The first 1000 followers of @TheIPaper, according to locations from their bio
On the back of a record-breaking quarter for traffic to independent.co.uk, and since the year-end is traditionally an appropriate time to take stock, I thought it might be worth taking a quick glance back at the digital strides the Independent has taken in 2010. In no particular order, here are some of the things we did:
Disqus – Not only were we the first UK national newspaper site to properly integrate social networking profiles with our commenting functionality, we were also the first to use Disqus specifically, a service which is fast becoming an industry standard (The Telegraph followed us later ) in allowing people to authenticate their commenting accounts on their own terms. As a result, the volume of comments has grown dramatically, while the tone has improved and the moderation workload is more manageable. Announcement here , and try it out beneath this post.
Blogs.independent.co.uk – Shortly after we’d redone our commenting service, we released our completely redesigned blogging platform, powered by Wordpress. Built on a particularly natty custom theme, we’ve drawn on the wealth of Wordpress-powered plugins and the fact that it plays very nicely with Disqus to revise how we approach this section of the site, and got even more Independent journalists blogging in the process. Here’s my introduction from the time .
Ind.pn – What have the Pitcairn Islands ever done for us? Well, they’ve hosted our Bit.ly Pro-powered URL shortener, that’s what, with Ind.pn links now standard for all Twitter sharing of content from the Independent, by both users and our in-house Twitter accounts alike. They’ve also saved us space in the print edition, where they’re now the standard for putting links in the paper. My announcement’s here .
Sharing – As I hinted in ‘ Your most shared articles of 2010 ’, it’s a very good thing that much of the distribution of attention across content from the Independent is now coming from organic recommendations by readers to each other. By reformatting our article pages to include prominent sharing links at the top and bottom of our stories ( announcement here ) , we’ve made it easy for you to share what you’ve found interesting on independent.co.uk…
And more Facebook – …and as far as finding out what your friends have recommended it’s not just the article pages which include that information; we have a Recommended on Facebook box on the frontpage of the site, and a dedicated page to highlight the information further, with further recommendations on some sections of the site. As far as on Facebook’s own site goes, our official page has grown to over 30,000 ‘likes’ this year, and i too has a page, with the impossibly-great URL Facebook.com/i
And more Twitter – Our Indy Twitter accounts have grown fantastically in followers and influence over the last year, as has the number of Indy journalists using the microblogging service. But special mention should go, I think, to the operation over the launch of i , where we linked up with the circulation and customer services departments to help get the message out about the new paper (in retrospect, it may have been going too far when we were guiding prospective readers into the shop )
i iPad app – As well as the relaunch of our iPhone app (and there’ll be a lot more app news in the new year to look out for too), we launched our first iPad app with the release of i . We’re still offering five free issues to new subscribers, so if you unwrapped an Apple tablet this Christmas, give it a go .
Those were some of the major new moves we made this year. But we can’t leave out the multitude of other features, tweaks and facelifts which helped us grow too: the fact that our blogs are in 49 languages , that we liveblogged every World Cup game, or that the quality of pictures on the site is much higher and our galleries are cleaner and allow you to share individual pictures . We launched a Kin dle edition as well, and had over 2.6 million downloads of our free Learn Spanish podcasts (remember that when you’re shrugging off your hangover and making some hasty resolutions this time tomorrow).
With the ever-changing world of online news, we’re always looking for your feedback and suggestions for how we can improve further. We’ve got a lot planned for 2011, but what would you like to see us doing differently or additionally? Let us know below, by email (j.riley [at] independent.co.uk) or on Twitter ( @_JackRiley ). And happy new year!
Tagged in: bitly , Disqus , facebook , i , independent.co.uk , ipad , iphone , Podcasts , Social media , technology , twitter , web desk
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