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Magazines and newspapers, like intranet content, come in various shapes and sizes, each with their own distinct lifespan. Some publications, such as daily newspapers, are only relevant for a short period of time. Others, such as trade magazines, may contain information that will still be applicable months down the road — annual buyer's guides, product reviews, interviews, and how-to information.

You will also notice that daily newspapers are usually kept close to the cash register to allow customers easy access without requiring them to walk through the whole store. After all when you're looking to pick up a newspaper, it's often a grab-it-and-go affair. On the other hand, magazines — grouped by topics of interest — are placed in a larger area to allow customers to browse through the issue before buying. When new editions and issues arrive, the previous day's newspapers are taken off the shelves while older magazines are moved to the back of the stands until they too are removed.

But what if store owners left all their unsold copies of magazines and newspapers on the stands along with recently released editions? Not only will customers find it nearly impossible to locate a specific issue or piece of information, but the shelves and racks would spill over onto the floor, their contents falling prey to all manner of mites and silverfish.

If bookstores don't mix old content with new content, why would you?

Content Types and Lifespan

Fresh content is the most critical ingredient to a successful intranet; perhaps even more so than technology and design. Without fresh content, everything else is irrelevant. But it's not enough to simply top off your intranet with new information; content owners need to make a distinction between just adding content and actually managing this content.

Far too many casual content owners take a lackluster approach to inputting content by piling more information onto an already crowded page. It's important to understand that as you add new content to the top of the list, you need to move (or delete, if the information in no longer relevant) content from the bottom of the list. Otherwise, you run the risk of turning your intranet into a scrapyard.

But this FIFO (first in, first out) method of archiving is fairly general and meant solely for the purpose of illustrating a point; it's really up to the discretion of each content owner to decide what stays and what goes based on its importance and relevance at a given time. And it's the responsibility of each content owner to understand the lifespan of his or her content, and that the value and usefulness of any piece of information will depreciate over time. This is key to keeping an intranet free of clutter and data white noise.

Although intranets and their content vary from system to system, you can usually classify intranet content into four lifespan categories:

• Static: Content that doesn't change, or changes very little, and remains useful over a long period of time. Examples of static content: annual reports, annual sales figures, and how-to procedures.

• Dynamic: Content that changes frequently and is referenced often. Example of active content: employee vacation schedules, calendar information such as appointments and meetings, and stock quotes.

• Periodic: Content that changes, and is referenced, occasionally. Periodic content life can be short or long term. Examples of periodic content: project specs, project schedules, employee reference manuals, employee directories, and organization charts.

• Short-term: Time-sensitive content that needs to be made available as soon as the information is known. Short-term content rarely changes because their life is so short. Examples of time-sensitive content: press releases, event announcements, notices of service interruptions.

A summary of these categories is illustrated in the following table:

Static	Changes	Life
	Rarely	Indefinite
Dynamic	Frequently	Can be limited or indefinite
Periodic	Occasionally	Can be limited or indefinite
Short-term	Never	Short (time-sensitive)