I know this was a BAD April Fool’s joke but the article about  The Guardian Newspaper tweeting their stories after printing in ink for 188 years gave me some food for thought about blogs and blogging.

The article alleges that the Guardian will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter and goes on to say that ”a mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper’s archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets.”

But what got my attention was the theme running through the entire article …

Brevity!

The article outlines the fact that the sceptics (not real of course) of the new Guardian Twitter approach expressed their concerns that 140 characters may not be able to convey the message behind the tweet.  But, social media experts apparently responded with:

“…the spread of Twitter encourages brevity … it ought to be possible to convey the gist of any message in a tweet.”

So what was I thinking …?  Should we as bloggers not be applying this principle when we write our blog posts?

I know for a fact that I can get carried away sometimes when I have something to say, but I also know that I don’t always have time to read long blog posts no matter how good they are and often, I decide I’ll return to the article later but never get the time.

The article even alleges that Jeff Jarvis, tweeted yesterday …  ”In the new media environment, readers want short and punchy coverage, while the interactive possibilities of Twitter promise to transform th …,”  Oh dear, he apparently ran out of characters but, is it true, do readers really want short and punchy information?

I suppose the answer could be yes and no … Newspapers still sell as do magazines but not many people read the entire newspaper from cover to cover (unless you’re my husband) and likewise, it’s unlikely that all of your reader’s will read your entire blog post.

Some people will argue this is another dimension of our “microwave” world, but like it or not, we’re already bombarded with too much information and either we must exercise brevity as bloggers or, give people the information in a format that allows them to scan … like good copywriters do!

Gimme your feedback!

Related posts:

1. A New Perspective On Social Media