The Immediacy Expectation
Written Mar. 11, 2009 by Tom Webster in Content + Social Networking + Terrestrial Radio with 1 Comment
When news breaks, today's net-savvy consumers instantly turn to their own trusted sources--traditional news outlets, blogs, message boards--and become their own 'editors,' discarding what is not credible (or doesn't fit their synthesized model) and incorporating the rest into what they deem is 'true.' In all cases, they require grist for the mill, and that grist has to be immediate. This is why Matt Drudge has so many page views--not so much from the sheer numbers of unique users (though he has those) but from those users constantly hitting 'refresh' to find out what is happening right now.
They do this, because Drudge has successfully created the expectation that he won't miss anything, so neither will you. Radio used to have that expectation, and for many stations still does--on the air. But what does your website look like after a few (hundred) browser refreshes? When something big is happening in your town, when does it make it onto your website? That night? Tomorrow? Later in the week?
You don't need a 'news department' to fulfull the immediacy expectation, and you shouldn't have to wait for the 'webmaster' either. What you should have is a website with a modern, user-friendly content management system, and judicious integration with social bookmarking, tagging and 'immediacy' tools like Twitter. You can do this--a WHOLE lot cheaper than you think--and you must do this. The web has a whole different set of expectations, and while more may be asked, much more is given. I'm glad to help.
Reader Comments
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Yes Matt does have the ability to pick news stories, but a great deal of those total page views come from the automated page refreshing on his site.
Turn up your speakers when looking at Drudge and listen for the "clicks", after a brief period of time you might be surprised at how many times the page refreshes on it own, independent on new content.
I'd take his page view numbers with a big grain of salt. I won't even get into the bizarro partisan propaganda he tries to pass off as news.