Guardian Unlimited

Guardian Unlimited is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service. It is Britain's most popular newspaper website (2.5 million unique United Kingdom (UK) visitors in September 2005—73% more than the nearest competitor [1]), and one of the most popular news resources on the Internet. For example, on 7 July 2005, following the London bombings, a record 1.3 million unique users visited the site and a total of 7.8 million pages were viewed [2] (N.B.: link requires registration). Interestingly, there were more visitors from the United States than from the UK.

The site is made up of a core news site, plus a network of niche websites covering subjects including media, sport, education and the public sector. "Guardian Unlimited" is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on March 14, 2006 by a new comment site, Comment is free, named after the famous quote by The Guardian editor, C. P. Scott. Both the talkboards and blogs accept comments without pre-moderation, although all now require registration for comments.

Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services such as Guardian Unlimited Talk and its media industry news site require users to register.

Ownership

"Guardian Unlimited" is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including The Guardian daily newspaper, The Observer Sunday newspaper, and the Manchester Evening News. All the aforementioned are owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to takeover by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.

History

"Guardian Unlimited" was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. Its popularity soared after the September 11th attack in the United States, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in the Guardian newspaper. The website won the Best Newspaper category in the 2005 and 2006 Webby Awards, beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Variety. [3].

In 2006 "Guardian Unlimited" reported its first profitable year, with income coming mostly from recruitment and display advertising. [4]

Talkboard

Main Article: Guardian Unlimited Talk

The network's forum, called Guardian Unlimited Talk and also "GU Talk", is the one of the largest news & politics discussion site in Europe. Because of this, and the Guardian's left-wing political reputation, it receives a lot of attention from right-wing American posters. As a result, its discussion topics (divided into folders such as "International", "Media", "UK News", and off-topic folder "The Haven") are a diverse and eclectic mix of British, European and American politics, media-related topics, and eccentric British banter by bored office workers.

See also

• The Fiver

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