BBC News this week released a “responsive” site aimed at mobile which automatically scales to fit the device it is viewed on.

It can be viewed at m.bbc.co.uk/news.

More than a quarter of hits on BBC News come from mobile, including via apps and the mobile and desktop sites which are accessed via a browser, rather than desktop, according to a post on the Editors blog.

In an average week, for example, the BBC News site and apps are visited by about 9.7 million users on mobile and tablet devices worldwide, or about 26 per cent of total users to BBC News Online.

Writing on the blog, Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, states:

This new site is designed, for now, mainly for simpler phones, although you should be able to access it on any device. It will gradually evolve as new features and functionality are added in coming weeks, to the point where it becomes the default browser for smartphones as well.

Kate Milner, mobile product manager for BBC News writes on the Internet blog:

We’ve made it easier for you to skim through the news headlines and view the ‘most read’ articles. Features and analysis stories are also now showcased throughout the site.

We’re improving our coverage of live news stories for all mobile users. The live page format offers short form updates related to big stories as they unfold, for example on stories like the Budget and global news events.

She goes on to say “over the coming weeks and months we’ll be adding more features and functionality”, including video for those devices that can display it.

• Twitter starts to roll out new site for mobile browsers
• Analytics to help news sites understand the mobile audience
• Eight lessons for publishers from comScore’s new report on mobile
• Innovations in Journalism – Fromdistance
• Twitter adds new search and photo sharing options

BBC News has compiled a table of views as shared by newspaper editors at the Leveson inquiry, giving readers the opportunity to closely compare the standpoints of each editor on key points.

The table sets out “how the editors’ evidence compares” and includes key points on given by the editors “on researching stories”, “media regulation” and a “key quote”.

See the table here.

See Journalism.co.uk’s coverage of the Leveson inquiry here.

• Friday deadline for core participant status for next Leveson inquiry module
• Leveson inquiry has cost £2m so far
• Media release: New edition of McNae’s to launch at NCTJ seminar
• The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 26 November-2 December
• Newspapers and PCC deny Baroness Buscombe claims

This year has been an extraordinary year for news. 2011 has seen the deaths of dictators and despots, revolutions across the Arab world, natural disasters in Australia, Brazil, Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, Turkey and Japan and a global financial crisis.

This podcast hears from four broadcasters on the greatest challenges of this year and the news agenda for 2012.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director, CNN International; Jon Williams, world news editor, BBC; Sarah Whitehead, head of international news, Sky News; and Tim Singleton, head of foreign newsgathering and assistant editor, ITV News.

For more reflections on 2011 read our interview with Sarah Whitehead, Sky News and with Tony Maddox, CNN International.

You can hear all our podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

• #jpod – Gender and conflict journalism: How far have we come?
• #jpod – How web analytics can provide story leads and new angles
• #jpod: How Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry
• #jpod – Celebrating Local Newspaper Week: Innovations in digital at the regionals
• #jpod: How news organisations are using Pinterest

Over on the Editors blog BBC website editor Steve Herrmann discusses how the broadcaster is currently trialling some changes to its use of live pages to develop the format from simply being built around big news stories, to becoming a more regular feature.

The format has been a big success in terms of usage, so we’re thinking about what more we could do with it. We think the pages are not necessarily just about breaking news – they are also a real-time showcase of the best of what we (and others) are doing, so we’ve been wondering whether – and how – we could make this approach work as a regular feature on the site rather than just something we use around big stories. What would it take and how would we need to organise ourselves differently in the newsroom and beyond?

So we’re currently trying some of this out – you can see an example here. This isn’t the first trial we’ve done, and it won’t be the last, and the approach and format may change, because these tests allow us to get valuable insights into how we might develop it, what works and what doesn’t.

Herrmann adds that part of this trial will also look at bringing the BBC’s news and social media output closer together, referring to a recent move by the BBC to reduce its use of automated feeds on its @BBCNews and @BBCWorld twitter accounts.

• BBC Editors blog: Developments for the BBC News website
• New BBC News website will launch in weeks
• BBC News and Sport websites show off new looks
• BBC explains semantic technologies and linked data behind World Cup site
• Facebook on how news organisations can best use the social network

The BBC News Android app has been updated to accept user-generated content and encourage people to send in their photographs and videos of a news event, something user of the BBC News iPhone app had already been able to do.

