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Top Magazine Sites' Video Use Doubles, Uptake of other Web Features Slow

The proportion of leading US magazines (the top 50 by circulation) that offer online video has nearly doubled in the past year - from 34% in 2006 to 60% in 2007 - but the adoption of other Web 2.0 features has been slower, according to research from the Bivings Group (via paidContent).

The research evaluated the magazines based on the presence or lack of selected web features, in an effort to determine how US magazines are using the web and how that use has changed over the past year.

Among the key findings of the study of top 50 magazines:

• More magazines are now using reporter blogs:
  • 58% have reporter blogs on their sites, compared with 40% in 2006.
  • 93% of those blogs allow reader comments.
  • 31% use blogrolls, or links to external blogs.
• Newspapers are ahead of magazines in nearly every web feature:
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  • Only in the use of tags are magazines ahead, with 4% of magazines using tags compared with merely 1% of newspapers.
• Required registration has increased from 38% of mag sites in 2006 to 42% in 2007.
• 64% of the magazine websites offer RSS feeds:
  • 44% of them have unique feeds for different sections
  • None embed advertisements in their RSS feeds.
  • 97% are partial feeds.
• 34% have content for mobile devices.
• Bookmarking has increased substantially: 36% of magazine websites offer bookmarking features, compared with 14% in 2006.
• Tagging is the only feature that decreased in use: Three magazines used tag clouds in 2006, but only two now offer tag clouds on their sites.

The entire report is available here (pdf); the data from the study are available here (xls).