[Sigia-l] It's old news

[prady]

On 7/10/06, Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> <http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/7/3/1>
>
> Surprising?

Not at all. The work only addresses some obvious things. For example,
"news access is more random than thought" isn't insight. Similarly,
news decays in time with power law, makes sense as well but is useless
insight, if at all. News decays, especially current news, because we
are bombarded with radio, TV, around watercoolers etc. It makes sense,
in that case, that people will not be interested to revisit it after
36 hours, unless something new happens (which could be analysis of
news as well).

What is not explained here is what type of news? News today is not
static, it is streaming. It is ever evolving (replacing the previous
one) till it follows the power law to become stale.

Also what is missing is a link between how we access news vs. other
information. I am sure the same may not apply to, say, accessing
document repositories, discussion threads, white papers, or magazine
articles.

I think, there may be some similarity with other networks, such as
social networks which author mentioned. But I can't see how this
reseach can complement SN analysis by computer algorithms.

What am I missing?