Ha, I’ll pass that up the line :D *crosses fingers*

Thanks v much :) Yeah, I think the whole debate about the media in Ireland lately has been really interesting. Slightly (!) biased here but I don’t think online media should be seen as a threat or a negative – it’s just a change in how the news is reported. (Ok, yeah, I am biased…)

Thanks v much. Really do appreciate any and all feedback we get from readers.

We place a high value on someone’s ability to make a solid cup of tea. Welcome aboard.

(Seriously though: the company is hiring. If you keep an eye on this page you’ll see all the jobs that are currently available).

We’re actually out of tea at the moment. This is making me sad :( (see sad faces and all)

Excellent stuff Amas. Poor Hugh is the only person on this thread with negativity. This is a positive news story and these are few and far between. Poor Hugh must be a little worried to even grace this stage!!!

Good to hear! Cheers for that :)

Hi Amas (who’s behind that logo?). Independent.ie can speak for themselves, but characterising Thejournal.ie’s traffic as ‘a third’ of either independent’s or irishtimes.com’s traffic is hardly supported by the figures, which show its page impressions at less than 10 per cent of ours. You’re right about the black art bit, and it would be an excellent idea for the industry to get its act together on getting clear and regular numbers. But blowing a trumpet for unqiue users while ignoring page impressions is a tad alchemical in itself.

Page views were the be all and end all of metrics at one time, but not anymore. There are lots of reasons for this and many articles about it, but a big one is that they give no measure of engagement – you could rattle though 12 or 15 pages while looking for something in way less than a minute, so it would look good on the page view numbers but there would actually have been no real engagement with those pages.

Comparing page views between sites without any additional data about how those pages were engaged with, now much time was spent on them or what actions people took while on them is kind of meaningless.

I’d think that a site like the Journal would rate highly on engagement, attention and action, since comments and discussion on a story are so totally integrated. People tend to read the discussions, join in and return to follow up. From my own experience I’d say I’d spend much, much longer on a journal page that interested me than one about the same story where there was either no reader discussion or a less active discussion.

That’s pretty cool to hear – cheers!

Thanks a mil – appreciate it.

Actually, you may have noticed that there *has* been advertising here since the start of the year. The site has been growing very fast (more than we’d ever hoped, really) since it started so we’ve been expanding the commercial side of the team and bringing in adverts over the past few months. The site and the apps are still going to be free but like you say, there is always the issue of how to monetise a free site and that’s one of the things that we’re doing.

Apart from the Carlsberg and Advert.ie ad around the article :P
Great work to all you folks at the Journal, plenty interesting articles everyday and great management of comments. Nice to see authors replying to questions and comments, gives a connected feeling not found on other news sites.

Cheers Damhsa, appreciate it. I think it’s a good habit for journalists to get into to read all the comments under their articles and get involved as much as they can. There are some days where that happens more often than others, but it’s something that we’ve been working a good bit on so glad people have noticed it a bit :)

Ahhh..I actually had a firefox add on called ad-block installed that was hiding the adverts.ie and boards deals advertisemnts Thought i was going crazy there as I couldnt see them

I’d love to do a study some day on the psychology of people who vote down other people’s comments. A lot of the time it’s obvious why people disagreed with a comment, but there’s always really innocuous or nice comments that get thumbs down. Baffling.

point proven :D

Ha! Ok, that hurt. I’m taking that one personally.

I don’t thumbs down positive comments, but I thumbs down every comment that mentions thumbs down. You’ll have noticed an extra thumbs down each.

It derails comment threads and ’tisn’t a thumbs up contest.

In the interests of consistency, I will immediately thumbs down this comment for talking about thumbs down.

Jobs that currently available are listed here: http://www.adverts.ie/jobs/distilled-media/

Cheers Hugh, appreciate it. I’ve included the ABC report in the story so people can check it all out for themselves, but I went with this angle because it’s the most newsworthy, given the size of the figures involved. Feel free to choose a different one if/when you’re covering the story on the Irish Times site… :)

That’s grand. It’s just, if we were reporting on traffic or circulation figures for the Irish Times, we’d reckon Irish Times readers would be particularly interested in Irish Times numbers. Not so at The Journal apparently. Each to his/her own…

I think we’re at cross-purposes on this.

Everyone here at The Journal is and has always been very open about how the site is doing. Hell, we’re incredibly proud of the figures over the past 18 months and we’ll yell them from the rooftops – the single best example of this is that the page views are the top of every single article for everyone to see. The site hit one million unique users per month for the first time in January – with around 60 per cent of those readers coming from Ireland – and has increased every month since.

I chose to write this piece by focusing on how Distilled sites are performing. If you want to criticise the way I chose to present a news story then that’s fair enough – well used to critical comments at this stage and it’s the nature of the job. Unsurprisingly, I disagree…

Oh, such sour grapes. No wonder the Journal is doing so well. The Times is just BORING and predictable, as well as being orthodox. RTE is just a government propaganda machine that we are forced to pay for (good trick, that). No wonder people ignore them for something fresh, even if it is not comprehensive and often slips up.

Congratulations and good luck for the future.

An editor of the Irish Times getting ratty about thejournal’s number claims. Hilarious. Eyes on the road pal. :)