#2 Christmas NDM Story ..

Twitter more than triples its UK revenues to £46m

Twitter more than tripled its UK revenues this year to £46m, and is expected to jump to more than £180m by the end of 2015, according to a new report. The social network's UK business will make £46.3m this year, with £43.6m from advertising and the remainder other revenues such as licensing, according to a new report by eMarketer.

• eMarketer estimates that Google's UK digital ad revenues will be £2.6bn this year, rising to £3.4bn by the end of 2015.
• Facebook UK generated £333m in revenue this year, and is forecast to make £516m by the end of 2015.
• Twitter UK is growing at a staggering rate, albeit from a low base, with revenues of just £1.3m as recently as 2011.

The research company estimates that by the end of 2015 Twitter UK will make £180m, with £171m of that from advertising. The UK is becoming an increasingly important revenue generator for Twitter, accounting for 15.2% of global income by 2015. This year Twitter UK accounted for 11.5% of the company's global income, according to the report.

As twitter is so popular, its inevitable that the revenue would increase over the years. From celebrities to normal people, everybody has twitter and so its clear that something that attracts such a huge audience would be successful and make a lot of money. 

#1 Christmas NDM Story ..

Facebook, Zuckerberg and banks face IPO lawsuit over misleading investors

Facebook Inc, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and dozens of banks must face a lawsuit accusing the social media company of misleading investors about its health before its $16bn initial public offering, a federal judge said. In a decision made public on Wednesday, US district judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan said investors could pursue claims that Facebook should have, prior to its May 2012 IPO, disclosed internal projections on how increased mobile usage and product decisions might reduce future revenue.

"The company's purported risk warnings misleadingly represented that this revenue cut was merely possible when, in fact, it had already materialised," Sweet wrote in his 83-page decision. "Plaintiffs have sufficiently pleaded material misrepresentation(s) that could have and did mislead investors regarding the company's future and current revenues." In a statement, Facebook said: "We continue to believe this suit lacks merit and look forward to a full airing of the facts." Facebook went public at $38 per share. The Menlo Park, California-based company's share price rose as high as $45 on 18 May 2012, its first day of trading, but quickly fell below the offering price and stayed there for more than a year.

Investors including pension funds in Arkansas, California and North Carolina claimed that Facebook negligently concealed material information from its IPO registration statement that it had provided to its underwriters' analysts. They sought damages resulting from their having sold or holding onto the shares as they fell below the IPO price, bottoming at $17.55 on 4 September 2012.

The lawsuit does not allege fraud. More than 40 defendants were sued, including Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Facebook shares were down 60 cents at $54.26 in afternoon trading. In court papers, the defendants had countered that Facebook had no obligation to make the requested disclosures, which they called immaterial, and that Facebook's actual results exceeded original projections.

They added that the US Securities and Exchange Commission and other courts have said revenue projections need not be disclosed before an IPO because they are "inherently speculative and unreliable". Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Mary Claire Delaney declined to comment. Max Berger and Thomas Dubbs, who represent the lead plaintiffs, were not immediately available for comment.

Notes ..

How Facebook Changed the World .. 

Part One ..

The weapons of the Arab Spring wasn't guns or bombs but really it was the INTERNET and the mobile phones.

For the first time in history world changing events where recorded hour by hour by the people on the street.

People always go on holiday to the capital Tunis but a few miles away is a place called Sidi Bouzid which is always forgotten and is very poor. 

December 2010 a 27 year old man called Mohammed, a young fruit seller tired to committed suicide causing riots and huge problems in the Arab countries.

He, along side other fruit sellers were tormented by corrupt local officials, they would take there fruit and demand bribes for it all back.

Friday, December 17th 

• Mohammed set up his stand to sell fruit near the central mosque. 
• He didn't have the money needed to pay the bribe to be there.
• A police officer took all his stuff, smacked and spat in his face.
• He got upset and started to cry, the other police officers started to kick him.
• Mohammed went to the town hall to complain, they refused to open the door or listen to him.
• He then bought a bottle of fuel, came back to where he was standing, in front of everyone he set himself a light, he burnt himself because of he had no money, no job, no prospects.
• The town being so small, everyone heard and slowly the news spread around the Arab world.

Everyone of those protesters had a tool in their pocket that would spread the news around the world, a mobile phone.
The police officers threw tear gas at them, they tried to beat the people up, the confrontation became a street war.

