There were some funny murmurings on Twitter about us not having commented on The Express Tribune's one-year anniversary issue. I really don't see why we needed to. I mean, we don't usually comment on other paper's self-congratulatory anniversary supplements. And contrary to popular perception, we are neither obsessed with ET nor do we go looking for opportunities to stick it to them. And to be fair, ET has matured in many ways since it began. It remains the best looking newspaper in Pakistan and, while there is still plenty to poke fun at in terms of content (as there is in other papers), it is still the only paper to appoint an independent ombudsman for reader complaints, an innovation that other Pakistani papers would do well to emulate.
With all the stuff going on around us politically and even in the media, we also really haven't found the time to do an exhaustive read of the anniversary supplement. I doubt anyone actually does that with any supplement, aside perhaps from the paper's own staff. However, thanks to the urging of friends, I did finally go through it quickly. What I liked about it was the general reliance on colourful graphics and design to convey the journey of the paper rather than boring pages of dense text that nobody would ever read (Dawn Supplements, I am thinking of you). A nod must also be made towards the willingness of ET to laugh at itself, by forthrightly accepting the major bloopers that have graced the pages in this one year (couldn't find the link to the page online), some of which have been the focus of much raucous commentary on this blog too. Many of the articles included from regular oped writers were remarkably double-edged for a congratulatory special issue (try this from Sami Shah or this from Fasi Zaka or this from George Fulton) but at least had the virtue of being honest. This bizarre piece of punnery and indulgence from the paper's City Editor Mahim Maher, however, I have to admit, did leave me quite speechless.
Quite aside from all that, there was one contention in young publisher Bilal Lakhani's piece in the issue that someone pointed out to us which does need to be addressed. In his piece he makes the following assertion:
I am not going to contest the comparative circulations of Pakistan's English language press (let's just say the assertion can mean nothing even while being perfectly true). However, allow me to just question the latter assertion, that ET's online presence is "neck and neck" in terms of readers with that of Dawn (the only paper with a 60-year head start to ET). And the reason that I can question that assertion is because it is very easy to verify. Keep in mind that we are not talking about aesthetic qualities or better design, simply quantifiable facts.
Here is what I get when I check the online readership of Dawn (dawn.com) against that of The Express Tribune (tribune.com.pk) on Google Trends, which gives you a handy estimate of daily unique visitors:
The blue line is Dawn, the red one ET. As you can see for yourself, "neck and neck" is not quite how one would characterize the comparison.
Do a comparison between the online hits on Dawn, The News (thenews.com.pk) and ET and this is what you get (blue line is Dawn, red is The News and yellow is ET):
So, according to at least Google Trends, one could ostensibly claim that ET is sort of neck and neck online with The News, but then neither does The News have "a 60-year head start" nor would anyone ever accuse its website of being either user-friendly, hip or well-designed.
Just to put things in perspective, I also did a comparison of these three English papers' online presence with the atrocious ones of the Urdu papers Jang (jang.com.pk) and Express (express.com.pk):
Here the blue line is Jang, red line is Express, yellow is Dawn, green is The News and purple is ET. Yup, so while Express currently rakes in almost double the number of hits Dawn does, Jang towers above them all with over three times as many unique daily visitors as Dawn.
Moral of the tale: Congratulate yourself for your genuine achievements by all means, but don't make silly assertions that can be easily caught out.
: : : UPDATE : : :
In response to various assertions and questions in the comments, we have a new post up with a detailed analysis of the relative positions of Dawn, The News and ET vis a vis their online presences. The new post can be found here.
