The audience most actively involved includes a minority of thoughtful people interested in real discussion-and a majority of cranks and those with too much time on their hands. Instead, the distinctive value of Net publications proves to be their ever-fresh nature, through more frequent updates than any print publication can manage. Every serious Net site must have new material at least once a day, to get people in the habit of visiting. Several times a day is better. Patterns of Web traffic show that people overwhelmingly visit sites during working hours presumably because their Internet connections are faster at the office than at home.
Frequent updates bring readers back every few hours.
For one, the joys of accidental discovery are still there. Many Net sites tout the ability to produce personalized news pages. The Create Your Own Newspaper site offers an even more comprehensive ability to tailor a page to your exact tastes. In theory, tools like this might deny readers the rich, unplanned discovery that can come from leafing through a newspaper. And it is probably true that no online experience can match a well-designed print magazine for helping readers discover things they didn't know they were looking for.