Guardian Unlimited has launched its redesigned front page today. Congrats to all the team who have delivered it. A dramatic improvement, I think….a much, much better showcase for everything that’s now on the network.
Emily explains all here…(oh, and, as is now customary.. a few users have their say as well )
I failed to mention that the Manchester Evening News last week beat off the BBC, Guardian, Times et al to win the Electronic News Site of the Year at the 2007 Newspaper awards..a fantastic achievement.
Guardian Unlimited has won an unprecedented third Webby. Fantastic news..and thank you and congrats to all who have made it happen.
In my general obsession with web stats, there is one chart that I look out for perhaps ahead of all others each queater - and that is the ‘Top 50 Blogs and MSM’ chart in Dave Sifry’s State of the Live Web (previously State of the Blogosphere).
It’s just as important for me that we do well on this as we do in our core site stats. When we talk about being ‘part of the web not just on the web’ - this is about as good an indicator of it as you can find. So, it’s good to see that we’ve bounced back up a few places since October back at number six behind the NYT, CNN, BBC, Yahoo and MSN.
Not sure what’s happened to TimeOnline there or the Telegraph for that matter. But, hey, that’s not my problem.
I know the point here is means to be the performance of some of the blogs on there (although it’s a lot less bloggy than in the early days), but I’m much more parochial than that. The things that always resonate for me are
* How the NYT despite registration, NYT select etc etc still comes right at the top of the table. No-one comes close.
* A clear ‘A-team’ that includes the BBC, but not, tragically us
* The remarkable presence of two UK names in the top 6
* The fact that the BBC might have 30% more inbound links than us, but they have about 1000% more traffic than us…
Sitting through two sets of pitches five years apart for the Guardian and Guardian Unlimted’s ad agency, you become aware all too quickly of just how few decent ideas there are out there. One agency a few years ago proved the point to us of how similar newspaper TV ads were by running two of our rivals ads back to back - but with the soundtracks switched. No-one noticed.
Anyway - obviously I’m biased, but after the rather pedestrian ‘We’ve got a big website according to some spurious stats’ claim from the Telegraph; and Times Online’s ‘Here’s a witty quote from our content’ (the oldest trick in the book - and I felt a real missed opportunity to get across the idea that their website was ‘new and improved), I think the Guardian’s work stands up rather well - and its also a great case history for outdoor media. The pic above is at my local station - deep in enemy territory for the Guardian..I’m sure I’ve seen a few more copies on the train since we started.
But in case you’ve miseed it - my favourite is this ad - which I think is visually striking and captures the times and the Guardian’s tone of voice perfectly.