With all the stuff going on around us politically and even in the media, we also really haven't found the time to do an exhaustive read of the anniversary supplement. I doubt anyone actually does that with any supplement, aside perhaps from the paper's own staff. However, thanks to the urging of friends, I did finally go through it quickly. What I liked about it was the general reliance on colourful graphics and design to convey the journey of the paper rather than boring pages of dense text that nobody would ever read (Dawn Supplements, I am thinking of you). A nod must also be made towards the willingness of ET to laugh at itself, by forthrightly accepting the major bloopers that have graced the pages in this one year (couldn't find the link to the page online), some of which have been the focus of much raucous commentary on this blog too. Many of the articles included from regular oped writers were remarkably double-edged for a congratulatory special issue (try this from Sami Shah or this from Fasi Zaka or this from George Fulton) but at least had the virtue of being honest. This bizarre piece of punnery and indulgence from the paper's City Editor Mahim Maher, however, I have to admit, did leave me quite speechless.
Quite aside from all that, there was one contention in young publisher Bilal Lakhani's piece in the issue that someone pointed out to us which does need to be addressed. In his piece he makes the following assertion:
"The result is that now The Express Tribune is among the top three English language newspapers in the country in terms of circulation; online we are neck in neck with a paper that had a 60-year head start."
I am not going to contest the comparative circulations of Pakistan's English language press (let's just say the assertion can mean nothing even while being perfectly true). However, allow me to just question the latter assertion, that ET's online presence is "neck and neck" in terms of readers with that of Dawn (the only paper with a 60-year head start to ET). And the reason that I can question that assertion is because it is very easy to verify. Keep in mind that we are not talking about aesthetic qualities or better design, simply quantifiable facts.
Here is what I get when I check the online readership of Dawn (dawn.com) against that of The Express Tribune (tribune.com.pk) on Google Trends, which gives you a handy estimate of daily unique visitors:
The blue line is Dawn, the red one ET. As you can see for yourself, "neck and neck" is not quite how one would characterize the comparison.
Do a comparison between the online hits on Dawn, The News (thenews.com.pk) and ET and this is what you get (blue line is Dawn, red is The News and yellow is ET):
So, according to at least Google Trends, one could ostensibly claim that ET is sort of neck and neck online with The News, but then neither does The News have "a 60-year head start" nor would anyone ever accuse its website of being either user-friendly, hip or well-designed.
Just to put things in perspective, I also did a comparison of these three English papers' online presence with the atrocious ones of the Urdu papers Jang (jang.com.pk) and Express (express.com.pk):
Here the blue line is Jang, red line is Express, yellow is Dawn, green is The News and purple is ET. Yup, so while Express currently rakes in almost double the number of hits Dawn does, Jang towers above them all with over three times as many unique daily visitors as Dawn.
Moral of the tale: Congratulate yourself for your genuine achievements by all means, but don't make silly assertions that can be easily caught out.
: : : UPDATE : : :
In response to various assertions and questions in the comments, we have a new post up with a detailed analysis of the relative positions of Dawn, The News and ET vis a vis their online presences. The new post can be found here.
Posts
66 comments:
please check:
http://www.websitetrafficspy.com/dawn.com
and:
http://www.websitetrafficspy.com/tribune.com.pk
What you will see is that Tribune's reach (no of ppl per month) is very close to Dawn's. However, Dawn's readers generally read a lot more pages per visit.
Also do check:
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/PK
Which ranks Dawn.com at 66 and Tribune.com.pk at 72. The numbers game is not as simple as Google trends which is shows how often SEARCH TERMS are used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Trends
Just can't understand why ET is so obsessed with Dawn?
It was always obvious that it would up against The News and The Nation, but yes, I agree with you, just after a year ET has gone all delusional.
Neck to neck with Dawn? They serious? I admire the ambition, but it's better that ET aims for the sky from the ground rather than from its imaginary clouds.
Pyala, you guys do a great job analyzing things you know about. However tech and social media is hardly your pyala of chai.
Google Trends does not compute traffic stats for a website. It only shows frequency trends of different keywords typed.
Website statistics, traffic counters, unique visitors, visits per user and other data is hardly done by google trends.
