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The "Half Life" of a News Story is 36 Hours

physicsweb.org — If you think you're reading the news, be warned that this story -- and any other on the web -- will be barely read by anyone 36 hours after it was first posted. Researchers have calculated that the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time in a power law, and not exponentially as commonly thought.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 7, 2006

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30 Comments

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  • DisposableRob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+33No it'll be old in 33 hours and 39 minutes.
  • zeerocks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14This is old news.
  • szelij, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Quick! Someone do a paper on the Half-life of torrents!
  • RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6That's a shame because it usually takes a week for the media to get a story right. It's depressing to know that most people are riding a 36 hour ***** conveyer belt.
  • Hydroxyl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Haha, I was like, "Half-Life Torrents?"

    You disappointed me. :P
  • SrLnclt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released."
    "barely read by anyone 36 hours after it was first posted"

    With radio-active materials, half life is the amount of time it takes for half of the nuclei of an isotope to decay. If the "half life" of a news item is 36 hours, wouldn't that mean half the people who will ever read it still haven't come across it yet? Since when is 50% of people equal to barely anyone?
  • wolkengrau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There's certainly something wrong with combining the terms "power law" and "half life"...

    If you took the title for word, you would get a exponentially function without fail.
  • alanspach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Dvorak predicted this!!! the giant douche
  • Tamriel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Speaking of top stories... Who the hell won the Mexican presidential election!? But seriously, if anyone knows I will be really surprised. Oh, and you can't give it away if you're from the UK cause the BBC is simply the best resource for... uh, typical news on the internet.
  • caBoss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thankfully, digg gives many of these stories life to begin with.
  • yafo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The half-life of a quantity subject to exponential decay is the time required for the quantity to decay to half of its initial value. The concept originated in the study of radioactive decay, but applies to many other fields as well, including phenomena which are described by non-exponential decays."

    From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life

    Half-life generally refers to exponential decay, but can be used to describe the quantitative time-to-half-quantity of any similar function.
  • Stalks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Digg drags old stories to the surface all the time. I believe that to be a great side-effect of democratic news ranking, as I almost always miss stories.
  • kibbled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think they are talking about individual news articles not events. I believe if additional information becomes public there is a new article written that has a shelf life of 36 hours. I am thinking back to the Vice President shooting accident. Instead of having a one day story, bits and pieces of the whole event where disclosed over a couple of days which made the event a front page story for a week. I chose this event as an illustration not as political commentary.
  • spirko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, half-life is an exponential decay term.
  • daeyeth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, this sounds pretty right. If digg didn't have the "top stories" features, I'd have to click back six or seven pages back on the digg front page if I missed a day. Most of the time I don't have the time or patience to do that. More news sites should adopt a "top stories" section.
  • mecole21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah i love the top stories section... fills me right in with what i missed...
  • Hydroxyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No soliciting questionable actions that will most likely end up in legal trouble on digg.com, thanks. :D
  • hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I actually try to do this at least once in awhile. Harder now with more categories. Guess that could be tied in with the other story on the front right now, http://digg.com/tech_news/Will_Diversity_Drown_Digg

    If I got a couple days behind, I'd give it up and only go a few pages back and start from there. The frustrating thing is that you can click on the next page and see a few topics from the bottom of the previous as new articles hit the top of the front. Would be neat if there were some kind of "wrap around" that would prevent this, but I guess that's something for 4.0
  • IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That was the 1st thing I thought.
  • VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If this was true, there wouldn't be a reason to snarkily tell someone "Welcome to Last Week."
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If they are political stories they can enjoy long lives as people link to them to support their arguement.
  • LoHo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+112 hours over the limit, and 20 people have dugg this article since then. guess this theory does not apply to digg =)
  • bexmex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is a classic case of why weekly and monthly magazines will still have huge power to inform.

    The internet saps the power of daily newspapers, and the 24-hour "news" channels because they are going after the same thing: the hot news story of the day.

    Places like Digg will always scoop these folks, because by definition what is "hot" is what has "diggs"

    But... magazines have the edge to be able to watch what is hot, cut through the noise, and give good analysis of last months news items. They are the only ones who think about the long term effects of news stories, because that's the only reason why people read their stuff.

    This doesn't susprise me, nor does it bother me. I say more power to social bookmarking sites, and more power to the magazines. Knock those "news" shows down a notch.
  • Dujoducom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One great thing about digg is that as the story develops there will be updates - if enough people in the digg community want an update on the story it will be dugg to the front page.
  • scotticus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0why the quotes around half life?

    I don't get it
  • Buelldozer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Drop the superior BBC ***** Tamriel. CNN was announcing it on their RADIO program At 4PM mountain (GMT -7).
  • mozzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+036 hours may not apply in every case. but this just goes to show the transient nature of the web.
  • BetaMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Does that apply to Digg? I'm digging this approx. 36hrs after the story was posted. It is dugg 326 times so far. Let's see how things develop from here..


  • StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I think you can find one if you search for "half-life" on piratebay...
  • BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I usualy am able to keep up with the news because I have two moniters and on my secondary moniter I have the google toolbar witch gives me RSS feeds to digg news.

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