Highly informative visualization of news consumption on The New York Times website throughout a day in June 2009.

The big yellow rings are access from a desktop and the red rings are access from a mobile device.

Highlights:

1. demand for online news differs from access point to access point.
2. mobile traffic is strong in the morning and in the afternoon when people are going to and from work
3. PC traffic is strongest around lunchtime.
4. mobile demand for news is getting bigger
5. mobile traffic in some countries it is already bigger than PC access.

The New York Times site traffic, World View, June 25, 2009 from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.

More details after the jump at The Guardian

I was meeting with the folks at The Guardian a few days ago and an interesting question was thrown out on the table asking if the presentation of online news can provide a competitive advantage over time. This could be quantified in several ways including attracting new users, longer time spent on site, more click throughs on articles or higher ad payouts for new layouts.

The main concern was that even if money and time is invested in coming up with new and innovative ways to present online news, it is so easy to copy, that the advantage would be short lived. What is more valuable investing in content creation or content display?

They are one in the same in my opinion and both have to be brilliant to win.

My feeling is that innovative news displays are mandatory to differentiate content and engage users. Good ideas will always be nabbed, copied and most of the time improved upon. But that is the nature of service innovation and not doing something new for fear of it being copied means you will just miss out on delivering new readership opportunities. Some that will suck and some that will work.

I am going to use the New York Times Skimmer service as an example of an offering that attempts to display the same underlying article set in different ways. Although there are 7 unique displays for the Skimmer service, three somewhat unique ones are shown below using the Dealbook blog content:

Lines Display

Fridge Display

Flow Display