Please do not ruin this blog with arrogance. There are 6 billion people in the world and many millions of Pakistanis who know more about social media. Maybe instead of playing god you could ask them for advice?
actually moral of tale is: check and double-check what you are arguing before you post -- surely you shouldn't have ignored Alexa -- or web spy traffic for that -- much of your post is pretty much redundant i think -- of course you will disagree
Omar R Quraishi
smoking gun -- ET obsessed with Dawn?
Please see Dawn page 1, April 13, 2011, announcement on "relatively minor" changes made in the paper -- this was made in a front page announcement
Also please check notice in Dawn Classified of April 11, 2011 -- Page 3 for the Classified Section
Quite a few other things as well which cannot be disclosed on this or any other forum.
I suspect you have the obsession thing the other way round.
Omar R Quraishi
There is serious journalism and then, there's ET. Stuff that burger kids mail-in from their rooms at home.
The Express Tribune is marketed towards that particular segment of the Pakistani public that like to see it's news, rather than read it.
They should give up the charade and transform into a picture magazine. Circulation might even pick-up then.
Maybe.
@Umair, @Anon645, @Omar R. Quraishi, and all those who tweeted and emailed to us saying we were hopeless with tech tools and that Google Trends is the wrong tool to use since it analyzes only search terms: Um... you might want to brush up a little on your own knowledge. Google Trends ALSO analyses web traffic and that tool is basically similar to Alexa. And as you can see from the images we posted (if you would bother to look before making pronouncements basically in defence of ET's assertion) we were utilizing the website traffic analyzer, not the search term analyzer. Thanks anyway.
Indeed, if you run the same searches through Alexa, you get pretty much the same results. But just for the sake of those who still don't believe us, some of our friends have volunteered to do a detailed study on this and send it to us on Monday.
So yeah, moral of the tale is as stands.
Oooh. Pyala on the defensive. Lovely.
I have worked for years in Website statistics analysis and manipulation and this is the first time I have seen someone use Google Trends for statistics.
Please go have a look at the about page of Google trends:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html
As you can see "website" is not mentioned ONCE, visitors is not mentioned ONCE, and the other normal terms associated with web-traffic.
Quote from the same page:
With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.
Seriously I love this blog but lately honest analysis has been replaced with downright arrogance. And not accepting that you're at fault here, and arguing because of unfounded arrogance when anyone with a few weeks of website experience can see you're cuckoo, will only harm you.
Accept you were wrong and move on. Please.
XYZ while you might be media analyst you are not web analyst, inaccurate and such a wrong use of Google Trends for site stats! Please ask your experts about these figures compared to server stats and u will see how just on 101 level this is wrong. You take a meta analysis from multiple sites and yes please show us your figures!
To toss in my 2 cents outside of Twitter, I think Bilal's comment is fair given Alexa's ranking of Dawn.com and Tribune.com.pk as just a few points apart - can be verified here - http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;3/PK
Its a good tool as it takes 3months into account. My moral of the tale is: it really depends on how you're measuring success and what tools you're using. I do wish Cafe Pyala had taken that into account and qualified their conclusion.
Best regards,
Pyala, you rock! you simply rock! Its funny how ET compares itself to Dawn, and think that the changes in Dawn are because of it.
ET's circulation is almost next to none,and its people should get a reality check, and come out of their fantasy world. To compare itself with the country's most credible newspaper, internationally acknowledged Dawn, is simply ridiculous.
Oh, the Mahim piece also left me speechless. Coming from a city editor is quite hilarious
Defensive? From someone who is not a fanatical fanboy of any paper, I think it was the obsessively defensive ET, as usual, that jumped into the fray to defend their great (junior) leader's claim, and cafe pyala responded with its own counter-argument. For most readers of this site who are non-converts to the ET cause, the jury is still out
Neck to Neck. They must be kidding. And even if ET gets hits is because of the utter bullshit blogs posted on the website. While people visit dawn, jang and other news websites simply for news.