The Android app, which has been downloaded more than two million times globally since its launch in May, has also been updated to include the addition of homescreen widgets, improved personalisation and the ability to store the app on the SD card.

A BBC Internet Blog post details the changes.

• Tricks and tips for journalism and editorial job hunting online – an update
• WSJ.com: Google plans digital newsstand for Android users
• App of the week for journalists – Pro HDR, for better photos (without an iPhone 4S)
• Facebook to take on BBM and Google+ with new phone messaging app
• FT sees 150,000 uses of new web-app in first 10 days

Who? Chris Hamilton

Where? Chris is a journalist and social media editor for BBC News

Twitter? @chrishams

Chris is speaking at our next digital journalism conference, news:rewired – connected journalism, as part of the panel on “Bringing the outside in”, a session looking at newsroom strategy behind integrating third party and user generated content.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

• #followjourn @cghgreen – Chris Green/journalist
• #followjourn – @bydanielvictor Daniel Victor/social media editor
• #followjourn – @NateLanxon Nate Lanxon/Editor
• #followjourn – @duncanhooper Duncan Hooper/managing editor
• #followjourn – @benfenton Ben Fenton/head of ‘live news desk’

A new study has looked at how six news sites’ Twitter followers engage and react to tweets. Twitter content publishing platform SocialFlow has assessed the Twitter audiences of Al-Jazeera English, BBC News, CNN, the Economist, Fox News and the New York Times.

The study is based on bit.ly and Twitter data from more than 20 million tweets posted by the seven million users who follow these accounts on Twitter.

It has revealed some interesting facts:

• Engagement can be read in clicks. The Economist has a highly active and engaged audience in terms of both clicks per tweet and retweets per tweet, suggesting a high level of alignment between content posted and attention users are willing to provide.
• Audiences differ in their willingness to consume and share information on Twitter. Al-Jazeera’s audience is the most active in terms of publishing and retweeting content on Twitter, while the Fox News audience generates substantially more clicks from its audience.
• A large number of followers doesn’t necessarily translate into action. Despite being the largest account, the New York Times garners the fewest clicks per tweet when audience size is normalised and earns many fewer retweets when compared to accounts that are much smaller.
• Timing and topical interest matter when seeking attention. By arranging audience tweets into topic maps, we were able to visualise the flow of attention between topics of interest, across the different audiences.

It is worth being aware that this is what SocialFlow does: it offers solutions to businesses wanting to maximise the effectiveness of their tweets by timing them to get the most reaction.

Click throughs

One of the points the study draws out is that where the Economist’s highly engaged Twitter audience clicks on links to the associated news article, Al Jazeera’s audience behaves differently. The study finds Al Jazeera English has the most retweets per tweet but followers are not necessarily clicking links – an all important goal for web publishers.

The takeaway for publishers is one of topics, network and timing, as the report states.

Knowing when an addressable audience is available and what topics they’d like to engage in is key to earning their attention.

The study also points out that a Twitter audience is measurable and this should be analysed and used “to inform content development strategies and marketing planning”.

While clicks bring immediate returns, retweets and other forms of audience participation raise trust and brand awareness, both imperatives for maintaining sustained growth. A high number of followers is not indicative of an engaged audience; a high click-through rate doesn’t necessarily yield other engagement metrics such as retweets and new followers.

By paying attention to long established demographics, collective audience behavior and the mercurial and fickle moment-to-moment signals, we step away from conjectures, generalisations, and assumptions, and leverage the audience itself in determining how best to interact.

SocialFlow has also created a Twitter visualisation looking at engagement with @AJEnglish. Topics have been mapped using over the period of an hour. The larger the topic node, the more it was discussed on Twitter during that hour. Click on the visualisation to download SocialFlow’s diagram as a PDF and explore it.

The full report is at this link…

• Twitter to send users emails about RTs and favourites
• Mashable: Monday is the worst time to post and tweet
• Tool of the week for journalists – WhenToTweet
• Mainstream media drives Twitter trends, claims study
• How the five journalists with the greatest online influence use social media

Traffic from LinkedIn to BBC News has jumped from around 20,000 referrals in January to over 200,000 in June, the BBC has revealed.

“Referrals from LinkedIn have increased rapidly over the past few months, but they’re nowhere near the level of referrals we get from Twitter,” a spokesperson from the BBC told Journalism.co.uk.

“Indeed in June, LinkedIn was still behind Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Drudge Report in terms of referrals.”

