Is Newser the most overrated site on the internet?

News aggregator Newser is getting a lot of attention lately as enemy number one in the battle between newspapers and news aggregation sites.

If you believe some of the coverage, Newser steels page views from newspapers, and along with The Huffington Post, occasionally Google news and others, is destroying the news business. Founder MIchael Wolff even boasts that he’s “proud to kill the news.”

Newser is an attractive looking aggregator, and it’s obviously well known in certain circles. The paranoia and/ or hype though about the danger is presents news isn’t justified by numbers. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the pious nature of some of the journalists attacking the site, I’d even go as far as suggesting that the attacks are part of a stealth promotional campaign for Newser.

According to Quantcast direct measure, Newser does 1.4 million page views a month on 546,000 people. While they aren’t terrible figures, some context: Newser was founded in 2007 and has banked $2.5 million in VCl funding. By contrast, The Inquisitr has 3x as many visitors, and 2x the amount of traffic. We’re 15 months old and were built on the fumes off an oily rag. The highest ranking newspaper website in the United States, the New York Times does 17 million visitors a month on according to some reports around 110-140 million page views a month.

I don’t actively tell people that The Inquisitr is going to kill news, because we’re not. But neither is Newser. If Newser was pumping through 100 million page views a month and was growing, maybe it would be some sort of credible threat, but 1.4 million page views a month? Give me break.They’re no more going to kill news than I’m going to win the 400 meters at the 2012 Olympics.

The hype and fear doesn’t match the numbers by such a wide margin that you could easily suggest that Newser is the most overrated site on the internet. Until I find a better alternative, that’s the label I’m giving it.