Online Readers Like to be Surprised by What They Read

Posted Thursday, May 12, 2011 12:00 am

By: Roy Greenslade | Guardian.co.uk

There is a great enthusiasm among digital pioneers to offer the readers of news websites the chance to personalize their editorial choices. But readers appear, at present anyway, somewhat underwhelmed by the concept.

Research by a journalism academic, Neil Thurman, shows a disconnect between the growth of personalized news services in Britain and US, and reader response. There is a reluctance among users to customize news websites.

Meanwhile, passive news personalization - which allows news websites to filter and recommend articles based on user browsing behavior - is outstripping active user customization by a factor of three.

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Online Readers Like to be Surprised by What They Read

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