Come on CP and ET! Out with the weapons. Its showtime. But on the serious side, I am astonished to see that ET is at the losing end. Even the boring the news website is faring ahead of them. Moral of the tale to tribune: Dont go ranting about your achievements till you last some 10 15 years in this small print industry.
Please don't even remind me of those bloody blogs! It's like being stuck in a college debate and being forced to listen to frustrated adolescents holding forth on everything under the sun. It's almost as bad as those back page atrocities by the same type of people.
Maybe I am responsible for adding to the traffic on the ET website by checking out their latest blogs, only to share them with all my friends and ridicule. Believe me, it's becoming a bit of a trend for my pals
Hey Pyala, try trending your own site with ET on google trends...:-D I wonder why you missed out on comparing your own blog site with any of the other media sites you mentioned...food for thought
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tribune.com.pk%2C+cafepyala.blogspot.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
@anon47 Agreed. Their blogs give me a few laughs when i am bored to death. so now the tribune guys can be happy that their hits are because of their blogs.
“University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” Henry Kissinger.
(Apply to Pakistan English media and blogosphere.)
xyz -- as i predicted you would disagree with me -- and that's fine -- but if alexa and google trends show, as you say, the same thing, then how come according to alexa tribune.com.pk is ranked 72 in pakistan, just six places behind Dawn.com -- that doesnt seem to be showing up on Google Trends -- also i think one of the anonymous posters has said already that Google Trends has to do with people typing and searching for a particular thing/word/subject --
Anonymous said...
Pyala, you rock! you simply rock! Its funny how ET compares itself to Dawn, and think that the changes in Dawn are because of it.
hahahahahahhahaha
on a side note: I think 90 per cent of cafe pyala's readers have posted on this particular post now
actually the facts should speak for themselves -
and this is for the anon trolls above (most of them in fact)
george fulton -- over 1200 comments on one article and close to 20,000 likes of FB --
fasi zaka -- over 15,000 likes on Facebook for a piece --
Hell, Dr Attaur Rahman's article on the HEC has been shared by over 6500 people via Facebook
you guys (trolls) are right -- there really is no comparison with Dawn :)
---------------------
Other articles routinely shared by hundreds, if not thousands of people on Facebook -- also last time i checked a couple of weeks ago, ET had over 22,000 fans on Facebook (excluding the trolls here of course I presume) and Dawn is probably around 37K -- and this is just in one year -- incidentally, The News has a little over 8,000 fans on FB while Daily Jang has just under 22,000
circulation figures -- well no paper tells the truth so lets not get into that but anecdotal evidence would suggest that The News as well as Dawn are been given tough competition -- Im sure Dawn leads by far in Karachi but the gap will close in the coming years -- as for The News, say, in the Karachi market, it was never that much to begin with (of course we have a gentleman, i mean troll, sorry, here who said that the website of The News is doing better than ET's! hahahahah) -- and the gap between no 2 and no 3 is very little -- I would suggest these trolls go and check with news hawkers in various parts of Karachi and Lahore and they will get a good idea of where the papers stand with respect to each other --
I’ve written a few pieces of Dawn. They are good paymasters and always on time. This is not so with ET. Always late, just like The News and DT.
Also, Dawn has columnists like Ardeshir Cowesjee, Irfan Husain, Kamran Shafi and Nadeem F Paracha on a retainer basis. They get an impressive sum every month to stay with Dawn as writers.
Dawn.com also pays its writers. I know Paracha gets paid very well by them.
ET should have the same system if they want to catch experienced columnists. I personally like ET, though.
Ouch. ORQ. Seems you are on fire.
CP walahs
interesting article, online presence wise I agree I think ET has the superior interface of all online papers but it has become more cluttered with time unfortunately. Where it works is the integration with social media, videos which obviously appeals to the younger crowd. On the other hand you have the virtual group blog mentality in the op-ed pages..this can attract a readership at the same time gets annoying
In the print sense does it exist in places like k-p? I for one haven't seen in there ..so circulation wise (even with dodgy circulation figures by the ABC) I would still give it to DAWN easily.
