PUBLIC MARKS from mozkart with tag trends

t the beginning of March, USA Today, US’ largest newspaper, launched its redesigned website with much emphasis on reader interactivity, user-generated content, and providing social networking tools such as reader and reporter profiles. Executive editor Kinsey Wilson, who has led USAToday.com’s development, explains how the online edition is embracing social trends while sticking to the paper’s journalistic heritage.

comScore has released some intriguing data about Web usage internationally. They say that 14 of the top 25 US Web properties now attract more visitors from outside the US than from within. That includes the top 5 US properties - Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network, Microsoft, Google Sites, and eBay. This is significant because it's a continuation of a long-term trend for online population to be more distributed around the world - particularly in China and the rest of Asia. Indeed comScore says that the US share of global online population has fallen from 65% to less than 25% in 10 years. We've been tracking these trends on R/WW all this year - in September we noted that as a percentage of world Internet penetration, Asia increased from 35.6% to 36.5%. This incremental increase is happening month by month, whereas the US figure is staying static. As Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said: "The fact that more than three-quarters of the traffic to Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft is now coming from outside of the U.S. is indicative of what a truly global medium the Internet has become."