Tunis may have been a popular holiday destination but under the leadership of BEN ALI, it was also a police state and the press was censored. 
Ben Ali didn't want his people getting influenced by outside views.

They new, one way of sharing the news around was facebook.
Tunis had over 2 million facebook users (1/5 of the population).
Ben Ali blocked all access to political sites, he rarely interfered with facebook.

Slim Amamou

• A young computer programmer lived in the capital found the videos of the events in Sidi Bouzid.
• This man had little in common with the fruit sellers a part from the hatred of Ben Ali.
• They were unhappy that they weren't allowed to speak up, he stopped people from having a personality.

Ben Ali liked to view himself as a enlighten modern leader but in reality he was a dictator controlling the Arab world just like:

- Hussein Mubarak in Egypt
- Muammar Gaddafi in Libya
- Mashala Assad in Syria 

1/4 of people in Tunis had broadband and 90% had mobile phones.

Censorship however was no obstacle, with the internet there is no single central hub but instead an infinite number of pathways to communicate by routing messages to other net works in different countries they were able to avoid Tunis's censorship altogether and gain access to any forbidden site.

If the bloggers where court posting illegal images or information online they would face detention and torture.

Slim Amamou posted he video on his own facebook page and soon it turned viral. 

Within days the phone footage was picked up by the Arab main TV channels and was being seen by the whole of Tunis.

Copycat riots broke out in other places but Tunis remained quite.

They hacked into the unions website and sent a message asking it's members to join them in Mohammed Ali's square in the centre of Tunis.

The authorities knew something was going to happen therefore blocking roads up but the people were one step ahead of them, they would contact each other via facebook warning them not to travel on the roads the police officers were standing on.

 A huge number of people gathered altogether to protest and express their anger.

Slim wanted to make sure that even if his phone was taken people would still be able to see what was going on, he installed the software which would allow live streaming on his phone - people watched live on their phones and computers.

Ben Ali responded ruthlessly however nobody listened, he got so desperate he was photographed with the young fruit seller Mohammed but nobody was impressed.

150 people died.

13th January - Ben Ali used traditional media to win his people over, a TV broadcast. However nobody cared. Too much had happened for them to accept Ben Ali.

Just in one day the whole of Tunis had changed, there was a huge revolution. 10's of thousands where gathered along the roads. 

They wanted the whole government system down not just Ben Ali.

Ben Ali's supervisors could see the writing on the walls, how then wanted him out.

14th January - The advisors told Ben Ali he was jeopardising the safety of the country.
That night - Ben Ali fled the country.

Everyone felt so free.
Ben Ali ruled over the country for over 24 years but it took only 28 days to get him out from a small protest in a southern small town to the great fall of the whole government.

Weekly NDM story ..

The world of "smart" is heating up

Mobile's share of traffic is on sharp ascent

According to Econsultancy's recent survey of mostly UK and US-based businesses, for almost 3 in 4 companies (72%) mobile accounts for more than 10% of traffic. The proportion of companies which say that more than 20% of their traffic can be attributed to mobile has more than doubled in the last 12 months, from less than a fifth (17%) in 2012 to 41% in 2013.

A quarter of display ad spend to go to mobile by 2014

Mobile should represent nearly one-quarter of digital display ad spend in 2014 (£340m or 24%, up from £240m or 19% in 2013), according to GroupM estimates.

GroupM predicts that total digital ad spend will continue to grow strongly in 2014, and mobile advertising will grow at almost 3.5 times the rate of the digital market as a whole.

Two-thirds of your Facebook friends ignore your posts

Each user post on Facebook is seen by an average of 35% of the user's friends, according to a study led by Stanford University researcher, who collaborated with three Facebook data scientists. Posts that do not receive likes or comments tend to be seen by even less friends: an average 28.9% of a user's network.

@guardian: connected and influential

@guardian's followers are much more likely to interact with and propagate its tweets than for example, @telegraph's – according to Twitonomy's analysis of tweets in the past two months:

• 90% of @guardian's tweets are re-tweeted vs. 72% of @telegraph's
• 89% of @guardian's tweets are favourited vs. 61% of @telegraph's
• @guardian's tweet is re-tweeted an average of 45 times vs. 16 times for @telegraph's tweets

Smartphones are crucial for researching and tablets – for purchasing

eMarketer forecasts that 84% of tablet owners and 75% of smartphone owners shop on their devices. It also distinguishes between shopping and purchase, with 63% of tablet owners and 39% of smartphone owners making an actual purchase via their devices during 2013. These distinctions make smartphones important for research and showrooming, while tablets – for both, researching and purchasing.

