What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories

One concern pointed out in the comments was regarding SEO

A continually updating piece at new URLs looks like duplicate content. The author mentioned that their Search traffic was the same, but I wonder what the long term impacts are.

Clearly low bounce and high time on site are important, but I wonder if fluctuating titles hurt them more than helped, and counteracted the increased engagement.

I wonder if The Verge sees a similar effect when they post longer features. I certainly stick around there and at Polygon for the longer posts, not the short blurbs that feel like they trick me into clicking them ...

The examples they give seem off to me - slowly-evolving thought pieces. (Of course, I understand that their examples are limited to topics they would typically cover.)

> ...and then build the article as the story develops over time, rather than just cranking out short, discrete posts every time something new breaks.

Seems to me that this format/style would be perfectly suited to more quickly-evolving stories like the Boston Marathon bombings.

I have trouble imagining the reading experience. You read it, then it updates when you're not reading it, and... what? The RSS for it reactivates, but it's still non-recent. Or we bookmark it to remind ourselves to check bank now and again? It's not quite like a subscription... seems like it's a lot of mental load to check back during those times when it hasn't been updated (scroll scroll scroll... oh drat, it ended at the same point as last time)

Seems like some sort of curated current affairs Wikipedia (from an information POV). It's an interesting idea, and certainly a technically interesting project, especially for interaction design.

I'd stick around longer to read the article if the funky little script driven animation didn't cause my browser to peg a core.