twopointouch

Heather Hopkins of Hitwise UK has published some interesting figures based on what young commuters do online. Her hope is to be able to offer some guidance to our ailing newspapers on what topics to cover more fully. People in this age group apparently have little loyalty to traditional newspapers and are turning to freesheets.

The second of her two tables lists the categories receiving the highest concentration of visits from internet users in this age group:

The trends here offer interesting guidance for both newspaper publishers and prospective web site owners:

1) Leisure interests appear to outweigh professional interests when it comes to using the web. It’s not clear whether this means that 18-34 year olds are more likely to use the internet outside work hours. I haven’t done a survey, but do any newspapers provide daily in-depth wrestling coverage? The position of tennis on the list is probably misleading because of the Wimbledon tournament. It’s also a period where there’s no football (soccer), so that’s why it doesn’t figure, I guess.

2) Nonetheless, Business and Finance appears four times in the top ten categories. Proper news isn’t something to eliminate by any means. Hopkins notes, “The top sites in the News and Media category last week based on visits were BBC News, Yahoo! UK & Ireland News, Google News, and the Telegraph.”

3) While technology sites (and porn) still rule the roost when it comes to the volume of visits (which is covered in another table), the site categories that are attracting the highest concentration of visits cover very mainstream topics.

4) Newspapers might consider upping the amount of space they devote to what they’ve traditionally put on women’s pages. Weddings, beauty, health and general women’s issues are clearly exerting a big pull online.