The figures suggest the dramatic rise in LinkedIn referrals – from 41,278 in April to 164,869 in May – is due to LinkedIn Today, LinkedIn’s aggregation news site which launched in March.

LinkedIn Today has been attributed by TechCrunch as the reason why LinkedIn is now a more important traffic driver than Twitter for its site. Those stats that have been further debated in an article on TechCrunch this week, which questions LinkedIn as a traffic driver as it is powered by Twitter. “Get rid of the tweet and you get rid of the referral traffic,” the article states.

The LinkedIn share button being added to many news sites also deserves recognition as a traffic driver.

Line graph of Twitter and LinkedIn referrals to BBC News. Click on the visualisation to see exact the figures.

LinkedIn Today features industry news for sectors such as ‘online media’, ‘public relations’ and the ‘publishing industry’.

LinkedIn users can also follow particular news sites, such as BBC News, the fourth most popular website in the UK, and the only UK-owned website out of the top four. It is curated by people within that industry based on shares on Twitter and LinkedIn. So a story becomes top story when enough people within the industry retweet and share it.

In order to become news source on LinkedIn today, news sites must contact LinkedIn’s business development team.

BBC News may have received a boost from LinkedIn Today but unlike for TechCrunch, which is a great fit for LinkedIn with its mix of technology and business news, the BBC site has a much wider scope. That is perhaps why the stats show that last month Twitter provided five times as many readers to BBC News, with more than one million referrals a month.

There is more on LinkedIn and how journalists can get the most out of the social network in this week’s podcast.

• #jpod: How journalists can best use LinkedIn
• Why news sites should consider adding the LinkedIn share button
• How social referral traffic stats get Twitter figures wrong
• Three ways to get a round-up of news shared by your contacts without checking Twitter
• LinkedIn growing by two new members every second

Today the BBC announced the launch of a new product for connected TVs which, according to a release will see BBC News video news clips brought to television via the internet.

The BBC News product for connected TV combines existing video and text content from BBC News Online and will initially be made available on Samsung’s range of Smart TVs. It will subsequently be made available on a range of connected devices over time.

This is part of a “value for money” strategy to re-purpose BBC Online products for a wide range of devices. Editorial teams in the BBC’s newsrooms will work to curate clips to complement the 24 news channel and to run alongside text-based news from BBC News Online. And the control of what content the user views will be in their hands, with navigation via the remote.

BBC Worldwide is also said to be launching an international version which will be supported by advertising. In a blog post BBC Online editor Steve Herrmann said in time the product will also be rolled out to other devices in the UK.

• Online video: FT’s Stephen Pinches on opportunities for publishers with connected TV
• Innovations in Journalism – Fromdistance
• ESPN in video content deal with AOL.com
• AP pushing 250 stories a week through its newly launched YouTube channel
• BBC Editors: BBC using ‘interactive reporter’ to increase UGC

Hundreds of journalists joined Saturday’s march against spending cuts, according to the National Union of Journalists, with reporters and citizen journalists out in force to cover the largely peaceful demonstration.

One of those reporters was first year linguistics student Matthew Taylor, who set up a new website and live blog to gather Tweets from student journalists on the ground.

Independent student journalism site Elephant, which launched 12 hours before the march began, recorded 1,000 unique users on the day, with around 75 followers online at any one time.

Taylor, a 20-year-old student at Queen Mary University of London, created the site using ScribbleLive’s live blogging platform. Taylor said he wanted immediacy and accountability for the tweets included in the blog and by using the software he was able to use approve Tweets through a student editor.

Armed with an SLR camera, a netbook and phone, Taylor was one of around 15 students reporting for Elephant. The site’s editor, who was also watching out for new information on the UK Uncut blog updated by members of the protest group and rolling news channels, curated and checked tweets for use on Elephant with a delay of “maybe a minute”.

“We were second only to television as the fastest visual report on the day,” Taylor claimed.

He said he is now providing feedback to ScribbleLive as to ways the company can improve the distinction between comments from the public and contributions from journalists in a live blog.

• MEN harnesses multimedia for English Degence League protest coverage
• Live coverage of the National Union of Journalists ADM
• #J30: How to use online tools to report national strikes
• Paywalled Rolling Stone brings readers closer to music
• Video: ITV correspondent John Ray arrested covering Beijing Olympics

The BBC is scrapping Have Your Say, a discussion board on the BBC News website. It is moving to an integrated system of comments within its stories, according to a post on the BBC’s Editors blog today.

