a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites o

A short while ago, Ezinearticles.com started featuring the pictures of on its home page. The images of the over 30,000 people who have written and posted articles are shown at random. I have found this feature very interesting and every time I log onto the site, I click on one or two of the pictures. The variety of talent and topics covered are truly amazing.

While looking at the pictures of these various article writers, I noticed something I didn’t expect. Article writers tend to be an older crowd. Of course, as far as I know, people are not required to give their age when they submit their biographical information. Even submitting a bio is voluntary. So there likely aren’t any statistics to verify my observation that most of the writers tend to be over thirty.

This surprises me because the demographic of Internet users is skewed to the younger age groups. Also, the most popular sites on the net tend to be dominated by young age groups. I am thinking of sites like myspace and youtube. Ezinearticles.com is very successful in its own right, but likely is attracting a different demographic.

At this point, you are likely saying, so what. Ok, it’s maybe nothing, but I think the popularity of article writing, and presumably reading, among the older crowd points to something significant about the Internet and how it is used. Research shows that people use the Internet primarily as a massive database, searching for information, clicking around until they find it, or like free association, follow one train of thought to another. They tend not to sit and read very much.

Even though people use the Internet as a database, search engines treat it like a massive narrative. The web crawlers look for words, and favour sites with lots of them. In order to achieve a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites on

g I didn’t expect. Article writers tend to be an older crowd. Of course, as far as I know, people are not required to give their age when they submit their biographical information. Even submitting a bio is voluntary. So there likely aren’t any statistics to verify my observation that most of the writers tend to be over thirty.

This surprises me because the demographic of Internet users is skewed to the younger age groups. Also, the most popular sites on the net tend to be dominated by young age groups. I am thinking of sites like myspace and youtube. Ezinearticles.com is very successful in its own right, but likely is attracting a different demographic.

At this point, you are likely saying, so what. Ok, it’s maybe nothing, but I think the popularity of article writing, and presumably reading, among the older crowd points to something significant about the Internet and how it is used. Research shows that people use the Internet primarily as a massive database, searching for information, clicking around until they find it, or like free association, follow one train of thought to another. They tend not to sit and read very much.

Even though people use the Internet as a database, search engines treat it like a massive narrative. The web crawlers look for words, and favour sites with lots of them. In order to achieve a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites o

ular sites on the net tend to be dominated by young age groups. I am thinking of sites like myspace and youtube. Ezinearticles.com is very successful in its own right, but likely is attracting a different demographic.

At this point, you are likely saying, so what. Ok, it’s maybe nothing, but I think the popularity of article writing, and presumably reading, among the older crowd points to something significant about the Internet and how it is used. Research shows that people use the Internet primarily as a massive database, searching for information, clicking around until they find it, or like free association, follow one train of thought to another. They tend not to sit and read very much.

Even though people use the Internet as a database, search engines treat it like a massive narrative. The web crawlers look for words, and favour sites with lots of them. In order to achieve a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites o

s used. Research shows that people use the Internet primarily as a massive database, searching for information, clicking around until they find it, or like free association, follow one train of thought to another. They tend not to sit and read very much.

Even though people use the Internet as a database, search engines treat it like a massive narrative. The web crawlers look for words, and favour sites with lots of them. In order to achieve a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites o

a ranking in the search engines, sites must have the words the engines are looking for, in other words - content. The web crawlers also favour sites that have a fresh stream of words.

Thus the popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote their sites and get fresh content for their sites. Articles lend themselves very well to the way search engines work. Ironically, the most popular sites on the Internet didn’t achieve their ranking by being search engine friendly. They achieved their popularity by word of mouth, by lending themselves to viral characteristics. The users of these sites are younger and are not writing or reading that much. They are using the sites the way most people use most sites, clicking and browsing around.

It may be possible that two distinct Internet cultures have emerged. Older users, who have been schooled in traditional ways, reading and writing books, adapt naturally to narrative content. Younger users, although they may be literate, gravitate to multi-media, graphics, video and electronically mediated conversation. This makes me wonder if these younger users will adapt to narrative at some point, or if search engines will be changed to accommodate this generation. When this happens, narrative as we know it may become a lost art.