The Cable News Network is America’s #1 cable news source based on the highest number of unique viewers according to Nielsen.  As the news network grew more powerful, the company introduced CNN.com in 1995.  Around the time of September 11, 2001, CNN.com’s unique visitors grew from 1.3 million to 4.6 million according to MediaLifeMagazine.

In 2006, CNN.com received 1.6 billion page views per month and served 600 million free videos over the course of the year.  Between January 2006-November 2006, CNN.com was ranked #1 for mobile news providers.  Based on these statistics and the prestige of having CNN as a client, Google AdSense should throw a victory party for themselves.  It was recently announced that they will be the exclusive pay-per-click advertisement providers for CNN.  Previously, Yahoo! was the advertisement provider since 2004.  In 2004, Yahoo! took the exclusive rights for CNN advertisements and competed against Google for the same deal.

Google’s search engine is also powering CNN.com for archived stories as well.  Google also sealed a deal to be the exclusive pay-per-click advertising company and search engine for most FOX Interactive Media websites, including MySpace last year.  The deal with FOX costed roughly $900 million – $1 billion.

“This is an important deal for Google because CNN.com has a lot of traffic and high quality content. The agreement provides an opportunity for our advertisers to target CNN.com and get high quality traffic for their ads,” stated Brandon McCormick, a Google spokesman.

CNN recently revamped their website.  Pulse 2.0 reviewed CNN Beta last June.

CNN is in the process of revamping their website[1]. The new website leverages Web 2.0 technology. For example, in the below screen shot of the new CNN website, where it says CNN Video, there are arrows below it that allow the user to scroll through popular videos by use of AJAX. The same is possible for scrolling through the categories of the “More Stories” section.

The new homepage does not look too much different from the original, but the way that the videos are set-up, there will not be anymore pop-ups involved. There is a separate video page that places the stories below the actual videos. On the video page, there are tabs for Most Popular, Staff Picks, CNN TV, CNN Live, I-Reports, and a By Section. Users will be able to search through all of the archived videos.

A good point that the Bivings Report made[2] was that there is not an option for bloggers and website designers to embed videos within their own homepages. CNN does not give the code to do so. Another problem I see is that the hyperlinks at the very bottom of the website are very small. This could be a problem for those who depend on reading glasses.

The new CNN will feature the ability to add local content, personalize weather reports, feature story highlights, comment on blogs, recommend content to users, and suggest stories. Given the pros and cons, I still believe that the new CNN website is a step-up from the old website.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

[1] beta.cnn.com
[2] Bivings Report: CNN Launches New Beta Website