According to Nielsen, Barack Obama was mentioned in nearly 20% of all blog posts on election day.  Traffic to news websites also grew by 27% over the previous Tuesday. An audience of over 42 million visited news sites on election day.

CNN and MSNBC topped the list of most visited news websites on Tuesday. Both networks offered live streams of election coverage throughout the day.

The Nielsen report can be viewed here.

Hey! Nielsen is an upcoming entertainment and opinion blog started by The Nielsen Company. Nielsen is a marketing research firm that determines what the ratings are for websites, TV shows, music, etc. A complete listing of Nielsen subsidiaries is available on Wikipedia.

“Hey! Nielsen is a place for fans to sound off on movies, music, TV, internet, and personalities. The website has all the usual opinion and social networking tools, but unlike other sites, the user opinions may be aggregated, interpreted, and shared directly with key decision makers in the entertainment industry. Put another way, we have every intention of making sure Hey! Nielsen users are heard,” wrote Steve Ciabattoni, a Hey! Nielsen representative.

I received an invitation to test out Hey Nielsen! Beta. So I entered my e-mail and activated my account. Here’s what I like and dislike:

(more…)

A press release was sent out stating that Nielsen//NetRatings^[1], a solid source for online page view measurements, will halt monitoring user activity based on page views and will now focus the length of time spent. The official announcement by the company is expected to be made tomorrow. What this means is that because of today’s web technologies, web traffic rating and measurement companies need to start reconsidering the criteria set on determining which web sites are more popular than others.

The biggest example of such technologies is AJAX. AJAX is a technology in which users can take actions on particular websites without having to be redirected to multiple pages. Digg is an excellent example of such technology use. On the homepage of Digg, users can “digg” stories and a vote will be accumulated, all without having to leave www.digg.com:
Also, every story that is submitted on Digg has its own individual page where more AJAX is implemented:

Clicking on the Comments, Who Dugg or Blogged It?, Blog It, and Email It tabs do not require a user to be redirected to another page.

“Based on everything that’s going on with the influx of Ajax and streaming, we feel total minutes is the best gauge for site traffic,” stated Scott Ross, Director of Product Marketing at Nielsen. “We’re changing our stance on how the data should be” used.

AOL LLC and Yahoo! Inc. also benefits from the upcoming changes by Nielsen//NetRatings. Nielsen will credit both services with the time spent on their messenger platforms. About 25 billion minutes was spent AOL Instant Messenger and 20 billion minutes were spent on Yahoo! Messenger service this past May.

Alexa Internet Inc., a subsidiary company of Amazon Inc. is also known for web monitoring that accounts for traffic solely based on users that have the Alexa Toolbar product installed. Will this new initiative by Nielsen pressure Alexa to tweak their tweaking technologies as well? I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

References:
[1] nielsen-netratings.com
[2] Alexa: About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
[3] Associated Press: Nielsen scraps Web page view rankings (via Yahoo! News)

In 1999, VNU Group BV acquired 54% of NetRatings Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRT). Today, VNU Group had given an offer to pay $225.6 million for the rest of the company to fully control the company. If the deal takes place, then NetRatings would be added as subsidiary that is wholly owned by VNU. VNU is also the parent company of TV rating firm, Nielsen Media Research. VNU is a Dutch company owned by private-equity investors, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR). KKR is notable for their involvement in one of the largest leveraged buyouts in America’s history between RJR Reynolds and Nabiso which is featured in the book, Barbarians at the Gate.

NetRatings Inc. offers Internet media and market research under the Nielsen//NetRatings brand. Nielsen//NetRatings offers products such as NetView, AdRelevance, @Plan, and Homescan Online. Homescan Online is an interesting one because it monitors consumer consumption online and offline to help monitor trends.

VNU’s offer is another indicator that having full control of Internet companies is becoming a hot commodity once again. Even if the deal isn’t sealed, NetRatings and VNU are still partners and VNU still owns a majority of the company.