BBC reveals most popular stories

The BBC News website has launched a new feature that lets people see which stories are the most popular.

For the first time visitors to the site can now see which news stories people are reading most, which stories they are emailing to friends most and which video clips are being watched most - minute-by-minute throughout the day.

Pete Clifton, head of BBC News Interactive, said:

“This is a fascinating new service for our millions of readers – they will be able to see exactly what people are reading and watching in any part of the world in real-time.

“We have a huge amount of information about our traffic and it makes sense that we share it with the audience.”

On the ‘Most Popular Now’ page – BBC News website readers will find a world map with a list of the ten most popular stories read by users of the site across the world – data all generated within seconds of the actual pages being read.

To find out what the most popular stories are around the globe – readers simply click on the area of the world they want to know about and the list of top stories automatically sweeps into the top ten for that region. As a result people can compare the stories that come top with European readers with those in the US, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.

Other features include a live news traffic monitor which measures news consumption and shows whether it is a quieter or busier day than average, and an archive of text and audio video clips.

Click on the 'Most popular - Day so far' tab and users can see how the popularity of stories develops and changes hour-by-hour throughout the day.

Readers will be able to find the information via links on the front page and on the right hand side of every story on the site.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/live_stats/html/map.stm