After the initial hype around the launch of the Apple iPhone it’s interesting to pause and look at just how big the role of blogs was in distributing the news with Techcrunch reporting on Engadget’s record 10 million page views on the day they covered the announcement.
While the larger visitor numbers are not unexpected, after all Engadget is the top ranked blog by Technorati and one of the world’s leading sites for gadget news, this dramatic increase in online traffic was felt around the blogosphere, albeit on a smaller scale. Over at Shiny Media the tech sites TechDigest and Shiny Shiny also received a surge in traffic around the time of the announcement with TechDigest “live blogging” the full rundown of Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote address.
Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington observes,
‘With massive numbers of readers flocking to blogs when big news is announced, it’s hard to say that mainstream audiences aren’t paying attention. Just about everyone that cares knew exactly what was being announced at MacWorld just moments after it was said, and they got the news from Engadget or another blog.’
It also raises an increasingly important communications issue for global companies which want to tailor announcements across markets and highlights the importance of streamlining those communications. Also, do those companies which are slow to adapt to coordinated news distribution risk frustrating press, bloggers and consumers alike if they can’t access relevant local information for a news announcement which has spread globally online?
