Thursday, November 1, 2007

Love that Dirty Water ...

So, for the second time in four years the Boston Red Sox have won a World Series, after NOT winning won for 86 years. The city, no, the entire region seems to be euphoric.

What this all meant for us at the Web site was almost an entire month of covering baseball games, stretching the staff out to make sure we had the latest game stories, which is a bit ridiculous since our numbers indicate that almost NO one goes to our Web site for this kind of sports information. At the end of the month, the story that garnered the most page views (about 500,000) was one about a 9-month-old baby that appears to have drowned in a bucket of bleach. Time and again, the stats indicate that what people want from us is a) NEWS about BOSTON; b) stories you can't get anywhere else (i.e. on a sports site, or Yahoo, Google, CNN, etc.) c) TEXT stories (as opposed to videos) and d) interactive content (where they can send in their own slideshows, etc.)

Unfortunately, we try to be all things to all people with a staff of three and it's a bit pointless. Endlessly spinning our wheels. The times where it works are those where we're offering uniquely Boston content. This week we livestreamed the Sox victory parade and there were more than 125,000 page views for the stream, and more than 114,000 unique visitors that day. We also received emails from as far away as New Zealand thanking us for making this available to people who love Boston but wouldn't be able to see it (0bviously) on TV.

The thing is, eventually everyone will be able to see EVERYTHING on the Internet. The computer screen and TV screen will become one.