Final part the online media portal wars has I suspect just begun..what ET definitely has done is to spur the other media groups to revamp their sites and that competition will be getting a lot more interesting.
Ultimately though what will decide things is the balance between "breaking news" vs "quality content"
Omer, all this new 'hits', sharing, etc., business has really confused the issue of impact.
There is secret in the fact that there are writers out there whose articles will have more impact on government and society.
Dawn's Cowesjee has ten times more impact on policy than any ET columnists. Same goes for writers like Kamran Shafi. Also, Dawn's NFP has a lot more impact socially than any English writer either in The News, ET or any other rag.
Let's not get childish, okay. Readers know what writers count in the long run and which writers are just flash-in-the-pan stuff, or stuff ET is full of.
I read both dawn as well ET. But I always take Dawn a lot more seriously than any other English paper in Pakistan.
Mr Lakhani wrote that Dawn and ET were neck and neck - did he say this was in terms of hits? No, he did not. He could very well have meant in terms of 'online presence' - in terms of establishing the website's SE0, FB friendliness, strategy and position in the market.
I think there is a chance that the writers at Cafe Pyala were so eager to prove ET wrong that they did not consider that success can be measured in various ways.
I am also shocked at Express Tribune staff's defense to this post - surely, this is not an argument about numbers alone.
Even a layman can see that Dawn has revamped its website after Tribune was launched. The number of blog posts Dawn uploads has increased since Tribune introduced blogs. This response is testament to the fact that a newspaper which had not changed in years, not in response to The News, The Nation or Daily Times has indeed taken notice.
And we need no analytics, no statistics no percentages to prove this - it is a fact.
These nitty gritty, face saving arguments "oh, well they are this many points" or "we have this many followers" to me are redundant.
The proof is in the fact that this post exists. That every single one of you has visited The Express Tribune website.
If you have not than I will stand corrected.
Is Cowasjee really taken that seriously by the powers that be any more? He may have been once but I think he now repeats himself and has has gone senile and is way past his sell-by date. I personally think Cyril Almeida is far the best writer left on Dawn's otherwise rather tired editorial pages. Thankfully, I can see some changes for the better on that front now, (no ET, it's not just because of you). ET has a refreshing breed of young writers, some bad and some pretty good. It also has Ayesha Siddiqa, Ejaz Haider, Khaled Ahmed and other big names too. And The News boasts quite a glittering array of names from Ayaz Amir to Najam Sethi to Maliha Lodhi, Mosharraf Zaidi, Babar Sattar and many others. It even has a column by Dr AQ Khan! Daily Times, though showing signs of decline, is also well worth a read too. All in all, not a bad collection of columnists if you think about it
I am still waiting for your biting response to George Fulton's 'farewell to Pakistan'. Stop splitting hairs about circulation figures and put that up.
(but I guess Mortenson is next?)
Ummm, guys. I think we might have to sue you. Because this online trend thingy, is like our gig...!
Ummm, guys. I think we might have to sue you. Because this online trend thingy, is like our gig...!
ET is a well-rehearsed, socially acceptable joke.
For the anon planning to sue, the anon who couldn't find the term 'website' and 'visitor' (dude, wrong page) and for the experienced website statistic analysts:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/websites/help/index.html
"With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites. You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites and top searches for each one."
Try to keep up you all, its friggin' 21st century...
Not sure why everyone is getting so worked up. Pyala - I look forward to what your experts turn up about sit hits etc. From a layman's level I would say that site rankings and tallying site hits are two different methodologies of comparison. Also I believe Dawn gets more overseas visitors. So hits from Pakistan may also present a different picture. But anyway, someone else can analyse all that.
