Megan channels one of my gripes:

What the hell is with multiple page web articles? The reason books have pages is obvious; it's hard to carry around a single 110x80 foot sheet of paper, much less unfold it to read. Not so much for web articles. Does someone actually find this preferable?

Yes, what is up with that? More ad space? I don't see why. Maybe more page views to fool the advertisers? Computer World does this, and I do find it annoying.

The worst about this is Television Without Pity. Their recaps range from 8-20 pages.

I know they do it to maximize ad revenue, but I would pay probably $2-3 a month for access to a "print" view with the entire recap on one page.

The ad revenue explanation seems likely and it may actually make sense.

If I'm paying for an ad near the bottom of a long page, how am I sure that a click on that page means my ad ever appeared? But if it's in the middle of a short page 3, a click on page 3 tells me the ad at least came into view and that would seem to make the ads easier to sell.

But Computerworld does annoy me when they publish a list of ten things and each gets its own page.

Jerry Pournelle complained about this years and years ago, before I ever had read more than a blog or two besides his "not a blog." IIRC it was because Byte was doing it.

There's another reason, and it's an obvious one if you think about it-- this simple action greatly hinders the direct email cut-and-paste.

if there's more than one page, most people will just email the link instead of cutting and pasting into email--so this simple action helps direct traffic to their site.

As someone who teaches e-marketing I am able to solve this mystery. This is just capitalism and the free market at work.

Web media is supported by advertising and advertising pays by the number of impressions using a metric know as the CPM (Cost per thousand impressions). Experience shows usually its not practical to have more then 10-15 banners/button ad slots on a webpage. Other wise the ads are lost in the clutter. So if you have the story on a single page story and you if you are only able to have 15 ads slots a page then the website and the CPM is $65 will only get 97.5 cents (15 X $65 X .001) for every individual that views the story. If its on four pages they will get $3.90 (4 X 15 X $65 X.001) for each time someone reads the entire story. Since web media sites are in business to make money the logical way to do so is to break the story into as many web pages as viewers will put up with. This is the free market at work with firms following the goal of profit maximization.

Firms that make more because they manage their advertising better will have more revenues and be able to pay to have premium content. The premium content would then attract more viewers resulting in even higher revenues. You have a classic free market growth spiral. Websites which constraint themselves by limiting stories to a single and not maximizing revenue will likely not be able to compete as effectively in the marketplace. They go fail. Of course if viewer reject multiple page stories then those firms using them will need to drop the practice, but consumer research shows that the average viewer doesn’t mind two or three page stories if the content is good.

Of course if you dislike it you could start a drive to have the number of words per page regulated by the government, just as the FCC regulates the number of minutes of children’s advertising on TV. This will force firms to limit stories to a single page for the benefit of consumers like you that prefer it. Personal gripes are often a driver of bsuiness regultion. Or you could start a consumer action by organizing a boycott of websites that break stories into multiple pages. Or you could simply let the free market take its course and allow firms to maximize their advertising revenues. Personally, as a member of a business school faculty I prefer the free market approach of giving websites the freedom to sell as much advertising as the consumer will tolerate.

I always thought it was because people refuse to scroll down past a certain point. They are used to reading articles in magazines, so at some point they look for a new "page."

The ad revenue answer actually makes more sense, though. But I've read plenty of website-building guides that direct you to not make the reader have to "scroll too much." Of course another reason for that is reading words on a computer screen is harder on the eyes than reading words on a page. You blink less staring at a monitor screen, so your eyes dry out. And there are other reasons having to do with lighting and refresh rates and so on that I can't remember.

What I really hate is blogs with width set to 392 pixels. In this age of widescreen monitors it is simply ludicrous.

An exercise for the interested student:

People tend to click away if a page hasn't loaded in between 3 and 8 seconds.

It takes about a second to set up an HTTP connection on a dialup line, and you get about 1000 bytes/second once it's set up.

(1) how many bytes on a page before people on dialup tend to click away?

(2) how many words of prose can fit comfortably on a page like that, along with some reasonable graphics?