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Among tablet owners, at least, reading on the mobile Web is preferable to using native apps, according to a recent survey from the Online Publishers Association. 

Forty-one percent of tablet-bound readers prefer reading on the Web, compared to the 30% who would rather launch a standalone app from a specific publisher. Aggregated news-reading apps like Flipboard and Zite rated surprisingly low on the list. 

Last month, Jason Pontin, editor of MIT Technology Review, wrote a widely read takedown of native apps, citing Apple's steep revenue share and the technical and design challenges associated with producing such apps.  "But the real problem with apps was more profound," Pontin wrote. "When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn’t really link."

studies suggest, if you're asked to recall a specific piece of information in a text, you'll remember where on the page you were when you read it.

Holding a book grants you a tactile sense of textual topography

100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 

a spike in retweets among those in the 71-100 character range—so-called “medium” length tweets. These medium tweets have enough characters for the original poster to say something of value and for the person retweeting to add commentary as well.

the ultra-short 40-character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than others.

As the number of Internet-enabled consumer devices continues to grow, so does the propensity of consumers to sequentially use multiple devices to complete a single online task. In fact, according to a new study from Google, 90 percent of people move among devices to accomplish a goal.

Examples of how consumers sequentially use multiple devices for a single task include opening an email on a smartphone and then finishing reading it on a home PC and looking up product specs on a laptop after seeing a TV commercial

The other primary way of using multiple devices is simultaneous use, meaning using more than one device at the same time. This includes both multitasking — performing different tasks on different devices — and complementary usage such as looking up a product online while watching a TV commercial.

While the finding that trust in ‘traditional’ push marketing techniques (such as banner ads) is at rock bottom in the online world isn’t a surprise, the chart doesn’t make hugely encouraging reading for proponents of social marketing which also languishes near the bottom of the trust index, just above the mobile apps channel. Text message communications were the least trusted, while online banner ads barely rated above spammy SMS in the trust stakes.

The relatively low trust in social marketing tallies with a recent Gartner report that found U.S. marketers ranked spending on the corporate website as more likely to result in “marketing success” than spending on social media sites such as Facebook.

“professionally written online reviews” still carry a huge cachet — at least with U.S. consumers. European consumers are far less trusting of the publishing industry, however (55% vs 33% split on that category).

visual breaks -- like a line or rule -- discouraged people from looking at items beyond the break, like a blurb. (This also affects ads

We found that when people look at blurbs under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb. In other words, most people just look at the first couple of words -- and only read on if they are engaged by those words.

People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don't view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on. On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor's attention.

There’s no denying that email is showing signs of decline — the number of visitors to web-based email sites fell 6% in 2010 compared to the previous year, and email engagement declined at an even greater rate, according to a report from digital analysis company comScore.

In response to these changes, brands are quickly adapting by combining email, social media and even mobile marketing tactics.

successful brands are doing just that — cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Ultimately, brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.

brands will be able to use historical affinity behavior of consumers to target more precisely than ever before. It’s clear that the database of affinity is a prize of gigantic proportion, and ultimately, Nate concludes that Google will end up the winner in that battle because they have the broadest data to draw upon and best chance of making sense of it.

not long ago, I bought a pair of jeans online from Bonobos. A little while later, I was shown an ad for Bonobos in my Facebook feed. I was perplexed by the timing of it, until I read an article that described brands’ practice of providing Facebook with customer email addresses that were then mapped to Facebook logins so that targeted ads could be shown to brand customers. This is technically more targeted, but I responded negatively since I had never opted into their feed. I think the question this raises is this: when it comes to targeting, is there a point of diminishing returns? Maybe there is such a thing as just enough targeting and no more.

In search, I am in research mode: in entering a query into the search box, I am announcing my intent to accept “bids” for my attention from all takers, and I’m prepared to act upon the provider of the best information in the search results to that query. In social, I am in a very different state of mind. I expect content from my closed network, and unless I have invited a brand in by Liking or following them, their presence is very much viewed as an uninvited intrusion. It’s the loud, slightly drunk guy at the party that keeps interrupting your conversation with the interesting guy/gal.

research suggests that readers prefer their tablets' Web browsers to the meaty, slow-to-update and even more slow-to-evolve native apps that publishers have been eagerly developing since Steve Jobs first held up the iPad on stage in 2010.

Inspired by the Netflix model, magazine subscription service Next Issue launched on iOS in July. For $10 per month, readers can get access to dozens of magazines from the likes of Conde Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst. This approach comes with challenges of its own, but it's certainly worth a try. 

Then there's The Magazine. Instapaper founder Marco Arment launched the stripped-down, iPad-only publication in October and it couldn't be more simple. For $2 per month, readers are promised eight thoughtful, well-written articles delivered in bi-weekly issues. The Magazine eschews the clunky, multimedia-loaded digital editions of print magazines in favor of a no-frills, high quality reading experience that Arment hopes people will think is good enough to pay for.

Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations by just adding a single line of code to their mobile sites.

These recommendations, Sternberg told me, are based on social recommendations on the site from your friends on Google+ (only if you are signed in, of course), what the story you just read was about, the story’s author and some of Google’s “secret sauce.”

The new Google+-based recommendations, interestingly, only appear once a reader slides back up on a page. This, Google’s analytics show, is a pretty good indicator that a user has finished reading a post (even if there is still more text left on the page). The recommendation widget then slides up from the bottom and one extra click brings up more relevant items for the page. The other option is to show the widget after a user scrolls past a configurable CSS entity.

In terms of specific days and times to post on Facebook, here are some of the stats I found: Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. I love the way this was explained in Buddy Media’s study: as they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”

Another study found that engagement was 32% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good rough guide to start experimenting with.

The best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.

Authorship photos might cause people to assume that the page is an article or a blog post rather than a product page.

most pages can be optimized by including images that serve as visual cues for where visitors should look next.

Relying on the screen above “the fold” to do all of the heavy lifting is one of the biggest usability mistakes you can make. The idea that it is the only place web users will browse is a complete myth.

I think in the mobile, in the phone space particularly, I don’t think people have time for opinion and commentary--they just want, “tell me what I need to know, tell me all the facts, tell me what’s going on.” I think on the phone it will probably continue to be that way. I think when we get to the tablet, there may be potential for commentary, for opinion, for bringing in some people who have a specific point of view--if you have time and want to lean back on the couch and read what someone’s take is on something, that might come into play. But I think on the phone, it’s going to be strictly the facts, strictly get to the point, tell me what I need to know, informing people very quickly about different topics

if you’re in the business of media or editorial, you’re always going to want to have someone as a human layer--otherwise, it just doesn’t work, I mean I don’t feel like you could ever really present a media product that’s completely automated--those companies are out there and most of them are really crappy.

Os jovens estão duas vezes mais dispostos a pagar por conteúdos digitais do que os leitores mais velhos, de acordo com o Digital News Report 2013

20 por cento dos leitores entre os 25 e os 34 anos estão disponíveis para pagar notícias em suportes digitais, por comparação com 10 por cento dos indivíduos com mais de 55 anos.

apenas cinco por cento dos inquiridos disse ter pago por informação digital na semana anterior ao inquérito, contra metade que havia comprado um jornal impresso no mesmo período