According to a study reported in PhysicsWeb, research into online readership showed that news stories on the internet have an extremely short lifespan: “The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released.” That is to say, a story will be read half as frequently after 36 hours. The rate of decay varies depending on the type of site, and presumably the frequency of updates.
Sceptics will note that almost nobody reads yesterday’s newspaper, so this research might not be quite so controversial as it first appears. It also talks about articles, rather than coverage of events, which might last longer. However, I’d suggest that many newspaper stories are run over several editions, and recapped in the weekend papers and monthly magazines. And since newspapers are always short of low-cost content, they’ll will re-hash stories with an update on later occasions. The same economic restrictions don’t really apply to online news.
Perhaps the blogosphere might be analogous to monthly news magazines in this case, whereby reaction is slower but more in-depth? (or more opinionated in any event). I also think this perhaps provides a very important raison d’etre to social bookmarking sites where good stories on particular topics can be accessed very easily, whatever their publication date.
via Micro Persuasion via digg (this is so the day before yesterday’s news)
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