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

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