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Estimated Reading Time for Blog Posts

Posted by Ef Rodriguez in blogs on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 | Comments

I’m not sure how many of you read PRSA National’s blog PRSay, but I noticed something peculiar yet fascinating about it this morning. Not concerning the content itself (which is actually pretty good) but in the mechanics of the site.

As I was browsing the page, I noticed a little blurb at the bottom of each post that tells the reader how long a post will take to read. Literally – down to the second. Peep the image below:

prsay-estimated-reading-time-blog-entries-tpr

In that example, that post would take you slightly under 3 minutes to read. Does seeing the anticipated reading time investment before you see the actual article empower you in some way? As though you are assuming more control over how you spend your time online by selecting reading material based on how long it will take you to get through?

Or is this kind of information irrelevant to you?

I fall into the former camp. I spend a lot of time reading stuff online, often to the detriment of my poor, dry eyes. Getting a sense of how long an article will take me to read gives me an idea of whether to bother. Unless, of course, that content is irresistible based solely on the headline.

What do you think?

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  • William
    I'm the same way. If I know how long it may take to read an article, I'll know if I want to even mess with it. Though, if the estimated time is an apparent bother to most people, I'd suggest they leave it off the article!
  • Agreed. I haven't seen it used on other blogs, have you? Maybe the estimated reading time is seen by other bloggers as a deterrent, thus the reason for it's rarity?
  • I think it would be worthwhile to explore and it would differentiate your blog. It's kind of like placing the file size on a download link, it let's you know the size you're dealing with.
  • Exactly. I presume it's just a WordPress plugin, so there's no real work involved once you set it up. I'll admit I'm curious about it.
  • toxicdeath
    I prefer shorter posts, unless you can grab me in the first few lines, I have limited time and want to read as much as possible but get put off by long posts. Just personal, would probably not change my reading habits to know how long it will take to read.
  • I prefer shorter posts, too. That's one of the reasons I gravitate toward Twitter. Do you think fewer people are blogging because Twitter and Tumblr offer a shorter alternative?
  • toxicdeath
    I think that Twitter is taking over, as you get the point of the writer in a short space of time, just goes to show that the attention span of people is dropping at an alarming rate.
  • Agreed. I think more and more folks are taking short attention spans into consideration when composing any original work. There are exceptions, for sure, but consider the popularity of Tumblr.
  • I gauge the time to read an article by quickly scrolling over it and counting the number of paragraphs. I'm also quickly scanning for key words that can tip me off to the content of the post.

    I think having the estimated time to read would be valuable.
  • So what do you think of the trend among popular blogs (Gawker, TechCrunch) of hiding a post's true length behind a preview? Is it annoying to have to click through to determine how long it is?
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