Will the new Nielsen web metric affect websites?

Nielsen / NetRating's announcement that it would stop using the traditional Page View measurement as its primary metric to compare web sites has created some entertaining blog debate reading. In one corner bloggers say that the new system is just as unreliable as the current Page View since websites are designed for time saving efficiency. Along the same lines other people say that the time measurement is unreliable because if a site is difficult to navigate a user could spend the recorded time simply hunting down what they want or it could be that the site uses mainly Flash.

Meanwhile in anther corner bloggers point out that there is no one blanket way to equally measure all websites since websites are designed for different uses. Reading a blog and using web search engines are utterly different. Example. Based on the new system Google drops to fifth in popularity based on the time spent at their site. This is because Google is a search engine, which is focused on giving visitors quick answers and links away from Google. .

Page views are used to determine the popularity of websites. The reasoning was that, the more times users view a site, the more chances advertisers have to sell them products. With the new Nielsen Web metric system it measures total time a user spends at a website.

However, Nielson isn't a usability expert, they are a market research company. The simplest (yet also not perfect) common measurement that would be more thoroughly equal is returning unique visitors which tracks returning visitors within a specified period of time. On the other hand from everything I have read and researched, I believe the best way to evaluate a website’s content value should be a combination of time, new visitor views and returning visitors.

Camera Phones Will Exceed One Billion

From: The Center For Media Research


According to a market study by Strategy Analytics, one third of the world population will own a camera phone by 2011. The number of camera phones in use this year will exceed one billion, with new sales boosted by early adopters replacing one-Megapixel handsets and first-time buyers alike.

Other key findings from the study:

• Nokia is the clear market leader at 28% global share, while Motorola also shipped over 100 million units in the last 12 months
• SEMC has raised the user experience bar for camera phones with their Cybershot range, and has outperformed in this category as well as in the music domain
• VGA camera phones' share of the market will fall from 38% to under 7% over the forecast period

One Megapixel Camera Phones Are Now "Table Stakes"