Are we too sexy for a smart shirt?

Startup OMsignal are launching a smart shirt capable of reading a person's heart rate, breathing levels and movement. The shirt meant to be worn under everyday clothes or on its own at the gym. The data it collects is sent to a computer or smartphone app where the user can view instant and long-term exertion, stress and even mood.

Weekly NDM Story ..

Mail Online passes 10m daily browsers ..

Mail Online continues to break traffic records, topping 10 million daily average unique browsers for the first time in November. The digital juggernaut is yet to see a significant slowing in traffic growth, with more than 168 million monthly unique browsers in November after hitting 150 million for the first time in October, according to latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for national newspaper websites published on Thursday.

• Daily browser numbers grew 8.29% compared to October, with monthly user numbers up 9.2%. 
• Mail Online cracked the 150 million monthly browser mark for the first time in the October report, meaning it has added 15 million browsers in a month.

The figure is more than 50% of Independent.co.uk's total monthly unique browsers in October. For the second month running, the Independent and London Evening Standard websites did not publish monthly ABC figures. Mail Online said that it achieved a record day of traffic on 20 November, with 13,381,032 daily unique browsers.

• The site achieved 38.6m global video plays last month, 
• 10% higher than October, averaging nearly 1.3m plays a day.

Investment in mobile and social continues to pay dividends for Associated Newspapers stablemate Metro.co.uk, which cracked 20 million monthly browsers for the first time, with growth up 24.42% month on month. Daily browser numbers rose 27.52% to 875,740.

Mirror Group Digital also lifted its game with double-digit growth in daily average and monthly unique browsers, to 1,863,344 and 40,725,031 respectively. Guardian News & Media's website network, theguardian.com, which includes MediaGuardian, reported 83,957,033 monthly browsers in November, up 6.6%. Daily browsers rose 8.14% to 4,686,914. Telegraph.co.uk took a backward step in November with daily browsers down 3.62% to 3,033,924, and monthly browsers down 4.95% to 60,639,635.

Mail Online

Daily average browsers: 10,403,48

Month-on-month change: +8.29%

Year-on-year change: +46.34%

Monthly browsers: 168,070,838

Month-on-month: +9.2%

The Guardian

Daily average browsers: 4,686,914

Month-on-month change: +8.14%

Year-on-year change: +18.32%

Monthly browsers: 83,957,033

Month-on-month: 6.6%

Exam Essay ..

The development of new and digital media means the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production. Discuss the argument for and against this view.

New and Digital media has opened us up to a world of accessing any information whenever wherever; through the use of tablets and Smartphone’s the audience now feel that they are in fact in power. When considering to what extent does the development of new and digital media mean that the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production, could be argued that in real facts the audience have been subconsciously brainwashed into thinking they have control when in reality it’s the complete opposite and really the media regulator everything. Pluralists truly believe that the media offer us a variety of products, giving us freedom to do whatever we like, for example, Web 2.0 allows the audience to become producers of their own text. However; Marxists have different thoughts and ideas, they believe the media maintain the ideological hegemony and have power over the middle class society. For example, the government and police keeps an eye on what happens over the internet and so has the power to put a stop to anything.

Pluralist argue the audience are in control of the media, we have freedom to think what we want and do what we like, over 18 million people now have blogs, we have access to global information and democratisation. Audiences are perceived as capable of manipulating the media and having access to “the plural values of society” enabling them to “conform, accommodate or reject”. They believe audiences are smart enough to accept and decline anything in the media. For example, according to statistics 57% of 9-19 year olds had come into contact with pornographic material online (Tanya Brown 2008). This fact just highlights the freedom an audience have, which answers the question that the audience does have a lot of power because of new and digital media. 

However, control of the media is said to be in the hands of an elite who allow a considerable degree of flexibility in production choices therefore indicating that the audience have power but only to a certain extent, they might feel they have freedom but really they don’t because of censorship. In terms of blogs and web pages, Andrew Keen believes they’re just millions of monkeys typing nonsense. Marxist believe that the media have dumbed down their output and construct texts simply to generate mass audiences, the audiences therefore have adapted to the “dumbed down” media, which again shows that the audience is being controlled by the hegemony leaders which keeps them the ruling class and the dominant ideology. 