In the meantime I have to say I agree with one of the above commentators that in a short amount of time ET has established a major web presence. And its website certainly is the best one in terms of user-friendliness and interactiveness. there's no doubt that there's a healthy (and judging by some of the heat worked up in these comments maybe even unhealthy) competition between the two papers but as a news 'consumer' I feel that's all to the good. Personally I read both online and find they often complement each other well. And the fact that both are trying to innovate is great. Good job to both of them and lets hope in this era of declining newspaper readership they both continue to prosper.
Hello ignorant fools,
Lets make things clear first. Website popularity does not have anything to do with who's more serious or not serious.
Now, as per CP's amazing analysis on Google Trends (which remains a doubtful tool for such purposes, but nonetheless), the results were for all regions. Now if only one restricts that search to the Pakistan region, then the results are much more closer:
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tribune.com.pk,+dawn.com&geo=PK&date=all&sort=0
And tribune's only going up. Dawn is flat or falling.
Anyway. CP, you try to act all impartial about ET and then throw in a punchline in all those articles just to remind us where you're coming from. Pretty Sad. At least stop pretending. Fact is that you guys are biased. Admit it and then you can go on with your bullshit rants about ET.
Tata!
@ flower girl at ET
Kamal siddiqi. comment with your own name. jumped in to save the team, eh?
Here is what is public on facebook.
Dawn facebook likes: 37,211
Tribune.com.pk likes: 22,863
I am a dawn.com staffer. I don't know about the newspaper but I agree that tribune is superior in terms of technology and design but it does suffer from Dawn obsession and a certain patriotic arrogance. Dawn is conservative and old fashioned but it has content that people wait for. Every one who at any point has had a problem with dawn joins tribune. Fine. That is the nature of the beast. But come on guys get real!
Moral of the story. ET did not invent the internet and Social media and blogs. Niether did dawn. Dawn.com just started all of this much before ET. Just a blessing with timming. Nothing else! Congratulation to ET for completing a successful year.
Bilal Umar/Lakhani,
you certainly suffer from that arrogance which comes from being an upstart! No wonder, your your city editor claims that it was love at first sight. And then flower girl was just a stumbling bloke;)
ex-Dawn:
Hmmmm -- as far as good rates are confirmed actually ET is probably better than either -- it is only now that Dawn is paying more to its writers but you will have to ask them the reason for that --
anonymous -- above -- at least have the courage to post under your real name --
takhalus -- 'give it to dawn' -- as has already been said, one paper has been around since 1947 or before in fact -- the other since 2010, so its not bad that comparisons are being made -- as for op ed being blog -- hmm -- not sure what you have been reading but writers like Khaled Ahmed, Ejaz Haider, Feisal Naqvi, Rubina Saigol, Rasul B Rais, Saleem H Ali, Dr Akmal Hussain, Dr Pervez Tahir, Kuldip Nayar (I think I will stop now) are anything but "bloggish"
Ghani -- impact is in terms of on policy -- the passport issue or the Bahrain Pakistani security men issue were all initiated by ET -- other sections of media followed later -- and as for impact well today I got a call from a courier company rep who was asking for a letter writer's number -- the letter writer had complained of poor service related to visas -- and there are numerous other examples -- its not a zero sum game btw as in if Dawn has impact then The News or ET dont -- they all can, and in fact do -- of course the seriousness aspect has to do with longevity of publication and in that regard it is should be no surprise really that Dawn is taken -- for now at least -- more seriously than other papers -- i have worked at Dawn for over 11 years and I am surprised to be saying this but I find it quite boring now -- there is a lot that can be done with it but is not being done -- but of course I am biased --
Also i think an article being shared by over 18000 people on Facebook means quite decisively that it has made an impact --
Omar, since when being anonymous has become a crime. Remember you are fuming in a space that is run anonymously.
Don't underestimate ET, Pyalas. Dawn is the Khwaja Meer Dard of journalism, but ET is Wasi Shah. You'll find more people reading Wasi Shah these days.