Most discussion topics on Have Your Say, such as one today which asks “will a no-fly zone resolve the crisis in Libya?”, gather hundreds of comments, but Alex Gubbay, BBC News’ social media editor, writes that it is time to change the place where readers comment as Have Your Say is “something of a silo away from the rest of the content”.

It is a reflection of the changing online landscape and the advent of social media that we feel the time is now right to move on from Have Your Say.

This process is essentially about us online focusing more now on encouraging discussion around our content itself, rather than looking to host or manage a community.

According to the Editors blog post, BBC News is planning to introduce editors’ picks and a ‘recommend’ option to its new comments system to “showcase interesting additional insight and perspective”.

Editors’ picks will be the default view once any comments have been selected, but users will be able to then tab to see all comments and also rate them, functionality I know has been sorely missed since we had to remove it in last year’s transition phase.

Gubbay explains comments, which have been tried out on a number of stories recently, will only be enabled on selection of content each day and that moderation will work as it does now.

New ‘share’ options for Twitter and Facebook are due to appear on BBC News’s stories shortly to show total ‘shares’ and a breakdown by site, plus and an option of short URLs.

Have Your Say is due to shut next month.

Full post on the BBC Editors blog at this link.

• Media Release: BBC appoints Alex Gubbay as first social media editor
• How news sites can apply to be included in Google News Editors’ Picks
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• BBC Editors blog: Developments for the BBC News website
• Sky News website closes down discussion boards

The unravelling disaster in Japan has seen record online traffic and a hike in TV audiences.

A spokesman for BBC News told Journalism.co.uk that there were 15.9 million unique users on the site last Friday (11 February), an all-time record - beating the previous best, election results day, which saw 11.4 million unique users.

There were 9.5 million page impressions for the main story, and 6.1 million for the live text page.

And this very visual story saw record video views too. The BBC News site had more than six million hits on its live video stream on Friday and seven million unique users of video, compared to a previous high of 2.7 million, for video views on the day of the general election.

The BBC News website also had a record weekend in terms of web traffic, with 10 million unique users on Saturday, and nearly eight million on Sunday.

CNN is also reporting a large increase in traffic. In a release, CNN Digital said between Friday and Sunday, CNN.com had 264 million global page views and 87 million global video streams.

The network said more CNN.com video was watched in those three days than during the previous 30 days.

Sky News said by 4.30pm on Friday, page impressions had more than doubled – to nearly five million – and unique users had also doubled.

Channel 4 has told Journalism.co.uk that it had trebled its usual web traffic on Sunday.

TV News

Bloomberg Television claims to be the first cable news network to report the quake, six minutes after the record tremor.

All the TV news providers we have spoken to have reported above average ratings for the subsequent days. On Friday, Sky News had one of its 10 largest audience days ever, with only the Iraq war having a higher daily reach. The BBC had an audience of almost six million to its 10pm news programme on BBC 1 on Sunday; ITV had almost five million viewers to a special report on Friday night while Channel 4 News had 1.5 million viewers on Saturday.

The BBC told Journalism.co.uk it had 5.7 million viewers to Friday’s 6pm news on BBC 1 and 5.3 million viewers to the 10pm bulletin when average ratings are 4.3 million and 4.8 million respectively. ITV News had 4.6 million viewers of its 6.30pm news programme on Friday, a 700,000 increase on its average audience of 3.9 million and an audience of 2.9 million for Friday’s News at Ten, up from an average of 2.5 million viewers. Channel 4 News said that its special report on Friday night had 1.3 million viewers, rising to 1.5 million on Saturday.

Social Media

And of course social media is rife with mentions of ‘quake’, ‘tsunami’ and ‘nuclear’.

In the hour that followed the quake on Friday, Tweet-o-Meter reported 1,200 tweets a minute coming out of Japan. And at the time of writing (Wednesday lunchtime), tweets from Tokyo are again peaking the Tweet-o-Meter scale at 1,200 a minute. In a release, CNN has reported that its breaking news account on Twitter acquired followers at a rate of 10 times greater than average and now totals more than four million followers.

Facebook users were also discussing and sharing first hand knowledge of the quake. BBC News created this map based on mentions of key words in status updates.

