First the Times UK story being claimed as the first one to break news about News Corp considering a stake in Yahoo, when CNBC reporter David Faber broke it two days ago, and now this: a moronic story, titled “BBC’s flagship site to be toppled in the charts by YouTube”, also in Times UK, about how YouTube is about to overtake BBC.co.uk in traffic within UK. It is such a sensationalist and nonsensical story, the story contradicts itself and the headline at least three times.

Doing a story based on what everyone knows are at best half-accurate numbers from the online traffic agencies, Hitwise in this case, is dubious. Then, it compares only BBC.co.uk domain with YouTube traffic, and disregards news.bbc.co.uk, which is a huge chunk of BBC traffic. Then numbers from NetRatings contradicts the original claims anyway.

And this conclusion based on these comparisons: “The impending demotion of bbc.co.uk looks to underscore the power of YouTube’s “web 2.0” model, which harnesses user-created content alongside commercial partnerships and seeks to make money out of advertising...The continued rise of YouTube, which handles more than 100 million clips a day, may also vindicate Google’s decision to buy it for $1.6 billion last year.”

I am amazed Times editors let such a story through.