On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 9:13 PM, Corey Floyd <cfl...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Definitely interesting… not too surprising that there has been a bump in > mobile reading over that past few years - seeing as everyone's phone screens > are twice as big as they were in 2012. Anecdotally, I am more likely to read > on my phone now than I was a few years ago (I always used to reach for my > iPad before I had an iPhone 6). > > When reviewing these stats, we should keep in mind the primary use case of > Wikipedia - a reference. While it is true that some will read significant > portions of a book or a blog posts on their phones, most people aren't > looking to read a Wikipedia article from top-to-bottom. Some will read a > section or 2, while many others will only need to ready the first paragraph > to get the answer that they need.
I definitely think we need to test this assumption. I wonder if this is something the QuickSurvey could be used to measure e.g. a simple question "What are you here for?" (although results might get skewed by quick lookups having no time to do a survey). I'm not sure it is. Personally I read much more than the lead section (I tend to use Google quick facts for those quick lookups). Thoughts welcomed on how we could work this out. > > So even as the number of "long form readers" increases on mobile, that might > not directly translate into more "full article Wikipedia readers" on mobile. > > I definitely believe we should continue improving our mobile reading > experience - it will only become more important as these numbers increase, > however we shouldn't draw to many conclusions from this article as the > content being discussed is quite different. > > > On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Tilman Bayer <tba...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >> >> Forwarding to the public list too. >> >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: Tilman Bayer <tba...@wikimedia.org> >> Date: Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 9:40 PM >> Subject: Interesting WSJ article: "The Rise of Phone Reading" >> To: Internal communication for WMF Reading team >> <reading-...@lists.wikimedia.org> >> >> >> Some food for thought - it's probably not entirely surprising in 2015, >> but this article collects a lot of information showing that the >> assumption "few people want to read long texts on a phone" is too >> simplistic: >> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395 >> >> TLDR from our perspective: Smartphones are becoming a major venue for >> reading ebooks, ie. really long-form texts, more than was predicted a >> few years ago. ("In a Nielsen survey of 2,000 people this past >> December, about 54% of e-book buyers said they used smartphones to >> read their books at least some of the time. That’s up from 24% in >> 2012.") One reason is convenience - “The best device to read on is the >> one you have with you"/"Most people who read on their phones toggle >> back and forth between devices, using whichever is closest at hand >> when opportunity strikes". Another is that screen sizes are getting >> bigger. >> Also has some bits about how book publishers react to this, which may >> of course be less applicable to us. >> >> [...] >> -- >> Tilman Bayer >> Senior Analyst >> Wikimedia Foundation >> IRC (Freenode): HaeB >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mobile-l mailing list >> Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l > > > > > -- > Corey Floyd > Software Engineer > Mobile Apps / iOS > Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > Mobile-l mailing list > Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l > -- Jon Robson * http://jonrobson.me.uk * https://www.facebook.com/jonrobson * @rakugojon _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
