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The BBC News website has launched a 'Most Popular Now' page allowing users to gather information about which stories are proving to be most popular.

Users are able to see which BBC news stories people are reading most, which stories they are emailing to friends most, and which video clips are being watched most throughout the day, by clicking links on the news front page and on each story.

The 'Most Popular Now' page features a live news traffic monitor that measures news consumption and shows whether it is a quieter or busier day than average, peak times for news consumption, and an archive of text and audio video clips.

It also has a section called 'Most popular, day so far’, which allows the user to see which have been the most sought-after stories and most watched videos hour-by-hour.

The 'Most popular stories now' section of the page features a world map with a list of the 10 most popular stories read by users of the BBC site across the world.

Clicking on a particular region unveils the top 10 stories in that area. Clicking on the story headline reveals a brief summation of the story and a further link to the whole article.

At 9am today the European audience was most interested in the discovery of the oldest orb-weaving spider in a piece of Spanish amber.

Where as African readers, at the same time, were enthralled by a story about Iraq implementing a new security plan.

The service automatically updates minute-by-minute, so there is no need to refresh the browser to see how the news agenda is changing globally.

Pete Clifton, head of BBC News Interactive, said: "This is a fascinating new service for our millions of readers - they will be able to see exactly what people are reading and watching in any part of the world in real-time.

"We have a huge amount of information about our traffic and it makes sense that we share it with the audience."

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bbc | iraq | pete clifton | bbc news interactive |

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