How publishers are rethinking the infinite scroll
With its new article page redesign, for example, Forbes is moving away from presenting readers an endless list of posts. Instead, it’s tweaking the formula so that it shows readers a continuous list of trending headlines, which it says offers readers better mobile reading experience and boosts the viewability of its ads.
“We understood the appeal of infinite scrolling, but there wasn’t a lot of extra browsing or consumption of stories happening after people clicked that first article,” said Forbes chief product officer Lewis DVorkin. “People were reading maybe one or two in the stream.”
Forbes isn’t the only publisher cooling on the infinite scroll. CNN, too, is down on the idea, and the recent Wired relaunch also avoided it. Some publishers just aren’t convinced that the feature lives up to its promise. Part of it could be the implementation. Few publishers have been particularly sophisticated with their infinite scroll features, rarely going beyond presenting articles in blog-like reverse-chronological order.
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