iPhone and iPad Changing People’s Reading Habits

Read It Later, the Instapaper-esque service for saving articles for later consumption has released some fascinating information on how users of the service, depending on the device used, have very different reading habits.

Posted on their blog they reveal that content is encountered pretty much constantly throughout the day, with only a slight drop after work finishes at around 5PM. As for when articles are read, those who use the computer have two key periods, during work at 8AM – 4PM and during the night at 6PM – 9PM with a slightly higher peak during which articles are read.

However when you then look at when users read content using Read It Later on the iPhone (graph above) there are four periods in which reading spikes. Around breakfast at 6AM, during the morning commute and start of work around 9AM, the end of work and commute home at 5PM – 6PM and the couch and bed time at 8PM – 10PM. As the blog post mentions, most of the reading occurs during these times which are periods in which there is little else to do, the spare moments or whitespace as they call it.

Perhaps the most interesting of them all is the graph of articles read on an iPad (graph above), this one really shows a fundamental shift in reading habits. Those who read on an iPad are nearly always doing so in the evening, at the most relaxed time for most during the day. The only other spike is a much smaller one at 6AM for breakfast reading. Finally the Read It Later blog details a scenario which shows when iPad users read articles using a computer and it shows a single, large, peak around 12PM, the lunch break at work.

For all the graphs and some more details, be sure to read the blog post on the Read It Later Blog.

[Via TUAW, Read It Later Blog]