10. A method for displaying a customized news stream, the method comprising: identifying, by one or more servers, dwell times spent by a plurality of users while accessing a plurality of items, each item belonging to one media type from a plurality of media types, wherein the plurality of media types includes types selected from a group consisting of news articles, videos, photographs, short messages, slideshows, or blogs, the plurality of media types having varying average dwell times; for each media type, determining, by the one or more servers, statistical parameters for the each media type based on statistical analysis of the identified dwell times for the items belonging to the each media type; obtaining, at the one or more servers, a normalized dwell time for each item, the normalized dwell time of an item based upon a quotient of a difference between the dwell time of the item and the average dwell time for items of the media type, and the standard deviation of the dwell times for items of the media type, wherein normalized dwell times for items of a given media type are made to be comparable to that of items of each of the other media types of the plurality of media types; determining, at the one or more servers, a first priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on the normalized dwell time of each item; determining, at the one or more servers, a second priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on the first priority and a profile of a user; and sending, from the one or more servers, a news stream to the user for presentation on a display associated with the user device, the news stream being configured to be presented on the display associated with the user device in an order based on the second priority of the items in the plurality of news items, wherein operations of the method are executed by a processor.
10. A method for displaying a customized news stream, the method comprising: identifying, by one or more servers, dwell times spent by a plurality of users while accessing a plurality of items, each item belonging to one media type from a plurality of media types, wherein the plurality of media types includes types selected from a group consisting of news articles, videos, photographs, short messages, slideshows, or blogs, the plurality of media types having varying average dwell times; for each media type, determining, by the one or more servers, statistical parameters for the each media type based on statistical analysis of the identified dwell times for the items belonging to the each media type; obtaining, at the one or more servers, a normalized dwell time for each item, the normalized dwell time of an item based upon a quotient of a difference between the dwell time of the item and the average dwell time for items of the media type, and the standard deviation of the dwell times for items of the media type, wherein normalized dwell times for items of a given media type are made to be comparable to that of items of each of the other media types of the plurality of media types; determining, at the one or more servers, a first priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on the normalized dwell time of each item; determining, at the one or more servers, a second priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on the first priority and a profile of a user; and sending, from the one or more servers, a news stream to the user for presentation on a display associated with the user device, the news stream being configured to be presented on the display associated with the user device in an order based on the second priority of the items in the plurality of news items, wherein operations of the method are executed by a processor. 14. The method as recited in claim 10 , wherein operations of the method are performed by a computer program when executed by one or more processors, the computer program being embedded in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.