In August, CNN celebrated iReport’s 5th anniversary and announced a redesign of the site was in the works. The redesign is here with the goal to create the largest “social network for news,” according to Lila King, Participation Director at CNN who heads up iReport.
Both individual iReporters profile pages and group pages have gotten major updates, making them easier to navigate the different pieces of content (photos, videos, etc) that a user has contributed to an “assignment.” King also described her excitement around the fact the iReport will be less hidden at ireport.cnn.com and there will now be many more opportunities to contribute to an assignment while accessing content across all of CNN’s content.
Katie Hawkins-Gaar, a Senior Producer at CNN who works on the iReport team described three of the main new social features, which she said they’ll publish a blog post with more detail tomorrow:
Three of the biggest changes are the personalized homepage, which populates based on what groups you’re part of and which iReporters you’re following; the new story pages with BIG beautiful photos and video; and groups that are organized around topics where you can find out about new assignments based on what areas you’re interested in.
Here are a few major facts about the reach of CNN’s social news network:
- CNN’s iReport has more than 955,000 registered “iReporters” (Source: iReport Server Log Data) with an average of 2.5 million unique users each month through September 2011. (Source: ComScore).
- iReport experienced its highest traffic day on June 11, 2008 with 2.8 million page views (Source: Omniture.)
- In its history the community has brought in 994,615 videos and photos with an average submission of 15,591 iReports each month on iReport.com. (Source: iReport server log data.)
- Reports are vetted for CNN with the same rules as any other kinds of footage from CNN staff, affiliates, stringers, story subjects and other parties.
- Typically CNN vets between 5 and 10 perce nt of the iReports that are received, though the number and percentage varies widely based on the news cycle.
- CNN has received an iReport submission from every country in the world.
