Broadsheet.ie: Three years of typos, things that look like Ireland and stolen bikes

The slides from my talk for Refresh Dublin.

Transcript

1. Three years of Typos, Things That Look Like Ireland and Stolen Bikes Wednesday 17 July 13
2. • A Brief History • Traffic • Comments • Apps • Future • Questions Wednesday 17 July 13
3. • Software developer, mainly native mobile apps these days • Originally involved to ‘just’ set up the site (a single day of work he said) • Sucked in to help maintain the site/apps and write the occasional post • Do it out of the goodness of my soft heart And You Are...? Wednesday 17 July 13
4. The Hamster In The Cage • WordPress with a scattering of plugins • Single server running Apache and MySQL • Varnish and CloudFlare provide caching Wednesday 17 July 13
5. Headline Items • Covering from 29th of July 2012 to 16th of July 2012 • Visits up 31% (13m vs 9.8m) • Pageviews up 43% (31.4m vs 21.9m) • Unique visitors up 12% (2.9m vs 2.6m) Wednesday 17 July 13
6. Where are your people from? 10% 1% 1% 5% 10% 73% Ireland UK USA Germany Australia ROW Wednesday 17 July 13
7. How Do They Arrive 40% 27% 33% Direct Search Referral Wednesday 17 July 13
8. Social Referrers • Primarily Facebook/Twitter • Google+ barely registers • Most shared story • 12,723 Facebook likes • 1,135 shares on Twitter • 36 +1s Wednesday 17 July 13
9. What are people Searching for • Some variation on ‘Broadsheet.ie’ is 9 of the top 25 searches • We’re going to ignore them Wednesday 17 July 13
10. Hello, Is Me You’re Looking For? • rosanna davison • katie talyor • electric picnic 2013 • niamh horan • property tax calculator • stubbs gazette • kate fitzgerald • tayto chocolate • johnny depp • mikey clancy • exchequer street boy • irish daily star Wednesday 17 July 13
11. Variations On A Theme • rosanna davison • rosanna davison playboy • rosanna davison playboy europe • rosanna davison playboy 2012 • rosanna davison playboy spread Wednesday 17 July 13
12. Top of the Posts Wednesday 17 July 13
13. Meanwhile, At The Smithfield Horse Fair http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/04/02/meanwhile-at-the- smithfield-horse-fair/ Wednesday 17 July 13
14. Daisy: The Cutest Kitten In The World http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/09/22/daisy-the-cutest-kitten- in-the-world/ Wednesday 17 July 13
15. Nasty Dublin Bike Rope Trick http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/07/01/nasty-dublin-bike-hate/ Wednesday 17 July 13
16. Opposite The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/06/27/opposite-the-dublin- rape-crisis-centre/ Wednesday 17 July 13
17. Rosanna Davison’s Playboy Cover http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/09/12/rosanna-davisons- playboy-cover-nsfw/ Wednesday 17 July 13
18. The Bottom Half Of The Internet 211,491 comments from 11,743 authors Wednesday 17 July 13
19. Comments Per Author 0.1% 3% 7% 7% 35.9% 47% 1 2 - 10 11-25 25-100 100-1000 1000+ Wednesday 17 July 13
20. What Got People Going? Wednesday 17 July 13
21. Are You From Dublin? http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/09/21/are-you-from-dublin/ 211 comments Wednesday 17 July 13
22. Are The Irish Anti- Semitic? http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/11/24/are-the-irish-anti- semitic/ 218 comments Wednesday 17 July 13
23. Give Them Enough Grope http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/07/11/give-them-enough- grope/ 255 comments Wednesday 17 July 13
24. The Other Side Of Parasite http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/04/18/a-sponger-writes/ 306 comments Wednesday 17 July 13
25. Who Is In The Right? http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/05/17/who-is-in-the-right/ 318 comments Wednesday 17 July 13
26. http://www.somethingofthatilk.com/index.php?id=400 The Browser Wars Wednesday 17 July 13
27. The Browser Wars 3% 4% 5% 16% 16% 19% 37% Chrome Firefox IE Safari Safari (in-app) Android Everything Else Wednesday 17 July 13
28. The Apps • iPhone 2.0 app released March 2013 • Windows Mobile released April 2013 • Android 2.0 app released in June 2013 Wednesday 17 July 13
29. Downloads iPhone 9,087 Android 1,882 Windows Mobile 1,200 Wednesday 17 July 13
30. App Usage • 5.5m screenviews (12.4m pageviews in same period) • 14,184 active users • 86% Irish users • ~ half the time spent in app compared to site at 2:52 average session length Wednesday 17 July 13
31. Devices Top Android App Devices • Samsung Galaxy SIII • Samsung Galaxy SIV • HTC One • Samsung Galaxy SII • Nexus 4 Top Android Web Devices • Samsung Galaxy SIII • Samsung Galaxy SII • Samsung Galaxy S • Google Nexus 7 • SonyEricsson Xperia Arc Wednesday 17 July 13
32. Code Available • iPhone: https://github.com/kmonaghan/ KMWordPress • Android: https://github.com/kmonaghan/ Broadsheet.ie-Android • MIT License (i.e. you’re free to use it, credit me and don’t blame me if it sets anything on fire) Wednesday 17 July 13
33. The Future • Keep going as long as people are reading • From a technical prospective • Fresher look for the site • iPad app • updates for the iPhone/Android apps Wednesday 17 July 13
34. • We love your submissions • broadsheet@broadsheet.ie • @broadsheet_ie • http://facebook.com/broadsheet.ie Don’t Forget Wednesday 17 July 13
35. FAQ • Why do posts disappear? • Not funny/legal issue/wrong end of the stick • Can you tell us about [some specific legal issue] • Nope - I either don’t know enough to comment properly or can’t as part of the resolution • Why do apps over a responsive website? • I’m doing this for free so there’s limited time to spend on it. I prioritize things I like and will benefit from personally first (i.e. apps) and pick away at the things I don’t (HTML/CSS/JS) Wednesday 17 July 13
36. FAQ • Don’t you just get everything from Reddit? • No • How do I get an avatar? • Goto Gravatar.com and sign up with the email address you use to post • Why was my comment held for moderation? • This is an automatic process. 2 links, first time using an email address, being a sweary mary, talking about prescription drugs are the usual reasons Wednesday 17 July 13
37. FAQ • Aren’t the Apps just RSS readers? • No, no they’re not. • How many buttons are open on that shirt? • Just two. Not four. Wednesday 17 July 13
38. @karlmonaghan http://karlmonaghan.com http://github.com/kmonaghan Wednesday 17 July 13