Half of Pakistan's population blogs for ET, and it's more fun and can be pretty melodramatic too. I'm surprised that Dawn.com's ranking is still six places better than ET on Alexa.com.
p.s: Hats off to ET for creating new readers of English newspapers in Pakistan.
My biggest problem with Express Tribune is its ridiculous smugness and defensiveness. Dude, if I was breathing down the venerable Dawn's neck in one year, I would at least learn to be cool and relaxed. No such luck with the ET upstarts.
No. Their trolls always insist that Cafe Pyala is out to get them(even when they have been rather kind and needlessly complimentary to them as in this post) and is constantly picking on them. Wrong. Cafe Pyala is happy ripping into everyone. And ET, however high an opinion it has of itself, is not exempt and everyone else gets even more of it when they deserve.
Take Geo for example. The number of anti-Geo and Jang Group stories that appear here are quite glaringly evident. Recently, even Geo's most sensitive crusade, about the closure of Geo Super (a matter of life and death for them)was completely dismantled but went without any obvious Geo trolls or fishy anonymous defences. Ok, they are losers, you may think, but it's more about confidence.
On the contrary, ET is obsessed with criticism and is childish enough to rush to defend itself in a ridiculously insecure manner. I think ET is in danger of becoming a small religious cult rather than the newspaper it is. In other words, relax ET and please grow up!
Bas kardo bas!
Who is Wasi Shah?
How about Jang being the Nasim Hijazi of media?
Omer very convinently ignored the question about ET being late in paying its contrinuters. Well, Omer?
Shame on CP for calling Urdu papers atrocious. They represent 99% of Pakistanis and no one can beat their readership. You filthy elite class exploiters can rant on and on but it will be of no use.
CP called the Urdu paper's WEBSITES atrocious, not Urdu papers themselves. Please learn to read before ejaculating your silly bile.
Bilal Lakhani? The dude doesn't even know who Amitabh Bachchan is FFS.
DAWN as far as I know has never been behind in technology. It launched its Nokia ovi app before ET. Secondly, remove IHT from ET and then see the paper going down. Furthermore, ET is riddled with factual errors. It is filled with tabloid-like details.
And it is not the best looking paper either. I believe Pakistan Today looks much better.
@Anon 8.45pm
I think you should take laxatives before commenting here. I guess you also don't read CP regularly. They always write against the Urdu press. People like you who have no connection to common Pakistanis are the real problem of this country.
It's been a while since I responded. Just thought I'd give people enough rope and all that. And they seem to have grasped it with both hands. A new post with the promised detail analysis is on its way but I just wanted to quickly respond to some of the assertions in the comments.
@Anon939: You wrote: "I have worked for years in Website statistics analysis and manipulation..." And yet not learnt how to navigate through the web it seems. As @Anon1137 pointed out, my friend, you're quoting from the wrong page.
You also wrote: "Seriously I love this blog but lately honest analysis has been replaced with downright arrogance. And not accepting that you're at fault here, and arguing because of unfounded arrogance when anyone with a few weeks of website experience can see you're cuckoo, will only harm you." Right. Do read our new post on the same subject, which should be up in a while, and let us know whether we should continue to trust your expertise.
@Umair: You wrote: "XYZ while you might be media analyst you are not web analyst, inaccurate and such a wrong use of Google Trends for site stats! Please ask your experts about these figures compared to server stats and u will see how just on 101 level this is wrong."
You're entitled to your opinions but not your own version of facts. As I said, read the new post and then let us know who's right and wrong.
@Jahanzaib Haque: Rankings - which are for within Pakistan only not overall - for Dawn and ET may be 4 or 6 places apart on Alexa but it doesn't really tell us a whole lot without other detailed data. We'll provide a more detailed analysis in a new post so you can compare.
