600 Million Page Views Is a Nice Problem to Have

I’m six months into my new role as a group manager at MSNBC.com and am still nothing short of stunned at the opportunity to be had at this company right now.

If you’re following the dynamics of the news business, you’re well aware that circulation at print newspapers is in a free-fall, and overall viewership of television news is on a steady (if less precipitous) decline. Where are all those news consumers going? Online. In droves. For July 2006, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that MSNBC.com’s page views cracked 600 million and unique users topped 24 million. (As is typical with the Nielsen/NetRatings our internal traffic numbers are even higher — by a significant margin.)

Into this fertile landscape MSNBC.com, a company born of a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft 10 years ago, carries a unique advantage: the ability to draw both from the journalism assets of NBC and the technology assets of Microsoft. No one else in our competitive set can claim a similar balance: Some are technology companies that are attempting to extend into journalism; some are journalism organizations that are trying to figure out technology. MSNBC.com has both baked right in to its DNA.

Exploiting this natural advantage carries its own set of challenges, however. Given such a vast supply of original NBC and MSNBC content, how do we present it to users without overwhelming them? Though MSNBC.com is a perennial contender for the #1 spot in online news, how do we claim that position for good and then add some distance? And how do we do more than just “deliver” the news, but engage people in a compelling way to impart real understanding, and along the way play a primary role in shaping the very future of journalism?

Suffice to say, these are nice problems to have.

What’s my point? These are problems you can help us solve. We’re hiring.

You don’t have to be a news junkie to apply. But it helps. : )