You know, everywhere I look these days the buzz all abut making content shorter and shrter and shrtr. I’m not sure why this trend was started and where this trend of hatred for longer, full-bodied and information-rich content came from, but I can tell you one thing — me and the rest of the HubPages crew aren’t really excited about it. I mean, we’re down right disgusted by it.
First it all started out fairly innocent — those people creating videos for YouTube began creating content that was rarely over 2-3 minutes in length, which played well into the short attention spans and busy lives of today’s Internet users. No longer were 15-30 minute videos necessary in this fast-paced, give it to me now world that we’re all now living in.
Not to be outdone, websites began doing things like dropping the ‘e’ in Flickr and soon after were considered cool, hip and cutting edge in the web 2.0 world. Unfortunately, this threw even more fuel on the quickly growing fire that was to become a trend of shorter and shorter content.
I believe after this sizzling hot buzz of creating super-short (and wimpy) content made it’s way back to the Facebook offices (and after realizing that dropping all the vowels from their name could leave them with only ‘Fcbk’) the Facebook status was implemented. I mean, why ask for full-fledged, informative and quality content from your users when you can get quick spurts of utter randomness? This major sign of affection and admiration for short content only increased it’s momentum across the then unsuspecting web. Short content had now become more than a fad — it had become a movement.
Of course, the bar got raised even higher when Twitter proposed the ultimate innovation in cutting content short by offering a platform that allows it’s information hungry users to only be fed content 140 characters at a time. These short and rapid-fire ‘Tweets’, as they’re called, are on a whole new level or creating short content and are a sure-fire sign that this trend isn’t going anywhere soon.
Yeah, this isn’t very good news for me, the rest of the HubPages team, the 50,000+ HubPages authors and the rest of the longer, more quality content creators who aren’t happy or satisfied with the somewhat empty feeling that only being able to type out 140 characters can give you. You see, we want to give more to the web and we’re willing to put in the time, effort and level of quality that it requires. This short content is rubbish to us, plain and simple.
Even though we’re all of a sudden in the midst of an all out short-content revolution, here at HubPages we will always be a supporter of creating longer, more quality content and promise to always be working to support and help those who are willing to take the time to create it.
We’re here for you, long content creators and we always will be.
HubPages Blog 
Long content creators UNITE! 🙂
Well google loves long content so I am not at all surprised that HP does too! Sure you can get a zillion stumbleupon drones for a silly utube vid – but then they are gone and they haven’t bought anything. Get ranked by google and you will actually make some money with your content!
Kind of a short post though.. 🙂
How many words, or characters, does it take to get into the world of Long Content?
So far I find this to be far more the most interesting of all the different sites I have come across while learning how to use my computer. My husband and I got a computer to make web site and for the first six months played games on it, had no idea where to start. This is very educational site and look forward reading the different articles, Thank you. PS can’t yet fill in web site area, hopefully soon.
I was just starting to get into this, when it finished.
You are either into long content or you are not.
This could have been much longer, You could have
explained things, like the length which is best, before boredom set in, as a lot of people struggle with this balance.
Anna
I am getting a better idea of what Hub is all about, especially as compared with Twitter. I still don’t know how to post writing on Hub. Once a get a writing in place, it is an easy matter to get the other “services” included.
Please refer to my website for continuous blogs on various topics.