原文: Blog reading becomes a habit, study says

Reading a blog can become as much of a habit as checking e-mail, a new study looking at readers, rather than bloggers, suggests.

Researchers from the University of California-Irvine presented their study, which they said was the first to look in depth at the readers of blogs, on Wednesday at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Florence, Italy.

In a release, they said that previous studies about blogs have typically focused on the writers, "largely overlooking those who go online to read, comment and participate."

They found that regular blog reading can become "an internet ritual," with the content secondary to the process of checking for new posts. The researchers said this is much like the routine of checking e-mail regardless of whether a new message is expected or not.

The researchers also found that the date and frequency of the posts matters little to the readers, but the position of the entry on the page is important.

The report said that readers are more likely to read the most recent posts, unconcerned about age, and that they were not bothered when they couldn't read every post.

"Some would eventually catch up on old posts when the time suited them, while others simply choose the more recent or most interesting posts to read, skipping the rest," the researchers wrote. "This attitude challenges the commonly accepted notion that users feel overwhelmed with staying constantly up to date."

"A missed post is not usually a missed opportunity."

Other findings of the report included:

• Most participants considered reading blogs a form of "chilling out" or "wasting time."
• Most definitions of blogs from participants included the word "journal" or "diary."
• Readers feel pressured to produce worthwhile comments in response to good posts.
• Readers are more likely to post on blogs belonging to their friends than on mainstream sites.

"One of the goals of this research is to stimulate the development of tools to foster that social potential in terms of both readers and bloggers."

Such tools, the researchers said, include a logging tool to help bloggers learn about their readers and target content for them or a blog habit tracker for readers.

译文: 研究表明阅读博客正成为人们的一种习惯

  
      一项着眼于读者而并博客写手的最新研究表明：阅读博客就像查收电子邮件一样日趋成为人们的一个习惯。

      这项研究是由美国加州大学欧文分校在计算机学会召开的计算机系统中的人文因素会议上提出的。他们认为这是首次从深层次角度研究博客的读者。会议是星期三（4月9日）在意大利佛罗伦萨举行的。

      研究人员还公布说，“有时，比起一个人例行公事读或者略读博客的习惯，即使有用的博客内容本身的吸引力还略逊一筹。”研究人员还发现日志在博客上的位置是最重要的，日期和点击率对读者来说作用要小一些。

      报告还说读者更可能读最新的日志，其实他们并不很关心文章的新旧，也不很在乎是否阅读每一篇日志。

      “如果时间允许，一些人最后还会读一些旧的日志，而另一些人只是简单地选择最新的或者最有趣的日志读而跳过其它的。这一态度挑战了人们普遍认同的观念，即人们常感到被持续更新的文章所包围。”

      “错过了一篇日志，就不仅是错过了一个机会。”

      其他的研究发现还包括以下几点：

·    大多数参与者认为读博客是一种“放松”或者“消耗时间。”

·    参与者对博客的大使用词语“期刊”和“日记对博客进行定义。”

·    读者感到为一篇好的博文写评论很有压力。

·    读者更可能参与自己朋友的博客上而不是主流网站上的博客。