According to an internal note posted on Fishbowl DC, Washingtonpost.com broke its personal best for web traffic last month.
Political stories were particularly popular, writes Jim Brady, executive editor of the site, with traffic to politics articles almost doubling and a 60 per cent increase in unique users to this section.
Brady reports an increase in traffic across all sections – something he puts down in part to a big news month and a new design for the site’s story pages.
While US newspaper websites appear to be going ‘widget’-crazy, there’s a distinct lack of the things this side of the pond.
The way the US sites are using these gadgets shows the breadth of news subjects they can be applied to:
These type of applications can sit on your desktop or feature on sites like Facebook, which now encourages outside software developers to design applications for its users. Answering this call, the Washington Post has developed political quiz application, The Compass, for use on the social networking site.
According to the AP article:
Jim Brady, the executive editor of WashingtonPost.com, says widgets can boost a newspaper’s brand online, refer new readers back to the site and perhaps generate revenues through sponsorship deals.
Sounds like a plan.
Yet on a quick perusal, there don’t seem to be any on the UK’s newspaper sites. Why not?
Has anyone spotted any, anywhere?