Top 7 Lists Lead The Pack On Digg

Lists are good, but if they become too long, readers are liable to lose interest.  Too short, and no one will think your 25-word post is worth reading.  Top 10 lists have become the norm - but why?  Russ Jones of the Google Cache combed through over 2,500 Digg stories to see if lists with more (or fewer) points do better.

The result: if you can’t think of ten different things to say, it’s not a problem.  “7 is the magic number, it seems the most comfortable - not exhausting but not incomplete,” writes Jones.  “Perhaps our attention span is shorter than ever?”

“Top 7” lists actually scored a 59% success rate, as measured by Jones, compared to 39% for the traditional Top 10 compilations.