The shelf life of newspaper columns on the net

Over the years, I have written quite a bit in the media, and all of it is up on my MEDIA page. I recently looked at the logs of my website and it shows 2534 reads in 5 days, or 21 reads an hour. The top 25 articles are as follows:

1	What should the financial stability and development council (FSDC) do?, 16th March 2010	107
2	How to control inflation?, 2nd April, 2008	107
3	India in the great recession, 15th April, 2009	55
4	Finding the right IPO process, 3rd November, 1999	39
5	Innovations in financial products, 25th June, 1997	36
6	Understanding FII investment, 2nd January, 2008	29
7	Evolution of exchange traded derivatives, 1st June, 2009	27
8	Cost of capital: What can a firm do?, 1st November, 2000	27
9	Why forbid insider trading?, 25th March, 1998	25
10	ICICI Bank + Bank of Madura = ?, 13th December, 2000	24
11	Inflation control, 7th February, 2007	23
12	Credit constraints, 22nd March, 2000	22
13	What could go wrong if petroleum product prices are decontrolled?, 8th February, 2010	21
14	India's inflation problem, 2nd September 2008	21
15	Windows + Intel = Wintel?, 7th October, 1998	21
16	The case for equity investment, 17th December, 1997	18
17	A crisis? Or a mere recession?, 19th March, 2008	17
18	Globalisation and the brain drain, 2001	17
19	The price discovery mechanism, 17th June, 1998	17
20	Why index derivatives matter, 14th May, 1997	17
21	Implications of the Hang Seng ETF traded in India, 17th February, 2010	16
22	Rethink the role of OTC derivatives, 27th September, 2008	16
23	Currency futures now, 18th April, 2007	16
24	NSE vs. SGX vs. BSE, 4th October, 2000	16
25	Are Indian family businesses well run?, 20th January, 2010	15

Some of these were unsurprising. E.g. the recent column on the FSDC at #1 is to be expected, given the topicality of the subject. But some remarkably old stuff is high up - e.g. #4 (1999) and #5 (1997). So web dissemination does give shelf life to some of these.



After a sharp peak (over 100 reads in five days) it drops off rapidly to 20 reads at #15, and after that there is a long tail, giving the overall value of 2534 reads overall.