Encouraging news for freemium and metered content sites! Your content is not as transitory as you may think.Pocket CEO Nate Weiner spoke to Fast Company recently, and one of the many interesting tidbits he shared was that the average article on pocket has a lifespan of 37 days. That means that while the flurry of saving and sharing that happens during the first week an article is published may die down, the article’s influence lasts a little over a month.Legacy publications (and subscription sites) such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are heavily favored by Pocket users, but occassionally a viral blog post can make its way up the rankings of most-saved articles.In addition, while 87% of saved stories were blog posts and other easy reads, such as listicles and links from Twitter, engagement (measured by the number of times an article is opened, whether it’s shared again or favorited, if readers scroll to the end, etc.) was much higher for longer, heavier pieces.This means that there’s clearly a place for longer articles in your free content marketing. Savvy, well-staffed marketing departments can try to optimize for subscription sales on the longer tail of their free content by making sure discounts, promotions and links last for a month or longer.But content publishers, especially B2C sites, should beware the curse of the Internet. While Weiner describes Pocket as a DVR for content, he also mentions that he avoids TV favorites like Breaking Bad because he knows he won’t watch just one — to start is to commit to 80 hours of television. There’s plenty of content I save to pocket that I don’t deep dive into because I just don’t have the time and know I can’t give it a cursory review.Which means that “saved” or “favorited” is not the same as “consumed.”