How fickle is news aggregator traffic?
Nieman Lab points out that Newser’s traffic has faced steep declines, explaining that much of its readership success was based on distribution deals that have since fallen through.
Similarly, while Politics Daily has been praised for amassing a huge audience in its first few months, the majority of that traffic comes from the site’s corporate parent, AOL.
And there’s nothing wrong with those arrangements, but they’re a far cry from loyal readership. When the firehose is shut off, the traffic disappears.
