Flipboard, Zite, Msgboy, Pulse, Taptu, Poptart, Feedly.

These are the names of a new-ish category of feed reader apps I've been checking out for the past two days. I really want to have a name for their category, but I haven't heard one that I like yet. For now, I'll stick with "personal magazines". Maybe not.

These apps run on your mobile device, or maybe even as a plugin for your favorite web browser, or even as a plain old website. They take the most common online activities and cram it all into one place. You like to see what your Facebook friends are up to? It's there. You like to check your favorite blogs? It's there? You like to read the news, read about last night's game, or check the weather? It can all be there, and it's all integrated into a single, digital magazine, usually with a...

1. Stuff about people
2. Stuff about people who are interesting
3. Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here (here being where your audience tends to be located)
4. Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here and who are part of a group,  with the size of the group being directly proportional to the post's potential engagement
5. Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here and who are part of multiple hunting crossbow groups, with the size and number of groups being directly proportional to the post's potential engagement

I’ve been watching web traffic from my desk here at North Country Public Radio this week. I do this most weeks, but what makes this week different is our Fall fundraiser. That’s right, this is that time, the time when we get on the air and on the web and ask for money to continue running our “show”.

Most weeks, when I survey our web traffic, I am watching a trend based on visitorsÂ’ desires to consume news content. This is the richest part of our online offering, and itÂ’s the most used part as well. So on Monday through Friday, IÂ’m thinking about how to provide a better service to our news consumers that will encourage them to visit more frequently and to share their love of NCPR.org with their friends.

However, there is a disturbing pattern that occurs for nearly every public media website that exists, and it relates to weekend traffic. When you look at weekday vs. weekend traffic for most public media websites, itÂ’s a little like looking at the profile of a crinkle-cut french-fry. Weekdays are up, weekends down. In fact, itÂ’s not unusual for weekend traffic to drop down to half or less than weekdays.

So on weekends, when nobody is here at the station, whatÂ’s the most important content? WhatÂ’s the most used content? To be honest, we here at NCPR spend very little time thinking about weekends and how they are different for our visitors. We assume that weekend visitors are the same as weekday...