A MINUTE-by-minute live blog on the Daily Record’s website yesterday attracted some 22,500 visitors yesterday and almost 4,500 comments.
The blog tracked the transfer of players between football clubs as a ‘window’ on the movement of players, operated by the football authorities, was nearing closure, late last night.
Using software known as CoveritLive, the Daily Record was able to report each transfer as it was unfolding. Not all comments received saw the light of day – they were moderated for content and for sheer volume on the page.
CoveritLive allows a two-way conversation with readers. STV is understood also to have tracked the transfer window, also using CoveritLive, to good effect.
The Daily Record service ran from 8am to midnight.
The paper’s recently-appointed digital editor, Iain Pope, told allmediascotland: “We have used CoveritLive to report on everything from sporting events like Old Firm games and – most recently – Andy Murray in the Australian Open final as well news events such as Budget Day, the Papal Visit, The X Factor final and even the recent Tommy Sheridan sentencing.
“But we have never witnessed anything like last night. The traffic was astounding – at some points we were getting 50 to 60 comments every minute.
“We were constantly trying to point people to the live feed from adverts on the site alongside targeted Tweets and Facebook updates linking back to it.
“The only problem we had was finding the time to actually draw breath and give readers the updates they craved.
“It was our most successful one-day live event by a factor of ten and that is testament to the staff who worked on the feed and our sports colleagues who were busy feeding us exclusive lines.”
Last year, the website – which also doubles up as the site for sister title, the Sunday Mail – had more than 80 million pages views – up 34 per cent on the previous year.
Of those 80 million, 14.5 million were video and audio hits – up 55 per cent on the previous year – and 3.2 million were for blogs and columnists.
Some 68 per cent of the audience was based in the United Kingdon.
Meanwhile, the papers’ mobile phone site had 4.3 million pages views – up 189 per cent, year-on-year.