Rupert Murdoch says "The internet has given readers much more power, the world is changing and newspapers have to adapt" this proclamation states that new and digital media developments have changed the way the audience access the internet. For someone who is so strong minded and powerful in the media, who owns a huge conglomerate, News Corporation, to say that newspapers have to adapt because of the new and digital media shows that the audience really do have much more power in terms of production and consumption. Through New and Digital media, the more traditional ways of consuming news are dying out because audiences now turn to the online version which gives them more power when consuming the information. 

On the other hand, Marxist criticises Pluralists, they believe the mass media still maintains the dominant ideologies of ruling class. According to Marxist Millband, the media have a huge role to play in the media which is basically spreading the dominate values of the ruling class because they control all the information the audience receive. Therefore making the audience believe they have no power and are really under control of the ruling class. The Frankfurt School Study (1930’s), a group of philosophers where concerned with the rise and impact of the media industries on the society because it has a huge effect on the audience the media have the power to control a person, therefore making them powerless as they’re programmed into thinking and acting a certain way. Linking this to the hypodermic needle model of communication suggesting that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted but the audience. 

Furthermore, Pluralist argue media content isn't focused on dominate ideology but by their audience. The rise of citizen journalism and users generated content (UGC) has empowered the audience in terms of production and consumption through the development of new and digital media. Since the audience now can create the news also with the help of the new Smartphone’s and tablets which makes it easier for one to post their own news. A great example of UGC is the incident with Rodney King in 1992, a man who was almost beat to death by the LA police which was seen by a man merely looking out of his window who then decided to record everything and afterwards posted it up online therefore creating the massive LA riots, it also created the rise in UGC as people everywhere started using the development of new and digital media to their advantage and started posting their own news on websites, blogs, social networking sites and YouTube, this gets rid of censorship through gatekeepers, people who make the decision on whether something is worth mentioning in the news or not. The development of new and digital media mean that the audiences now post up their own news, they don’t rely on the traditional ways of receiving news, another point to add, majority of the teenagers today first hear the news on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. 

Overall, Pluralism and Marxism both have very effective and important points, however I personally disagree with Pluralism as I believe audience do have power but to a certain extent, Marxist believe even though we might think we have freedom we really don’t, but in reality the hegemony leaders from the ruling class control the media and train our brains from a young age into thinking a certain way. Mass media are seen as a way of entertaining the workers while drip feeding them ideologies and beliefs therefore is making the audience powerless and the ruling class to stay powerful and in control of the middle/lower class with their dominant ideologies.

Notes ..

The Virtual Revolution ..

Explores role of Internet in contemporary politics.

• 1/4 of our world is now connected to the world.
• The web has allowed everything to be more open and everything less closed up.
• The web is shifting power in times we would never have imagined - Its reinventing warfare and is creating cultural cults. 

Twitter was developed in San Francisco 2006, apart with facebook its all called Social Networking, for new ways to stay in touch with people.

Iran riots (June 2009) occurred, riot police banned the media from broadcasting what had happened, turning people to Twitter to vent their anger, after 18 days there was over 2 million tweets were sent of out Iran from over a million people. 200 000 tweets were posted every hour.
Once the government found out they blocked websites such as Twitter.

The webs shaking up the worlds politics because it can capture information from a crown of eye witnesses and then it can transmit it globally in real time. 

      - Its unmediated    

      - It's interactive 

      - It's mobile 

• The web is like a tool box for protests unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
• The people who made Twitter aren't surprised by its transformation from celebrity news to weapon of revolution. 
• The webs linked information is piped through an older physical system, the internet that operates beyond the jurisdiction of any one country and works against central control.
• The internet was originally designed to protect the most powerful nation of modern time. 

Vint Cerf - Co-inventor of the Internet.

Underlining Cerf's work was a technology called packet switching, it lies in the heart of the virtual revolution.

Part of his intentions when making the internet was to build a system that did not have any central control.

Packet Switching 

• Takes a piece of information and breaks it up into small pieces. These are then sent over a network (not in the right order, or the same line). At the receivers end the packets are re-combined in the right order and the data is made whole again. 
• The perfect tool for computers to talk to each other because it allows for a huge amount of data to be transmitted fast through multi roots all at once.
• Unstoppable flow of data.

