequency MOST people want (This most includes the 2 million or so Australians so uncritical and desperate for infotainment that they are willing to watch either ACA and TT every night - when are they going to become citizen journos, I wonder?).

That's not to say NM or Citizen Media are crocks. I like 'em both. I make 'em both! But surely NM would not go to the trouble of paying MSM for their content if plenty of people did not value what MSM does. However it gets accessed is not the point. The high regard in which the output of MSM is held throughout the community is!

Of course this is all in an Aussie context. WTFK what's going on elsewhere!