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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."

14 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. In related news by lecithin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Users Find Physicists Uninteresting After 3.6 seconds.

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    1. Re:In related news by JPribe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wow. It didn't even take that long.

      But seriously, I wonder if this will change ad placement for revenue models? If an ad gets a click on a story older than 36 hours, is it worth more? Hmm, I smell a patent in the works, too.

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    2. Re:In related news by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, I Am A Physicist, and I certainly find YOU uninteresting!

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  2. Old news by Percent+Man · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are we still talking about this?

  3. However ... by blowdart · · Score: 5, Funny

    The story will get posted again on slashdot 37 hours later.

  4. maybe because it's not "news" anymore? by holden+caufield · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm wondering if these same researches tried to define what their subjects defined as "news"? If something was newsworthy, I'm guessing they likely found out about it over time. Maybe the people didn't read it because they were informed from other sources?

    Sounds like a bit of a flawed evaluation to me.

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    1. Re:maybe because it's not "news" anymore? by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Informative

      The "news" in this story is not that people become disinterested in a story, but that the rate at which they become disinterested is quite different from what was expected.

      Furthermore, the study was not done by taking people and finding out how quickly they became disinterested in one story or another. A quick glance at the summary informs us that the subject of the study was the number of people reading a news story (more likely downloading the story) at a given time. That this number decreases with time is obvious. However, it was expected that the decrease would follow an exponential curve, whereas the experiment showed a power law curve instead.

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  5. Re:First post by Luctius · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please reread your own sig.

  6. Another massive triumph for statistical physicists by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually, nobody cares about this sort of thing, and these so-called "statistical physicists" would all be cleaning gutters for a living right now.. except the guy from HR is too terrified to go downstairs and fire them. The last time he tried, they somehow irrevocably proved to him that not only was it statistically impossible that he had arrived to give them their pink slips, but they also proved his trousers, eyebrows, and cat out of existence with nothing more than a slide rule and a whiteboard.

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  7. 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?

  8. Methodological issues? by gilroy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've read the linked article but not the actual Phys Rev paper, so I'm likely blowing smoke but...

    • The "news cycle" is 24 hours, due to historical roots in daily newspapers (augmented by the evening news, etc.) Assume for the moment that people stay interested in a news story. After a day, if the story is ongoing, the original article is likely to be replaced by an update. Real-life example: Over the weekend, the NY Times Science section had these stories in a row: "Shuttle astronauts complete spacewalk", "shuttle astronauts inspect tiles", "shuttle Discovery meets space station", "shuttle Discovery set for launch". (paraphrased) Clearly, the first story in the list is the most recent and, were I looking for news on the Discovery, I'd probably click that one. Even if I really liked the Times' coverage of the rendez-vous, I'm not likely to read that article again if a new one has been posted. Does that mean I've "lost interest" in the shuttle?
    • The results seem drawn from traffic at a particular Hungarian portal and might not have any generalized relevance.
    • Ease of navigation seems important but not addressed. If stories "fall off" the homepage after 36 hours, it would make it look like people were less interested. (Or, really, the fact that some stories are highlit on the front page makes it look like people are more interested than they really are.)

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  9. Heh. by wfberg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good luck in explaining the spike in traffic 3 full days after the article was posted.

    Suckers!

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  10. We Just Killed Their Theory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can see these physicists really scratching their heads when the article gets slashdotted 72 hours after the published date (July 7).

  11. Re:Exponent? Power? by DaoudaW · · Score: 4, Informative

    The difference is whether the independent variable is the base or the exponent. A power function is something like f(x)=x^(.5) whereas an exponential function could be f(x)= (.5)^x.