Read It Later opens its data, shows its users can’t get enough of Lifehacker

Read It Later has revealed some pretty interesting statistics not only on how its service is being used, but where it’s being used. In a recent blog post, we get to see a detailed breakdown of which blogs, and authors, are getting the most clicks on the Read It Later service.

With its 4 million registered users, by keeping track of what readers as saving, Read It Later is able to tap into information that all the analytics apps in the world won’t provide. As it says in the blog post:

Read It Later users aren’t just drive-by visitors to a piece of content—they’re passionate about it. The content is important enough that they added it to their queue so they wouldn’t miss it.

Read It Later recently analyzed the 47 million clicks that it got from its users from May to October, a 37% increase from the previous period. The data was then collected and broken down to find out who are the most popular authors, who of them have the most loyal audience, while also giving us a comparison between bloggers and long-form writers.

So what are some of the interesting statistics that were revealed? Out of the top 10 most saved authors on Read It Later, 9 of them write for Lifehacker.

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Aside from finding out who Read It Later users’ favourite authors are, we also get to see who has the highest return rate, or in other words, once the story has been saved, do people really come back to it later? Gawker publication’s Deadspin author Drew Magary claiming the number one spot. With both charts, Gawker blogs dominated the lists.

The last bit of analysis that we get from ReadItLater relates to the prolific bloggers versus long-form writers, and while naturally the more output, the more a blogger’s links will be saved. A comparison of TechCrunch, New York Times, Rolling Stone and Grantland, shows the prolific TechCrunch shooting ahead of all authors with the most saves, based purely on volume.

When you dig a little deeper, you find that by return rates, the numbers balance out, and as would be expected, the authors writing longer pieces are more likely to have readers return to their stories.

As the blog post points out – analytics can track quantity. We can tell how many times a link has been clicked, or how many return visitors a blog gets. Read It Later gives a more interactive and in-depth look at how readers are consuming content.

The myth that the Internet has made our attention spans all that much shorter may be nothing more than a myth after all. Rolling Stones author Vanessa Grigoriadis averages 2927 words per story and has a 49% return rate to go with her lengthy pieces.

At the same time, Read It Later statistics also do take into account the varied types of articles that are being saved. A short news piece has just as short a shelf life, whereas a How-to or in-depth analysis proves to be a useful tool that readers come back to, more than once.

➤ Read It Later