And, of course, people have been flocking to see user generated and videos from the news channels on YouTube. This dramatic footage from Russia Today has clocked up more than 10 million hits. Meanwhile, Channel 4 has had 200,000 views on this video of Krishnan Guru-Murthy with before and after tsunami shots and ITN Productions is reporting record views of the ITN News Channel on YouTube.

• Newspaper Society: Round-up of record web traffic for local media titles covering riots
• LA Times breaks web traffic record with 127m page views
• Welt.de posts record traffic for February
• ‘Baby father’ Alfie Patten breaks Sun traffic record
• Paywall results in for Newsday as US newspapers see dip in traffic

British news publishers are leading the way in the iPhone app download charts, according to rankings displayed in Apple’s iTunes store.

The Guardian (version 1) tops the list, followed by MailOnline in third place. The top five grossing UK news apps are:

1. The Guardian (version 1)
2. MailOnline
3. The Economist
4. The Sun: Bizarre
5. The Scotsman

iTunes also lists the top free iPhone news apps but apparently uses an algorithm based on the last four days of sales/downloads. So, bearing in mind this is more of a snapshot (which may also be a bit  skewed because we are currently in holiday season), the top five free UK news apps are currently:

1. BBC News
2. Sky News
3. MailOnline
4. FT Mobile
5. The Economist

At the time of writing, they also appeared in the same ranking for worldwide news apps.

The top five paid-for UK news apps are currently:

1. The Guardian (version 1)
2. This is Bristol
3. The Scotsman
4. Macworld UK
5. MacUser Magazine

Journalism.co.uk’s own free news app, which features this blog, our main news, editorial job listings and press releases, is currently ranked 72.

• Economist launches apps for iPad and iPhone
• Economist launches World in Figures iPhone app
• Condé Nast launches monthly GQ iPhone app
• ITN launches iPhone news app
• Communicate.ae: Digital experiments at the Guardian – successes and failures

The weekly BBC News TV audience has gone up by almost a quarter this year, according to a post by Kevin Bakhurst, controller of the BBC News Channel, on the BBC Editors blog yesterday.

He reports that so far in 2010 9.6 million people have watched the channel each week, a 24 per cent increase on 2009 when the average was 7.7 million.

This year has seen many major news stories, including the UK general election, the Haiti earthquake, the Pakistan floods, the shootings in Cumbria and the Chilean miners. During events like these, some traumatic and some complex, many people turn to the BBC.

…The highest reach recorded for a UK news channel and for the BBC News Channel (7.4m) was on 11 May, the day that Gordon Brown resigned and David Cameron became prime minister. This was closely followed by 7 May, the day after the general election, when 7m watched and 13 October when 6.9m watched the rescue of the Chilean miners.

On the BBC News website, on the day after the general election, there were more than 5.5 million requests for the live BBC News channel page and around 3 million requests for the live page on the day the Chilean miners were rescued, he added.

• Sky News claims 58 per cent traffic increase from last year
• Japan quake sends record audiences to broadcast and online news
• Less than half of BBC breakfast team confirm Salford move
• Newspaper Society: Round-up of record web traffic for local media titles covering riots
• Sky News ‘Leaders’ Debate’ campaign gathers pace – and criticism

The BBC reports this morning that rival media groups have come together and called on business secretary Vince Cable to consider blocking Murdoch’s planned bid for the remainder of BSkyB.

Signatories are said to include the heads of the BBC and Channel 4 and chief executives of newspapers including the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail and the Mirror. The letter argues that any such bid would “reduce diversity in the industry”.

In June, News Corp told the board of BSkyB that it was prepared to pay 700p a share to take full control of the leading satellite broadcaster. BSkyB’s directors said the offer was £1 per share too low, but agreed to resume negotiations after regulatory hurdles have been cleared.

News Corporation has been confident that it could demonstrate that the combination of BSkyB with News Corporations’ UK newspapers – the Sun, the Times, the News of the World and the Sunday Times – does not pose a serious threat to competition.

This follows news last month that similar calls on Vince Cable were being backed by the National Union of Journalists while founder of Enders Analysis Claire Enders wrote to Cable to voice her concerns over the future plurality of the media.

• Telegraph: European Commission raises rights questions over News Corp Sky bid
• Guardian: Telegraph journalists ‘provisionally cleared’ by leak investigation
• Telegraph: Blocking Sky bid may jeopardise News Corp UK investment, warns James Murdoch
• Vince Cable versus Rupert Murdoch – the animation!
• Guardian: Murdoch’s media fightback over letter to Cable