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EARLY GRADING HAS TOP OLYMPIC SITES EARNING STRONG MARKS

          Five days into the Olympic Games, Internet analysts
     have begun reviewing the performance of Olympic Web sites.
     The WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE's David Sweet calls the
     Olympic coverage at the Sydney Morning Herald "unmatched,"
     while his "hits" include CNNSI.com for its Olympics
     timeline, which is "just right for a harried Web surfer." 
     Sites that "miss" include the home page of the IBM powered
     www.olympics.com, as "dedicating the bulk of the page to a
     list of results gives it a dull feel."  Meanwhile, Sweet
     adds that the Games are "failing to captivate U.S. sports
     sites," as on Monday afternoon, the top story on ESPN.com,
     SportsLine.com, FoxSports.com, CNNSI.com and The Sporting
     News Online "touted football or baseball, not the Olympics"
     (WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE, 9/20).  In S.F., Tommy 
     Cummings reviews the sites and gives the "edge" in Olympic
     content to olympics.com "simply because it gets to the
     point. ... By comparison, NBCOlympics.com's content is so
     diverse (21,000 pages) and mixed so closely with its
     cutting-edge applications that the hard-news content gets
     lost in the presentation" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 9/20).
          HAS NBC MISSED GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY? In Atlanta, Frances
     Katz reviews NBCOlympics.com and writes that the site "seems
     to be what they used to call 'brochure ware,' that is,
     nothing more than an online advertisement for the network's
     televised Olympics coverage."  NBC has "completely missed
     the opportunity" that the Web site "gave it." Meanwhile,
     Katz adds that MSNBC.com has "better pictures, more
     information and just flat out better reporting" than
     NBCOlympics.com (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 9/20).  The WALL
     STREET JOURNAL's Steve McKee writes that NBCOlympics.com
     "wanted me to vote on my favorite sport."  McKee writes,
     "BUT HOW CAN I VOTE IF I CAN'T FIND WHERE?"  McKee: "This
     wasn't fun" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/20).
          SURFIN IN SYDNEY: CA-based Keynote -- which measures a
     Web site's accessibility and its loading speed -- reports
     NBCOlympics.com "usually took less than 2.5 seconds to load
     on surfers' screens" between September 11-17.  Overall, the
     site was available 98% of the time.  But olympics.com "was a
     bit slower" than its three-second weekly average and
     "usually took less than four seconds to load" between Friday
     and Sunday.  PC Data Online's latest list of Top Ten Sports
     Sites included NBCOlympics.com (No. 5) and olympics.com (No.
     8) (USA TODAY, 9/20)...olympics.com reported that swimming
     was the most popular sport for users on Sunday, with most of
     the traffic coming from the U.S. (29%), Australia (13%) and
     Canada (5%).  The three most popular athletes on
     olympics.com were Ian Thorpe, Ryoko Tamura and Simon
     Whitfield (olympics.com).
          ALL THE WEB MEANS TO SOME IS MORE WORK: In Atlanta,
     Robbyn Footlick noted that media outlets are using their
     newspaper, magazine and broadcast reporters "to feed their
     separate Web sites."  SI's Rick Reilly: "I can remember when
     you came to SI and (writing) once a week was enough.  Now
     you have to write 12 times a week.  I'm going for the
     triathlon of SI writing -- the magazine, the Web and SI
     Presents" (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 9/20).

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