It's news to them

Aaron Applegate's memorable story about the naked man who flailed a car with a pigeon appeared in the No. 1 position on the Online Top Ten list for two days running. Because of its undeniable attributes, a two-day-old news story was of more interest to online readers than much fresher breaking news.

It's not unusual for an online news story to move like a virus through the Net, picking up an audience the way a black suit picks up lint.

A recent story in The New York Times asks the question, "When does online news become old news?"

The answer, according to a Notre Dame researcher quoted in the Times piece is that it takes a lot longer for a story to grow stale than journalists might think. On average, 36 hours pass before half the audience of a typical news story has seen it, the report says.

An excerpt:

Dr. (Albert-László) Barabási said that one of the main insights from his research was that Internet users did not read news articles evenly throughout the day. Instead, they read in bursts. So while a story will seem old to some users, others who have been away from the Internet for a while will be intrigued to catch up and begin reading.

So, if you haven't heard about it yet, a naked man flailing a car with a pigeon is as interesting on Friday was it was on Tuesday.