The internet is probably the most democratic opportunity for people to express themselves and to get information. 

In the 21st Century, if you had something to say in public, you couldn't. If you was a citizen but not a media profession you could not broadcast a message not matter how hard you tried.

WikiLeaks 

• Allows people to anonymously blow the whistle on governments and corporations, the people who run it have made some serious enemies therefore keeping a low profile.
• Has a database of over 1.2 million documents.
• Maintains it's own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military grade inscriptions to protect sources and other confidential information.       
• February 2008 came a court injunction by a Swiss bank, after it published allegations about tax invasions. 
• WikiLeaks website was taken down by court, however it made half the world more interested in the banks documents. 
• The New York Times published their IP address, CBS News said freedom of speech has a number and also published their IP adress. 

Austin Heap (25 year old San Franciscan) used his programming skills to develop haystack, a programme that hides in everyday websites, it allowed people to use the Twitter and other social networking sites in countries it was ban in (Iran). 

The web seems to be taking us back to a world before politics, a world of direct action, people can express their views simply by login in.

The web is this fantastic resource for transmitting information and gathering people together around an issue even in a particular place.

China has more people online than any other nation in the world - 253 million, so the webs effect on politics is a huge threat to the state and yet the technology has improved Chinas growth.  

The efforts China puts into censoping the web - 30 000 Chinese secretly police the web full-time.

The government in China started recuiting Internet commentaters, citizens who would write articles and Post comments all over the web in support of the official party line.

Censorship is two things, one which is blocking and the other which is guiding.

Petter Thiel - Founder of Paypal, a revolutionary international money transfer system, a new global currency. Petter Thiel believed Paypal was going to be the new currency and how it would change how the world used and saw money.

He was also a key early investor of Facebook.

Facebook now has 350 million users world wide, if it was a county it would be the third biggest population in the world. 

Paypal:

• Money can be moved across national borders through abstract cyber space.
• 2008 it was handling 60 billion dollars in transaction every year.  
• Origins of Paypal lie in Stanford University. 

The web has led to all kinds of new social groups.

Before the web, extremist were scattered around the world, the web then linked them all, gave them new tools allowing them to seize the initiative. 

The web acts like a virtual portable homeland.

The concept of a portable homeland refers to how different groups operating in different countries in the world who have similar aims can use the internet as a space that links all of them. So the internet replaces the borders in some of these countires for each of the groups which allows them to link as if they all live in one place.

The most common form of cyber attract is called a denial of services, one computer sends instructions to a network of computer known as a "botnet", these are just ordinary domestic computers that have been hacked and are now under the control of cyper warriors. This network bombards the chosen site with millions of requests, the site goes into meltdown and cannot respond which means no one can access the website, hence denial of service.  

"All you have to do is pick up a newspaper and see if there's any conflict which will tell you if there's any conflict in the cyber world."

At the moment, 1/4 of the planet is connected, what will happen when the remaining 75% comes online? Will the web help us to achieve greater global understanding? Or will we face new dangers that we never even imagined? 

The web confronts the world with both an incredible opportunity and incredible responsibility.  

The question for the future is, how will we use it?

Weekly NDM Story ..

Daily Mail overtakes Sun as biggest-selling Saturday paper

The Daily Mail overhauled the Sun in November to become the UK's biggest-selling Saturday paper for the first time. However, the News UK red-top remains by some distance the biggest-selling UK daily across six days – a position it has held since overtaking the Daily Mirror in 1978. In November the Saturday edition of the Daily Mail had an average headline circulation of 2,474,439, compared with the Sun's 2,453,981, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures published on Friday.

Across six days, Monday to Saturday, the Sun averaged 2,089,752 copies, against the Daily Mail's 1,755,308. The Daily Mail's headline sales figure includes an average of 91,277 "bulks" – copies sold to airlines, rail companies, hotels and gyms for a nominal fee and given free to the public. This is a marginal rise of October's bulks figure of 87,391. The Sun does not distribute bulks.

The Daily Mail was only daily tabloid to increase sales month on month – and then only marginally, 0.10%. The Sun was down 2.83% compared with October. "While we have out sold the Sun on Saturdays previously, this is the first time we have achieved better sales over the course month," said Roland Agambar, chief marketing officer for Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday publisher DMG Media.

"The performance of both papers demonstrates the strength of the Mail brand, the success of our loyalty strategy and the advantage of continued editorial and commercial investment."

