Fairfax Digital: The Vine traffic at 400% of expected after 1 month ...

So according to Fairfax Digital's Pippa Leary, www.thevine.com.au is swimming along with 155,000 users in month 1 - way over the 40,000 they forecast.

Problem is - there's no audited data on this.

A search for The Vine on Neilsen Netview generates zero result - meaning the amount of users on the Netview panel accessing the site was too low for it to be an adequate sample size.

And on Market Intelligence - which Fairfax uses for The Age, RSVP SMH, Lifestyle, ASX and it's Business properties, thevine.com.au is nowhere to be seen ... I have checked under Lifestyle and Entertainment and it is not one of the sites Neilsen is tracking

Begs the question - why isn't FD monitoring this through Neilsen given it's the only standard for agencies and clients in Australia? It's hard to swallow publisher supplied glee when they haven't used Neilsen to monitor traffic ... it's especially hard given the FD salesforce go to market daily trumpeting their primo sites traffic and sourcing Neilsen when doing so.

AdNews piece is here -- http://www.adnews.com.au/News.cfm?NewsId=4722

Fairfax reach out to the tragically hip's in-boxes

Came across the weekly email out for douchebag bible Vice and saw the main advertiser within was Fairfax, pedalling their 'hip monied 18-29 yo' portal The Vine.

I don't want to sound negative, but I don't think I'm the only one that would safely say that they have zero chance of moving the self annointed bleeding edge culture leaders of Vice onto their aggregation of everything that is done better elsewhere The Vine experiment.

Want pop culture opinion with character - check out www.defamer.com.au

Fairfax Digital launch The Vine

http://www.thevine.com.au

Personally I don't see the point at all as there are plenty of other sites easily accessible doing this much better and with more sincerity ... but hey, I am not in their target demo anyway.

Time will tell if the kids embrace this.