A mistake to begin with.
What Mangoo writes in his article is definitely interesting, and the extent to which Chartbeat can actually follow the reading habits of people who click onto a particular page is fascinating. But I have no doubt that he knew, well before that "study", that people rarely get to the end of a 2000 word article. Nineteen years ago, in a very in-your-face manner, Jakob Nielsen let us know How Users Read on the Web:
They don't.
I quoted Nielsen back then, and it's a good guess that since then web-reading habits have only gotten worse. Studies that Nielsen conducted about ten years later also showed us that when people read on the web they do so in what he called an "F" pattern:
F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website's words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.
Actually, though that "F" can definitely connote "fast", what it basically describes is the way in which readers will truly read the first few lines of what you've posted, but that they soon end up skimming the rest. I have no reason to assume that Nielsen was wrong, but it's worth noting that though Nielsen's 1997 column dealt with "readers", in the title he referred to "users". It's also worth noting that relatively recently Nielsen acknowledged that sometimes people do read web pages, and gave a rather surprising reason for that.
I've never expected anyone to "use" a Boidem column. I'd hope that they'd put aside perhaps twenty minutes to read, to consider, to perhaps nod in agreement or shake their heads in dissent, or even call my bluff. Perhaps even enjoy. Any of those are legitimate. But "use"? Certainly not the Boidem.
Go to: It's nice to have a devoted reader, or
Go
to: How to read a Boidem column.