| By Fuat Kircaali |
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| May 1, 2009 02:30 PM EDT |
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23,821 |
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Today marks the 30th day of Ulitzer's public beta. We had an amazing month and perhaps one of the most widely discussed launches of a "new media" site. Gartner recently asked, "Will Ulitzer dominate news content on the Web eventually?" The answer is yes, and I'll explain why.
First, I'd like to share some of the 30-day stats with you. We had more than 140,000 visitors who read 197,000 pages of articles, blogs and news stories. The syndicated page views (outside the Ulitzer domain) exceeded 1,369,983 page views. The legendary technology reporter Maureen O'Gara was the most read Ulitzer author with 231,600 rolling page views, and we syndicated more than 3,000 Ulitzer stories.
My First Blackberry, Circa 1999
I remember receiving my first Blackberry 10 years ago at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. It was a small device similar to a pager but with a full keyboard, a huge difference. As I took its photo above with my current one, I recalled that it took four to five years for Blackberry to be known and used by the masses. Ten years ago I would e-mail friends while visiting them in their office, and they thought I was Houdini.
Early Adopters of "Tomorrow's" New Media Platforms
Even with these impressive first stats, Ulitzer users for the next 12 to 24 months will only be a fraction of the early adopters of tomorrow's social media tools. I personally think these impressive numbers will just be a small portion of the number who will join over the next couple of years when the "followers" discover the power of the Ulitzer platform.
Today we are approving roughly less than 5% of new author submissions. However when you look at the authors who "get" the Ulitzer platform, you find creators, innovators and the leaders of tomorrow's "new media" participants.
We are already presenting hundreds of Ulitzer authors who are among the well-known, well-read, and professional bloggers. The following e-mail from one of our recent Ulitzer authors summarizes the distinction between ones who "get" it today and the ones who will follow them in the years to come.
From: ps
To: Ulitzer Support Team
Subject: RE: Blog feed error
Sent: Apr 29, 2009 4:30 PM
Our company is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. We got a note this morning from our most notable blogger about Ulitzer and we're all jumping on the bandwagon. :-)
--ps
Newt Barrett, another seasoned Ulitzer author, explains "tomorrow" with every blog entry he publishes. I personally read all his stories with great interest.
Why Will Ulitzer Eventually Dominate News Content on the Web?
The answer to this question lies in two simple reasons:
1) Ulitzer is an original content site, which is not Twitter, Digg, Facebook or Google News with links to original content elsewhere. The platform offers a revolutionary yet simple functionality from both the author's and reader's points of view.
2) Ulitzer offers quality content under a managed environment. Google News keyword alerts are already contaminated with meaningless garbage largely due to its automated nature. Instant access to quality content will get more difficult as this erosion escalates. Sites such as Ulitzer will be the only answer to one-stop access to quality original content on any subject.
Before I end my post I'd like to extend my thanks to David Weinberger as well as Richard Stallman for their feedback, input and contributions to the Ulitzer copyright attribution references.
Until next time.
Editor's Note:
Regarding Rick Ross' feedback below, Ulitzer author profile pages display both rolling last 30-day page views, as well as cumulative page views. These numbers can be verified by authors by comparing them against their Google AdSense stats.
Ulitzer counts multiple visits by the same reader to the same article as only a single page view.
Other metrics may show higher numbers than reported by Ulitzer.
All other page view stats mentoned in this article are verified by Google Analytics, (1,369,983 page views reported in the first paragraph was 1,424,634 page views according to Google Analytics for the same period between March 30, 2009 through April 30, 2009).
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