How CNBC.com’s Coverage of the Apple iPhone 6 Anouncement Graded Out

On Tues­day Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the com­pa­ny is launch­ing two new iPhones, a mobile pay­ments sys­tem, along with the new inno­va­tion that sparked the most curios­i­ty among con­sumers, the iWatch. 

If you’re read­ing this blog post, there’s a good chance that none of what I just said is news to you because already heard this from one of the 9,053 web­sites that pro­vid­ed cov­er­age of the launch yesterday.

So with this post, instead of reit­er­at­ing what was cov­ered, I plan to eval­u­ate how yesterday’s launch was cov­ered by news out­lets. Specif­i­cal­ly, I am going to exam­ine how the good folks over at CNBC.com served you, the con­sumer, with their cov­er­age of the launch. To do this, I have decid­ed to hand out grades for each aspect of their online cov­er­age because I am a guy and only thing that guys (not to stereo­type, but..) like more than grades are rank­ings  because they are basi­cal­ly analy­sis dumb­ed down to its sim­plest, most com­pre­hen­si­ble, non-nuanced form. (And if you don’t believe me here’s some more proof.)

Here we go.

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Accessibility

Upon vis­it­ing CNBC’s home page on Tues­day after­noon (dur­ing the time the launch occurred) the first sto­ry I saw fea­tured at the top of the home­page was a live blog of the event, as well as a link below that read, “For all things Apple, click here.” This link brought you to a page with an array of news sto­ries, columns and con­tent regard­ing the Apple launch from CNBC in the past two weeks (this page appar­ent­ly no longer exists, however).

For me, CNBC’s online cov­er­age passed the lit­mus test of “Could my 92-year-old grand­moth­er find it on the com­put­er machine if she had to?” If she can, you can.

Grade: A for acces­si­ble enough for my grandmother. 

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Timeliness

The afore­men­tioned live blog pro­vid­ed instant updates from the launch and oth­er infor­ma­tion includ­ing details of the new prod­ucts, per­ti­nent tweets, and videos of U2 play­ing at the launch – the whole kit and caboodle.

How­ev­er, when I tried to vis­it the same live blog on my iPhone, many of the videos being post­ed either didn’t appear or did­n’t work. I found this sig­nif­i­cant because many peo­ple were like­ly at work or not in front of a com­put­er when this launch occurred (mid­dle of the day), and thus would have not been able to see the con­tent on their phone instan­ta­neous­ly, and would have had to wait until they were front of a com­put­er lat­er. Regard­less of how quick your con­tent out­put is, if your read­ers are not able to see it, that’s a prob­lem. Oth­er than that blem­ish though, I found the time­li­ness of their cov­er­age and updates to be more than adequate.

Grade: B for bet­ter make sure those videos work on my iPhone next time. 

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Content

As I men­tioned before, CNBC orga­nized all of their Apple cov­er­age on to one page– which I found very orga­nized and help­ful — that they linked to on their home­page. This page fea­tured every angle of cov­er­age on the launch you could pos­si­bly want — whether to buy or sell Apple’s stock, how Apple is dis­rupt­ing Chi­nese sup­ply chains, and how U2 paid to play a role in the announce­ment.

This page includ­ed head­lines, such as “Is Apple Pay a bit­coin killer?,” that effec­tive­ly used key­words and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sparked the reader’s interest.

Addi­tion­al­ly, at the top of the live blog includ­ed a bul­let-point list of key details and take­aways from the launch. If I were a web brows­er look­ing for details on the new­ly launched prod­ucts, this is exact­ly what I would want a web­site to pro­vide. And of course, for those peo­ple look­ing for a lit­tle bit more cov­er­age, below the list was a detailed news sto­ry includ­ing quotes from Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as updates on how the launch has effect­ed Apple’s finan­cial stocks.

Final­ly, I’m not usu­al­ly one who watch­es the videos on news sto­ry pages, but CNBC includ­ed a two minute recap video of the event halfway down the page of the news sto­ry. I found this video to be use­ful for some­one who would rather see than read about what hap­pened, and just the right length as well.

Grade: A for all the clicks and page views.

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Engagement and Interactivity 

Although CNBC did not include any read­er polls on the news sto­ry, some­thing they did that I found savvy was after a para­graph that includ­ed details about the new­ly launched iWatch, they embed­ded a link to a per­ti­nent poll that asked whether or not read­ers would actu­al­ly buy said iWatch — nice cheap way to get extra page views.

Although CNBC is a rather large, nationally–run web­site (which usu­al­ly means lack of inti­ma­cy with the read­ers), I thought this was an effec­tive way of engag­ing and includ­ing the read­er in on the discussion.

Addi­tion­al­ly, many peo­ple did not hes­i­tate to weigh in on the sto­ry in the com­ment sec­tion, how­ev­er, again, the vol­ume of com­ments made it dif­fi­cult for the author to inter­act with each and every com­menter. (Dis­claimer: I am very anti-com­ment sec­tions only because more times than not they just turn into a cesspool of ban­ter and hatred).

Where I thought CNBC failed to engage the read­ers was with their social media pro­mo­tion (more on this next). Instead of includ­ing ques­tions that invit­ed feed­back with their tweets and Face­book posts, they chose to include text that read more like a head­line (which is fine in many cas­es, but isn’t as engag­ing and like­ly to receive clicks).

Grade: D+ for don’t you care about what I think, CNBC? 🙁

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Social Media and Promotion

CNBC did the kind of heavy pro­mo­tion that you would expect from a major news out­let for a sto­ry that inter­ests so many. Although they failed to engage the read­er with ques­tions that invite feed­back, where I thought they suc­ceed­ed in their pro­mo­tion was how they visu­al­ly engaged and informed the read­ers with the pic­tures they attached to each tweet and Face­book post.

Pic­tures such as the one that com­pared the sizes of the new iPhones to old­er ver­sions (above) in some cas­es told the read­er every­thing they want­ed to know, or at least caused them to click on the link to read more. Many of the oth­er pic­tures they includ­ed were visu­al­ly appeal­ing and def­i­nite­ly would have made me more inclined to click as a reader.

Final­ly, the CNBC Face­book feed effec­tive­ly used the afore­men­tioned video titled, “A com­plete recap of Apple’s big event in two min­utes to sim­ply and effec­tive­ly inform the pub­lic of the key take­aways.  If I were some­one scan­ning my news­feed after a long day and just want­ed a CliffNotes ver­sion of the event, that video would def­i­nite­ly sat­is­fy me, both in con­tent and dura­tion. And appar­ent­ly, many peo­ple agreed with me because that video got rough­ly 5–10x more likes than CNBC’s aver­age Face­book post. 

Grade = B for big, appeal­ing pic­tures and videos that would appeal to my A.D.D.