How New York Times web traffic looked the day Michael Jackson died

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A video showing visitors to the New York Times website on the day Michael Jackson died reveals that mobile demand for news is getting bigger
Mapping a day in the life of a news website: these two beautiful visualisations of traffic circulation show where the readers of the New York Times came from – and what device they were using – on the day Michael Jackson died.
Apart from looking good, the videos demonstrate that the demand for quality journalism is strong when a major story breaks. At 5:20 pm – 1 minute and 10 seconds after TMZ.com broke the news – a sudden flash appears, representing readers coming to the site for information. According to Alexa statistics, the New York Times site is the 96th most popular in the website world.
It also shows that the readers' demand for online news differs from access point to access point. Mobile traffic is strong in the morning and in the afternoon when people are going to and from work, while PC traffic is strongest around lunchtime. Soon news organisations are going to have to ask themselves if they need to respond to that.
Do readers demand different news at different times of the day? Do news organisations need to provide them with an overview featuring the most important details in the morning, while readers prefer some background information and more colouful pieces when there is realxing time around lunch?
In the video, you can see readers coming to the main web site from computers represented in yellow circles, while the orange circles indicate readers using mobile phones to access the mobile site. Being clearly visible throughout the day the videos show that mobile traffic is getting bigger and therefore more relevant. Indeed, in some countries it is already bigger than PC access.
The visualisation was done by Nick Bilton, who worked for the New York Time's research and development labs, in co-operation with Michael Young, Michael Kramer and Noriaki Okada. According to Nick Bilton, the data that was used to create these maps come from 15 Web servers, and some of the mobile bursts on the maps are a result of compressing the data.

• New York Times
• Digital media
• Newspapers
• US press and publishing

Mercedes Bunz

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