Newspapers experience rapid online growth
With paper copies of national newspapers seeing readership fall in many cases, it shows the value of spreading operations online that a number of papers are seeing resurgent times on the web.
Figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronics show that in September, the Guardian Unlimited piled on an extra million unique users while the Times Online did even better by upping its user-base by two million.
While this means the Guardian’s web pages remain top of the listings for the most visited UK newspaper website with 16.7 million users, the Times managed to leapfrog the Daily Mail group’s offering due to its exceptional growth over the month to an audience of 12.5 million.
All of these sites have undergone recent upgrades to add greater emphasis on social networking features to allow feedback from its readers and contact with its writers - which has seemingly proved popular among users.
With such high numbers of people heading online to get their news fix, it may come as no surprise that the daily hard-copy versions of these newspapers attract far fewer readers.
Official statistics for the Guardian put its circulation at just over 367,500, while the Times can boast 654,000 readers - far below the reach of the newspapers’ websites.
