Bloomberg passes Reuters online

Bloomberg News now has more visitors to its website than rival Reuters, reports Douglas McIntyre of 24/7WallSt.com.

McIntyre writes, “According to February comScore Inc. data, monthly unique visitors to Bloomberg sites reached 11.7 million. The Reuters number was 11.3 million, about the same as CNNMoney’s.

“The gain in Bloomberg is unexpected in many quarters. Its website is barely a website at all by current standards — hardly more than a collection of headlines. The Bloomberg BusinessWeek site at least carries the hallmarks of a site that has benefited from some design elements and thoughtfulness toward the reader.

“The Reuters primary site, on the other hand, is photo and video rich, and designed for broad consumer access. It bristles with social media features meant to draw traffic from the Web 2.0 universe.

“The move of Bloomberg to its current perch might be attributed to it huge news gathering organization, made up of hundreds and hundreds of reporters, writers and editors around the world. This force has as its primary goal to create content for Bloomberg terminal subscribers who make up almost all of the company’s revenue. The Bloomberg sites get a tremendous benefit from this news enterprise.

“The competition between Bloomberg and Reuters has played out almost completely in the terminal sales business, in which Bloomberg has taken more than a modest lead. Observers often have questioned why the two companies have any substantial presence on the consumer Internet at all, and the industrywide drop in adverting rates makes the question more pertinent.”

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