Latest Articles

Business Briefing: Where Next for Venture Capitalists?

Despite the economic downturn venture capitalists are still looking at investment opportunities in digital media. New Media Knowledge spoke to one to get the low down on what VCs want.

more

Social Media in Practice: BBC Radio 5 Live

Web publishers and broadcasters always have to look for new and innovative ways to maintain existing audiences and win new ones. When BBC Radio 5 Live realised it was losing listeners to other sources of football-based content it launched a new service to win them back. New Media Knowledge met the people responsible.

more

Conservationists Embrace Social Media

Television is increasingly embracing new media to reach new audiences and add interesting applications. New Media Knowledge talks to the people behind a new online conservation series that aims to raise wider awareness of the plight of endangered species.

more

• The Language of the Web
• Rough Guide to: In-Game Advertising
• Alexander McCall-Smith Engages Web 2.0
• Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future
• ‘Virtual Home’ for Ex-Pats in London Established
• Rough Guide to: Social Media and the Law
• Record Visits for UK Blog Sites

Related Articles

• UGC and the Law

  The era of user-generated content has provided site owners with fresh, inexpensive ways to populate their sites. But it also brings new legal headaches, best avoided rather than remedied. Ian Delaney reports from the presentation given by Paul Massey of K&L Gates at Internet World on 2 May 2007. more

• The Infinite Dial

  Awareness of podcasting has risen considerably over the last year - from 22 per cent in 2006 to 37 per cent in 2007. However, the number of people listening to the format remains relatively static, up just two per cent to 13 per cent, over the same period. more

• The Young Ones

  The latest NetObserver poll from Novatris and Harris Interactive reveals that the internet habits of those under 25 vary widely from those of their elders. more

• The Revolution will be YouTubed

  Ian Delaney reports on the insync event 'The Revolution will not be Televised: It will be YouTubed'. Four supporters of citizen TV and four very different ways to achieve it. more

• The Twitter Debate

  Ian Delaney examines the Twitter phenomenon: the next generation of social media communications or the scourge of a society that can't stop talking about itself? more

The Eyes Have It

Findings from the Poynter EyeTrack07 research into how people read online and in print discovered that a much larger percentage of story text was read online than in print publications. Ian Delaney reports.

Findings from the Poynter EyeTrack07 research into how people read online and in print discovered that a much larger percentage of story text was read online than in print publications. Ian Delaney reports.

On average, online readers read 77 per cent of what they chose to read in the study, which involves volunteers wearing special glasses that can track what they are reading and looking at both on screen and in printed sources. This figure is much higher than the proportion of text read by readers of tabloid or broadsheet newspapers, who read 57 per cent and 62 per cent of the stories they selected respectively.

Of online readers, nearly two thirds read all the text in items they chose to read.

The study divided readers into two different styles:

• Methodical readers start at the top and finish at the bottom without too much scanning. Online, they use navigation bars and drop-down menus to locate stories.
• Scanning readers jump around pages, headlines and pictures. They read parts of a story and then jump to other elements such as pictures or boxouts.

Around 75 per cent of print readers tend to be methodical in their approach to reading, while this number drops to around 50 per cent online. However, when it comes to the amount of text read online, there was little difference between the two styles of reader, unlike in print, where methodical readers read more text than scanners.

Non-traditional formats, which included diagrams, lists and boxouts, proved more easy to digest than a traditional narrative story. Comparing reactions to six different versions of a story about the spread of bird flu, which contained the same facts in different formats, it was the non-traditional layouts with more boxes, subsections and sidebars than yielded the highest amount of information retention, both in print and online.

In online publications, navigation bars and story lists draw most attention, forming the online equivalent - when it comes to attention - of large headlines and pictures in print publications.

For more information, there is a video and a PDF file on the Poynter site documenting the findings. The full study is expected to be released in the summer.