Digital Spy

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Digital Spy
URL http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Entertainment
Registration Free/restricted to ISP e-mail - Use of anonymous email such as Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail etc with one time payment of a User Verification Fee
Owner Hachette Filipacchi (UK) Ltd
Created by Digital Spy Ltd

Digital Spy (or DS as it is often known by its users) is a British Entertainment and Media website, noted for its extensive Big Brother coverage and forums. According to comScore figures, it is the fourth largest British entertainment website with 2.1 million unique users on its news site and 3.1 million forum users.[1] According to Alexa Internet traffic statistics, as of June 2008, Digital Spy is the 83rd most popular website in the UK[2] and has an overall Alexa ranking of 1,862.[3]

The site was first established on January 18, 1999 as digiNEWS before the then member sites of the digiNEWS network were merged and Digital Spy Ltd was formally incorporated in 2001.[4] The website's latest design was launched on March 1, 2006. Digital Spy has been described as "the nation's favourite showbiz website" by one magazine.[5]

On April 9, 2008 it was announced that the website was purchased earlier in the month by magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, a subsidiary of the Lagardère Group[1][6] for a "significant" sum.[7]

Contents

[edit] Forums

The site also features forums which went live in March 2000. The forums themselves incorporate one of the largest media-based discussion centres on the internet, with topics covering the above as well as computing, telephony, gaming, politics, radio, sport and general discussion, which also has sub forum called chatter for less serious general discussion. On the 10th May 2007, the number of registered users climbed above the 200,000 mark. In February 2008 this had grown to over 245,000[8]. To date over 87,500 users have never participated in the forums.[9]

The forums are powered by twelve front end Apache HTML servers running on FreeBSD and a cluster of four MySQL database servers. The forums utilise the vBulletin software.

During Big Brother over 40,000 posts per day can be added to the forums - currently around 180,000 posts are made each week. The peak usage during Big Brother was in January 2007 was a new record of over 17,000 concurrent online users in the aftermath of Jade Goody's eviction. [10] In December 2007 after the end of an X-Factor show the Digital Spy Forums saw over 20,000 online users and registered over 320,000 pages displayed between 10 and 11pm on that evening. In July 2007, The Times reported on the number of customers who had registered on the forums to express their concerns and negative aspects of the Virgin Media cable service.[11]

Representatives of several major companies including Top Up TV[12], Joost, Sky[13], Goodmans and Amstrad CEO Sir Alan Sugar[7] are registered members that post on the forum.

[edit] TV Guide

As of Friday November 17, 2006 the Digital Spy website has a TV Guide powered by DigiGuide. This was changed in last quarter of 2007 to a new TV Guide powered by TV Genius[14].

[edit] DS:BB

Digital Spy:Big Brother, or more popularly abbreviated, DS:BB, brings the latest news stories, and during the series records Live Updates, in which forum members record up-to-the-minute updates from the live streaming. The site also, during the series, has columns written by journalists such as Jenni Trent Hughes as well as ex-Big Brother housemates. In 2002 DS:BB won a WebUser gold award for its Big Brother 3 coverage.[15]

[edit] Digital Spy Soap Awards

The first annual Digital Spy Soap Awards were launched at the end of 2007 - voting running until the end of January 2008. Categories include - Best onscreen partnership; Best Newcomer; Sexiest Male / Female; Most popular Actor/Actress; Best Single Episode; Best Story line.[16][17] [18] [19] The 2007 Awards were annonced on the 21st March 2008.[20][21]

[edit] Popularity

On January 17, 2007, the site logged 3.93 million page impressions, a figure that then rose to a new best of 4.07 million page impressions - some 180,000 unique visitors - on January 18, 2007. The previous record was 3 million impressions, set as the seventh series of Big Brother began in May 2006.[22] By January 2008 the site had grown so that during the first 7 days of January 2008 4 of them saw over 3 million page views. December 2007 saw nearly 3 million unique visitors come to the Digital Spy Forums and the site as a whole deliverted over 80 million page views. The daily average number of unique visitors to the forums has grown to over 150,000 by January 2008.

In an article in The Independent Mike Anderson of The Sun said "When you go to the world of online there's a whole load of new competitors, which you've got to reframe yourself on. TMZ, Digital Spy, plus the BBC, Channel 4, they all come into your zone as a competitor. Six months ago, Digital Spy was bigger than [Sun entertainment brand] Bizarre. It's no longer the case because we've come into that space."[23]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Brook, Stephen (2008-04-09). Magazine publisher buys DigitalSpy. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2008-04-09.
  2. ^ Top Sites United Kingdom. Alexa Internet. Retrieved on April 09, 2008.
  3. ^ digitalspy.co.uk Traffic Details from Alexa. Alexa Internet. Retrieved on April 09, 2008.
  4. ^ Digital Spy History. Retrieved on July 19, 2006.
  5. ^ "James Sutton; John Paul: Hollyoaks". attitude. October 2007. p.44.
  6. ^ Lagardere buys UK web portal Digitalspy.co.uk. Forbes. Thomson Financial News (2008-04-09). Retrieved on 2008-04-09.
  7. ^ a b Byrne, CIar (2008-04-28). Hachette spies a good match with a digital duo. The Independent. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
  8. ^ Digital Spy forum users (see bottom of page). Digital Spy. Retrieved on 2008-01-09.
  9. ^ Inactive Digital Spy Forum Users. Digital Spy. Retrieved on 2008-03-17.
  10. ^ Digital Spy's best ever figures. Retrieved on Jan 19, 2007.
  11. ^ Private equity targets Virgin Media. Times Online (2007-07-08). Retrieved on 2007-07-08.
  12. ^ Top Up TV. Retrieved on Jan 09, 2009.
  13. ^ Sky. Retrieved on Jul 02, 2007.
  14. ^ Digital Spy TV Guide. Retrieved on Jan 9, 2008.
  15. ^ About Digital Spy. Retrieved on July 19, 2006.
  16. ^ Digital Spy Soap Awards. Retrieved on January 9, 2008.
  17. ^ Top soaps compete for Spy's awards. Retrieved on January 9, 2008.
  18. ^ The Bill - DS Soap Awards. Retrieved on January 9, 2008.
  19. ^ BBC - Eastenders - Digital Spy Soap Awards. Retrieved on January 9, 2008.
  20. ^ BBC News Article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7308450.stm
  21. ^ Soaps - News - 'Enders, 'Oaks win big at DS Soap Awards - Digital Spy
  22. ^ Digital Spy's best ever figures. Retrieved on July 23, 2007.
  23. ^ Mike Anderson - In the court of 'The Sun' king. The Independent. Retrieved on Jan 09, 2008.

[edit] External links