Dear smartypantsweb

[prog]

What's the purpose of having jumps ("Click for more...") on long blog articles?

I'm not talking about sites that break stories across 10 short pages so that they can expose you to 10 times as many ads. I mean the click-once-to-read-the-entire-post style that I very often see on popular blogs. Random example: Andrew Sullivan puts a "Continue Reading [topic]..." link at the bottom of posts which reach past a certain vertical length, maybe one out of every four of the posts on the front page.

I can guess some reasons, but what reasons does the conventional wisdom hold? (Yes, I'm wondering if we should institute something like this for the Gameshelf.)

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I think it's the same as how magazines put two or three pages of an article in the front of a magazine, with pictures and nice layouts, and then say "continued on page 124". The front section of a magazine or blog is easy-to-read and an advertisement for the rest of the content. If someone wants to get an in-depth treatment, they go to a more data-dense section.

Another reason would be for content that isn't typical of the blog - "normally we're a worksafe blog, but we feel the need to discuss something with NSFW images, so they're behind the cut."