Most users don’t read to the end - Six in 10 users will view, like, and even comment on this article without reading.
Many users only have a passing engagement with posted articles - By glancing through article excerts/previews, instead of reading the full piece, many users overestimate their understanding of an issue. A little bit of knowledge can go straight to their head, and may not in a good way.
The problem is that without reading articles, users are more susceptible to fake news and misinformation, and the comments rarely reflect in any way the actual contents of the article they discuss.
(If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with this one!)
Myth: We read what we've clicked on
Most publishers have been chasing article views, the metric that counts the number of times people load the article page. The more views an article gets, the more people are reading, the more successful it is. Or so we thought. A research carried out by Chartbeat found that most people who click don’t read. In fact, a stunning 55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page.
Few of the users who view articles are active commenters, and most read and perhaps like, but never read or share their thoughts in the comments.
Maybe this is just our cultural lot: We live in the age of skimming. I want to finish the whole thing, I really do. I wish you would, too. Really—stop quitting! But who am I kidding. I’m busy. You’re busy. There’s always something else to read, watch, play, or eat.
OK, this is where I’d come up with some clever ending. But who cares? You certainly don’t. Let’s just go with this.
What to do? we need to do a serious and time-consuming work on building reading and active commenting community by motivating readers to users to read and post useful comments. Not vile commenting that leads to cesspool of primitive discourse but constructive comments that will encourage interaction.
The begging question is How do we motivate and nudge users into reading articles they are about to like (give thumbs up)? I don't know at the moment.
Definitely not like this;
We can start with brainstorming and sharing suggestions and ideas.
Liked that? Try these!
I encountered comments that are not even related to my articles. Just for the sake of points. Many Read Cash users glance on the title without even reading the whole article. It's sad that this platform is deemed to failed but I'm still hopeful it will be change and users will read the articles completely before giving their comments, response, opinion and feedback.