A while back I mentioned the cognitive science behind chunking and studies that show that 7 chunks of data is easier for humans to process. Then I asserted that information scenting means that articles with indications they’re chunked would do better on sites like digg. I was speculating that this is why “Top 10″-type posts work so well.
And now, study done by Russ Jones backs that up. He counted up how many “top 12″, “top 11″, “top 10″ etc, lists that made it to the front page of digg, and what number comes out on top with a 59% success rate? 7. (to be fair, his data set seems a little small, especially for non-10 numbers)

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