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).
