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The Age of Microcontent
August 15, 2008

Librarians and archivists: get ready for your worst nightmare. Oh, wait, too late! It's here. There are a growing cadre of web sites that are ushering in with great rapidity the "age of microcontent". This is content so tiny or short that it virtually defies description or collection. And yet let's not make the mistake of equating those qualities with unworthiness. But first allow me to explain what I mean.

I suppose you could say that Twitter.com is an early microcontent site, where people are limited to 140 characters to answer the question "what are you doing?" You must surely think, as I have, that what on earth could possibly be good about hearing what someone is eating for breakfast or that they just put the laundry on? And you'd be right. But we would both be mistaken to think that's all there is. My fellow LJ blogger Josh Hadro just recounted "How Twitter Nearly Saved My Vacation," and there are other examples where Twitter has actually been the conduit of important communication. You could also imagine, that there may be "tweets" (individual messages) that end up having historical significance.

But it isn't just text that has gone micro. Video has as well. The web site 12 Seconds allows users to post videos of no more than 12 seconds about whatever they want. Jason Griffey and Kenley Neufeld are just a couple librarians who are using it. But many others are as well, and it doesn't take too much of an imagination to think that perhaps there will end up being content posted here that might be worth saving.

And just today I ran across another site that seems, if possible, even more "micro" than 12 Seconds: qik.com. The premise here is that all you do is enter your phone number, follow the link sent to your phone, then you're live streaming video to the Qik.com site. Sure, this results in an incredible number of motion-sickness-inducing, idiotic, and downright pointless videos, but who knows what gems may end up posted here? Think about someone on the scene of a major event, for example.

The point is that we are quickly entering a period where anyone, anywhere, can be generating content of virtually any kind and putting it nearly instantaneously up on web sites that anyone can view. This is not just a remarkable cultural phenomenon, but also an incredible challenge for librarians who may at some point be called upon to capture it, describe it, and preserve it. Welcome to our (brave new) world.

Posted by Roy Tennant on August 15, 2008 | Comments (1)