Not long ago, I tweeted a link to a very long story. Within 60 seconds, it received three retweets. Since the article would have taken at least 10 minutes to read, it is highly likely that those who retweeted it did not read it.
This phenomenon is not limited to Twitter. A couple of
recent articles revealed some interesting data about what people really do
online.
From Time magazine in early March: "A stunning
55% [of those who clicked into an article] spent fewer than 15 seconds actively
on a page. [emphasis theirs] The stats get a little better if you
filter purely for article pages, but even then one in every three visitors
spend [sic] less than 15 seconds
reading articles they land on."
Analysis of 10,000 articles shared on social media "found
that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content
is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that
content."
A Slate article noted that about 5% to 10% of those who open
an article leave it immediately and 38% of people who click on it
"bounce" [leave it] before the end of the first paragraph.
At a few hundred words into the article, about half of the
remaining readers have left, and very few of the rest make it through to the
end.
The amount of scrolling can also be tracked. "There’s a
very weak relationship between scroll depth and sharing. Both at Slate and across the Web,
articles that get a lot of tweets don’t necessarily get read very deeply.
Articles that get read deeply aren’t necessarily generating a lot of
tweets."
On April Fools' Day, NPR published a story called "Why
Doesn't America Read Anymore?" There
was no article [emphasis mine]—only the headline and an explanation of the
fact that they wanted to see if people would comment anyway. They were not
disappointed as many brainless comments rolled in. This Gawker post has the
best of them.
The Washington Post noted that in addition to diminishing
attention spans, we are developing into a nation of superficial readers. “It’s
like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they
say,” said a graduate student in creative writing.
Attempting to stay with the trend, last week both the
Associated Press and Reuters directed their reporters to limit stories to fewer
than 500 words.
If anyone is still reading this, what it means is that I
should not feel slighted that people are retweeting me without necessarily
reading what I so carefully and lovingly select for dissemination.
It's not me.
It's you.
PS: I am aware that some people retweet things and plan to
read them later. But how do they know that what they have retweeted is worthy?
Or does it matter?