In the quality daily sector the Guardian and i were the only titles to increase sales between October and November. The Guardian's average daily circulation was up by 0.44% month on month to 199,672 – the Guardian News & Media title's third successive monthly sales increase. The Lebedevs' 20p daily i was up 0.32% to 297,510.

Every national Sunday title was down month on month.

The Sun

Headline circulation: 2,089,752

Month-on-month change: -2.83%

Year-on-year change: -11.51%

Saturday edition: 2,453,981

Overseas: 21,816

Daily Mail

Headline circulation: 1,755,308

Month-on-month change: +0.10%

Year-on-year change: -6.21%

Saturday: 2,474,439

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 1,593,682 (90.8% of total)

Overseas: 70,349

Bulks: 91,277

Daily Mirror

Headline circulation: 1,000,170

Month-on-month change: -1.41%

Year-on-year change: -4.28%

Saturday: 1,183,499

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 938,125 (93.8% of total)

Overseas: 32,045

Bulks: 30,000

Daily Express

Headline circulation: 508,458

Month-on-month change: -1.12%

Year-on-year change: -5.36%

Saturday: 575,494

Overseas: 12,101

Daily Star

Headline circulation: 506,729

Month-on-month change: -2.97%

Year-on-year change: -9.51%

Saturday: 455,334

Overseas: 5,245

Daily Telegraph

Headline circulation: 544,340

Month-on-month change: -0.86%

Year-on-year change: -0.38%

Saturday: 713,297

Overseas: 12,644

Weekly NDM Story ..

The Sun attracts 117,000 paying subscribers to its Sun+ digital service

The Sun has attracted 117,000 paying subscribers to its £2-a-week digital service Sun+ since erecting a paywall around its website on 1 August. News UK's tabloid, the UK's biggest selling paper, reached 100,000 digital subscribers in four months – it took stablemates the Times and Sunday Times a year to reach the same level of paying customers after their online content went behind a paywall in 2010.

"No one else has sought to charge for digital access to a mass audience newspaper, and, though it's early days, we are encouraged by the strong start achieved by the Sun," said David Dinsmore, editor of The Sun. Dinsmore said the Sun was not looking to target overseas users like the Daily Mail and admitted the publisher's social media strategy has not been coherent enough to date. "In reality our marketplace is very much the UK at the moment, we have 60 million people here to focus on," he said. "We are in the process of hiring a social media team, we have been remiss [in this area] in the past. It has been an ad hoc affair. We are a product across all platforms and it is key to have that social-media marketing opportunity.

"It is early days and we are still bottoming out what we want to do, we have a number of successful individuals [on Twitter], good things to build on, but we want to see something much more structured." News UK revealed some details of the subscriber base of Sun+. 

• The biggest single group (30%) are 25 to 34, which Katie Vanneck-Smith, chief marketing officer at News UK, said "blows out the myth young people won't pay for [digital] content".
• Almost half (47%) of sign-ups for the paid service are via mobile devices, which Vanneck-Smith said was slightly surprising as there had been an expectation that the service might be initially more popular on desktop computers, given the typical print Sun reader's profile.

Sun+ subscribers are split 60/40 between men and women, although this is expected to balance out to an extent once the football promotion slows down, and there is a "slight" London bias to sign ups, with the capital's denizens considered to be early adopters. Not surprisingly, the Sun's almost 30 million online unique user base plummeted following the introduction of the paywall, as users sought out free alternatives.

• The Times and Sunday Times saw almost 90% of web traffic evaporate after the introduction of a paywall in 2010.
• In October, News UK revealed that the number of digital subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times had topped 150,000.

News UK chief executive Mike Darcey, who joined from BSkyB nearly a year ago December, has aggressively pursued digital sports rights deals to bolster the Sun's online offering. First up in January was a £30m-plus deal for Premier League internet and mobile highlights – outbidding former employer BSkyB as well as O2 and Perform Group.

This was followed by a four-year deal for the digital FA Cup rights, and last month the publisher secured the digital clip rights to highlights of Champions League and Europa League matches in a joint deal with BT Sport. The Sun had an average daily circulation of 2.089m in November, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Friday. However, the Sun has been overtaken for the first time as the biggest selling Saturday paper, with the Daily Mail's edition on that day averaging 2,474,439 in November. The Sun's Saturday edition averaged 2,453,981.