Title: Long-Form Reading Shows Signs of Life in Our Mobile News World | Pew Research Center
Headings: Long-Form Reading Shows Signs of Life in Our Mobile News World
Long-Form Reading Shows Signs of Life in Our Mobile News World
Terminology
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Content: While Facebook drives more traffic, Twitter tends to bring in people who spend more time with content. For longer content, users that arrive from Facebook spend an average of 107 seconds, compared with 133 seconds when they come from Twitter. The same pattern emerges with shorter content: Those arriving from Twitter spend more time with that content (58 seconds) compared with those coming from Facebook (51 seconds). Yet, for both short- and long-form content, Facebook referrals drive about eight-in-ten initial visits from social media sources, while Twitter drives about 15%. Just a small fraction of users who access either a short- (3%) or long-form (4%) news story on their phone return to it on that phone, but those who do tend to spend more time with it than users overall. Return visitors to long-form articles spent 277 seconds with the article compared with 123 seconds for users overall. For short-form content, return visitors spent an average of 110 seconds of engaged time with the article compared with 57 seconds for users overall. Both long- and short-form news articles tend to have a very brief life span. Fully 82% of interactions with short-form articles begin within the first two days after publication, as did 74% of long-form interactions.