I've released a little new site called BBC Touch. It compares the BBC news front page with the list of popular new stories and attempts to give a value as to how close the two match, in the hope that this value can be used to say how “in touch” the news editors are with the public over time. Anyway, this is much easier to explain if you go have a look, and read the about page. Done that? Good, you may continue...

So what I really want to talk about is the responses I've had from the BBC Backstage community. Firstly they found it and contacted me about it before I'd even publically mentioned it, which was nice! Of particular mention is Jem Stone (who I like to call a big wig at the BBC) who said this about it:

“It's the best use of the most popular feeds (and some good visual representation) offered by News we've seen so far. Thanks Chris.”

I'm quite proud of that! But then there have also been a few negative comments, questioning the value of the data. They have some valid points, but at the end of the day if the popular data is so useless, why include it on the BBC News site at all? If you'd like to read the discussion in part or full, you can find the particular thread in the mail archive here. That is all really, just wanted to let people know it was there, and the discussion surrounding it. Have fun!