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Physicists Find Users Uninterested After 36 Hours

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yawn-show-me-something-new dept.

SuperGrads writes "Statistical physicists working in the US and Hungary have found that the number of people reading a particular news story on the web decreases with time by a power law rather than exponentially as was previously thought. The finding has implications for the study of information flow in social networks, marketing and web design."

1 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Possible other causes? by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One has to wonder how the site's story policy affects the drop-off. That is, is the drop-off because users are uninterested or not reading, or is it because after that time the story drops off the main pages and becomes hard to find to read?