You also wrote: "it really depends on how you're measuring success and what tools you're using. I do wish Cafe Pyala had taken that into account and qualified their conclusion." I'm sorry but we never claimed to be 'measuring success' at all. That is an interpretation that kneejerk ET defenders imposed on it. We were only dealing with the specific issue of an assertion about web traffic.
@Anon1152: Really?? You really want to compare a small no-money blog with the multimillion dollar infrastructure of a newspaper?? And that is your idea of a comeback? Wow. Your expectations from mainstream news media are rather low. (Btw if you check it properly, Google Trends says it has no data on us. But then we're not the ones claiming neck and neck with mainstream news media either.)
@Omar R. Qureshi: Have already addressed the rankings issue above. As for GT only doing search terms, once again, you're wrong.
You also wrote: "on a side note: I think 90 per cent of cafe pyala's readers have posted on this particular post now." Haha. Are you claiming ET staff are our only readers?
@Flower Girl @ ET: Nice spin but no dice I'm afraid.
Anon354 and Anon129: Sigh. Sorry but there is no cure for idiocy of the sort you exhibit. It's terminal. Mian khush raho, hum dua kar chalay.
@ XYZ: Thanks for that comprehensive response :).
You say you are dealing with "the specific issue of an assertion about web traffic" - I have read the sentence again and again - I see no assertion.
"Online we are neck and neck" - where does this say traffic?
It means online presence. Perhaps you disagree - but this post "proving" on the basis if the ever reliable Google was nothing short of petty.
In the words of mother "beta, baat nahi pakra kartay."
XYZ: That was the most petty reply ever!
Dude...get a life.
And even if your amazing upcomign analysis proves that ET is way behind dawn, who gives a shit.
Fact is that ET's website is a hit. Its doing great. And you're doing a really petty thing by doign this whole hugeass analysis of yours.
Wow. Stopped caring about who's right a while back.
Am now more entertained by the all out flame war between CP and ET staff.
I think you guys should take this outside and kick each other's asses. Like adults.
@ bilal umar. grow up! and dont be a cry baby. this website aint for losers like you. and the google trend proves how 'hit' the website is. no wonder, its at the lowest of the chart. and why do you people are stubborn about making et the most read website. Hello! it is not. its just a hype that will in two years simply wipe out. mark my words. only two years. poof. and there will be nothing left of et's dear website.
who is flower girl>
If ET staffers spent a little more time doing what they are paid to do, and a little less whining 'Cafe Pyala is being mean to me waaah!', ET might be a better paper than it is now.
The funny thing, of course, is that pyala has been remarkably kind to them in the post but no, tribune trolls keep insisting that pyala is government and they are geo super.
So, dear flower children, stop feeding your irrational persecution complex and edit some copy or something. its hardly at the all out flame war level an earlier posted mentioned yet but at some point, cp's patience with you is probably going to run out, patloon utarna will follow, and while they might not emerge at the end of it smelling of roses, you guys are guaranteed to come out of it looking like shit.
have nice day.
@xyz... kiun deewaar say sar maartay ho bhai, jahaalat ka koi muqaabla nahi
stop being this kind to all the flower girls @ et, XYZ. and say something about Mr Lakhani Jr claiming, oh no no, saying that he has got the most talented staff in the region. ha ha ha ha
Anon guys explaining on behalf of XYZ. Looks like they are also CP writers and do not have the guts to come out in the open. I was NOT expecting better from them though.
@Anon927: Your comment has been removed because it is unnecessarily personal and defamatory. You can critique something without resorting to such things.
I have been waiting for CP to write a truthful(ie REALLY nasty)post on ET, with particular focus on their blogs and Speakers Corner (shudder). Would love to hear the shrieks of outrage from the True Believers. I hope the wailing from the cry babies will be loud enough for mama to stop eating her chicken pie in Zamzama
@ anon 948... how dare you say that. the Speakers Corner is the only place where we know how nasty our police behave with journalists (read et subbers) and what drivers of the entire nation are thinking and saying (sometimes on the phone). measure your words before speaking :p
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