
ADD Nation, 90% of Social Media Referrals Don't Read - messel
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/12/13/add-nation-90-of-social-media-referrals-dont-read/
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tokenadult
"It was a startling realization, but all the amazing 'views' I get from sites
like HackerNews, Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon are 80-90% meaningless. Not only
do very few of them revisit my site, but the vast majority of folks that find
my blog posts from social sites leave in under 10seconds. That’s an obvious
signal to me that they aren’t even reading the first paragraph. How can anyone
really judge the value of an article in under 10 seconds without reading any
of it? The obvious answer, they can’t."

I am very surprised that this is news to this blogger. Jakob Nielsen has been
letting people know this for years,

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

that people read very little on the Web,

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html>

but maybe most people have never read those articles. Hm.

But to respond to the author of the submitted blog post, why SHOULD I read for
more than ten seconds if the first ten seconds don't provide a rationale for
reading further? I do read several articles a day in full length, but they had
better be well written and informative, as there are millions of other Web
postings out there competing for my attention and time.

~~~
theoneill
"How can anyone really judge the value of an article in under 10 seconds
without reading any of it? The obvious answer, they can’t."

I was curious about this so I clicked on the link. The actual answer is that
you can tell a lot about a site in just a second or two. As soon as I saw the
tag cloud, I was gone.

~~~
messel
Oh boy. I love the cloud, never realized how polarizing it is. Do you think
most folks hate cumulus? Any idea why?

Or do you think the topics (inspiration, entrepreneurship, leadership, mind)
are danger signals to readers?

By the way, thanks a bunch for saying something. Feedback on touchy issues is
a big help to improving the site. Contrary to the stats I've collected so far,
I really do want people to get a positive first impression from the blog.

