The Lifespan of a Reader
There was this research some years ago which was showing that the staff of a company fully renews itself over a period of three years. People come and go, and if you have the curiosity to pay a visit to your former colleagues after a few years, you may end up with the surprise of not knowing anybody in that company anymore.
Thinking at myself as a blog reader, one of the things I notice immediately is that the list of blogs I read has almost completely changed over the past two years. Although I watch on average 100 blogs (or more), the ones which are still on my favorites list can be counted on one hand’s fingers only.
I don’t remember when I’ve lost interest in some blogs and how long it did take until I wasn’t interested in them anymore. However, I believe that for most of the blogs, my lifespan as a reader last some 4-6 months. I have no idea if those bloggers were starting to repeat themselves, or was it only that I didn’t care for those topics anymore?
How are you as a reader? Are you aware of your lifespan as reader of a certain blog? When you stop reading one, do you know your reasons, or it’s just that one day you discover that you completely forgot it existed?
After how much time the readership of a blog is completely renewed? I wonder if we could measure that. What do you think?
Andrew says...
My choices have changed in cycles. I used to have loads of programming blogs, then I got rid of them for photoblogs, then WordPress blogs, now am somewhere in between, but with more political blogs.
As for real life I have been with my employer for almost 12 years, and a lot of my workmates are within a few years of that as well.
Simonne says...
Wow! I’ve never worked in the same place for so many years! My maximum was four years, and it seemed like ages already. Your employer must be great, since he managed to motivate you to stay that long.
redivide says...
I don’t think regular readers are worth much.
The easiest way to get regulars is to give them something for free: backlinks, files, a lead on a story, etc. Time is short and there are so many blogs out there. RSS subscriber numbers is meaningless as well. At most they will read the titles, so visits, traffic, from feeds is rare.
I consider uniques as being way more important.
Ronald Huereca says...
I’m pretty faithful to the blogs I read. I’ve unsubscribed from a few, but more-or-less have a lot what I had about a year ago. It’s adding new blogs to my mix that’s difficult, because for each one I add, I take one away (just for sanity purposes).