---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vijayan MJ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Jun 27, 2007 4:44 PM Subject: About Manorama To:
Forwarded message! FYI Dear Sir I hope you have seen the advertisement published in Manorama daily on 10.06.2007, claiming that Manorama online is the 4 th most popular online newspaper in the world, next only to The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today. I intend to present some related information that will help you to evaluate the veracity of their claim. Manorama site is in Malayalam and Malayalam is spoken by just about 3- crore people in a world population comprised of 600 crores. That is to say, Malayalam speaking people constitute just 0.005 percent of the world population. Moreover, if you consider the internet penetration among the Malayalees, the percentage will be less than 0.0005 even. If it's so, '*huh' *, a publication read by 0.0005% of people getting the fourth rank in the world in terms of popularity!! Also, there are languages with online newspapers, like Chinese, Japanese, Hindi etc in the world, spoken by people numbering say 50 crores or 150 crores. How is it that none of them are there even in the top 90 ranks as given in Alexa.com ? More than that, Manorama's claim will be true only if their online edition is read by Hindi/Chinese/Japanese people also! So it is just an absurd exaggeration intended to mislead the readers and advertisers. This ranking is not at all a credible, international ranking. Nor, it is an automatic ranking in which all news sites are included. Manorama of April 17th had published a page-one report with a claim that it is the 8 th most popular online newspaper in the world. Within a very short span of 55 days, the rank has jumped from 8 th to 4 th. At this rate Manorama is likely to become the world's MOST POPULAR online newspaper in another 55 days! That news report contained reference to the effect that alexa. Com is doing the ranking. Even presuming it is a credible institution, what is the basis of reporting that a language site with 0.005 % readers in the world can hold the fourth rank? Even if all the three crore Malayalees go online every day and read Manorama it is simply impossible get even the 100 th rank. As I was surprised by the unbelievable tall claim of Manorama, I had gone into the technical facts about it. I wrote to alexa. Com asking why another Indian online paper ie Eenadu of Andhra, which has a better alexa ranking than Manorama is not even seen in this ' popularity rank list' of newspaper sites were Manorama claims a fourth place. Alexa has given a clear answer and it nails the unprincipled, baseless boasting of Manorama. This ranking is done only among those sites that register themselves in a directory listed by the website http://www.dmoz.org . They call this the Open Directory Project. Any site can apply for inclusion in that directory but there is no guarantee that your site will be included. Their report followsÖ "*Ö. While the ODP is comprehensive in scope and coverage, we care a great deal about the quality of the ODP, and pride ourselves on being highly selective. We don't accept all sites, so please don't take it personally should your site not be accepted. Our goal is to make the directory as useful as possible for our users, ** not to have the directory include all (or even most) of the sites that could possibly be listed* * or serve as a promotional tool for the entities listed. "* So, it is like this. You join a group where many has not joined, then rank yourself and claim that you are second or third in the whole population. This is a blatant deception which a respected news organisation should never do. Let me come to my last point. For newspapers, they have an official and authentic organisation called Audit Bureau of Circulation to certify circulation. There is no such thing in the cyber world. Alexa.com is a wing of a private commercial institution called Amazon which is engaged in e- marketing. Of course alexa. com has a system of evaluating the reach of websites. By electronic means it counts the number of times pages in a website is visited. This is not a fraud operation like what Manorama is doing but even this is not authentic. Statistics of hits- that is what a page visit is called in their language- is misleading. The sites with a lot of pages will be shown as having innumerable visitors, than those sites with less number of pages. To put it in simple terms, if ten thousand persons visit a site which has twenty channels, the hits will be, ten thousand into twenty, which makes 2 lakhs. But, if the same number of persons visit another site which has only 5 channels, their hits will only be 50000. So, it is clear that this is not a measurement of popularity, but is a measure that can be used to mislead potential advertisers. * Of course, these are the times when your success is measured by the unscrupulousness you can show in cheating your customers. Surely, Manorama is a very successful organisation. * Thank you,* please make sure that your colleagues too come to know about these things. * Regards L.Narayanan, Thrissur **** -- Regards, Vijayan MJ "We hear that governance now will have a different cadence Tyranny will now be the protector; cities will be without walls or doors Innocence will now be a punishable crime Judges will profess ignorance of criminal deeds... Executioners will be in charge of funerals, killers will organize mourning... If this be the realization of India's ancient dreams Then soon, there will neither be India, nor any of its connoisseurs..." 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