Too Long (at Long Last)
At last. I get it. I finally understand why it is that so many friends and colleagues have gently complained about the length of my posts on VentureBlog (and worse yet on SaysMe). It is, of course, abundantly clear to most of you reading this post. But it took personal experience before I got wise to the errors of my ways.
In recent weeks I have found myself with less time than usual for blog reading (this is caused, at least in part, by my acute addiction to Six Apart's new blogging platform VOX, which now occupies far too many minutes of my day). As a result, I find myself scanning quickly through Bloglines. And when one scans quickly through a feed reader, the first thing that falls by the wayside are the really long posts. They just take too much effort. If the writers of those long posts are lucky, they are saved for a later day. If not, they are clicked and cleared, without a read.
I have no doubt that many of my VentureBlog posts have fallen victim to such Machiavellian reading techniques. So in an effort to attempt to learn from experience, I am going to try to keep my future posts to a more manageable length. I'm sure I'll still have my occasional missive. But, for the time being, I am going to try to write shorter and more often and see how it goes. Wish me luck.
PS: Not so good so far. This post on writing shorter posts is now 4 paragraphs long and 267 words. Oy veh!
Well, many of your posts are difficult to synthesize much more than you are already doing. At least they have substance, don't take that away from us :-).
Yeah, this post is hardly "long", and I'd hate to see you leave out the nuances just to be brief (and, it's not like you've been posting every day anyway ;)
It's also interesting to see you taking this path when so many others are starting to talk about how they are going to cut down on their volume and up their quality (and length) of posts -- seems that folks are getting burnt out on everyone just commenting on the same old stuff (something you rarely do, but you are clearly going against the trend here...).
mistah hornik -
long or short, your posts are usually worth reading dave. however, if making them shorter means you might post more frequently, then by all means go for it... would help make it easier to get that weekly dose of hornik reality-check ;)
on the other hand, you have a very flat text-only look & feel to the blog -- ever thought about adding pictures? i think having a brief photo to add color always makes it more interesting, also more likely for folks to checkout read. just a thought, i know some prefer just text.
- dave
Hey Dave, your posts are totally cool and insightful and I enjoy them thoroughly. One thing I've learned about writing for the Web is that the audience has a very short attention span, and couple that with the fact that reading on a computer screen really sucks means that concise writing does a great service to your readers. Brevity, conciseness, and completeness are the way to go! I'm sure you'll find a way to combine that with your own writing style and we'll not lose the ol' Hornik voice!
I use my daily blog news and it allows 300 characters per post....if you don't have my attention within those 300, I don't click to view the whole post, regardless of it's length. Interesting posts get read.