Another awesome article form Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, especially the stats on how many decisions we make online vs. when watching TV which has serious implications for online advertising and website usability.

Today, of course, we're in the opposite scenario: everything we write competes with trillions of Web pages, all a few clicks away. As a result, most people actually read very few words on the Web.

The velocity of media consumption has increased dramatically. Readers no longer linger over lovingly described passages detailing a lord's style of dress. They click here, they click there, they click everywhere. But they don't stay.

People's consumption of print media is different than their use of websites, leading to the many differences in designing for print versus the Web.

Compared to TV, the Web also has a much finer granularity of user control:

When watching TV, you make one decision every 30–120 minutes: pick a show or movie to watch, and then it's lean-back time. Ah, easy.

When surfing the Web, you make a decision every 10–120 seconds: leave or stay on this page; leave or stay on this site. Where to click now? Where to click next? A bit stressful.

Adding up all these differences explains the fast pace of Web use: the velocity is much higher than we see for TV use.

Read the original Alertbox article here
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/media-velocity.html

Great research from Jakob Nielsen on how business users interact with social networks, I especially like the part on 'overly frequent postings' which really annoy me (and I hope we're not in the same category).

Summary: Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks.

Some key insights form the article

• Users prefer casual style for business messages on social networks
• RSS feeds are seen as more trustworthy
• RSS feeds are checked at work, social networks from home
• Only 6% of users accessed corporate social networks from mobiles
• People like a single stream of news that pushes old stuff down
• Users are unlikely to search for old messages or scroll down
• Posting frequency and expectations are tied to the service
• If you post too rarely, your material will drift out of users' time-streams
• If you post too much, you'll crowd out other messages
• Three great motivators are fear, greed (deals), exclusivity (latest news)
• Sites that are not updated regularly give a bad impression
• Users don't actively seek out companies in social networks
• There's usually another trigger such as recommendations (re-tweets!)
• Overall message usefulness still scores low but trustworthiness high
• Useful messages have substance, are timely, provided expected info
• Trustworthiness is influenced by clear user names and logos
• The shorter the message, the more important the writing

Read the original article here
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/streams-feeds.html

Or buy the research report here (and email me a copy please)
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/streams/