How Do You Respect Media Snackers?

[Michele Martin]

A new blog meme is making the rounds, thanks to a post by Jeremiah Owyang, wondering what you do to respect "media snackers"--people who want to little bites of information and knowledge, not a whole meal.

Take a look at his post and the accompanying video and then share with us what you think you do well and don't do well to meet the needs of these very important blog readers.

[Laura Whitehead]

Hi Michele! I too got tagged by Beth. I am a huge media snacker so do respect others. I try to balance my blog posts (although am aware I wrote a terrificly long post last night for a review of a CMS!) and use micromedia such as facebook and twitter to microblog and share information too.

I did a mini short post on my blog at http://laura.popokatea.co.uk/2007/11/04/snack-attack/

I nearly did it as a 'snack byte size' MP3 to really respect media snackers, although the sore throat and lack of normal voice stopped me recording that one!
Saying that though - I have my audio RSS feed on my blog which is strangely well used and received even though it is provided by a computer generated voice!

[Tim Davies]

As I've been tagged by Laura I'll hopefully be reflecting on this one soon. Just missed the opportunity on Thursday to interview DK from Media Snackers at an event - then I could have managed to respond to this and the weeks challenge in one. Ah well :P

[Marco]

I think that this is an interesting discussion, one that repackages, in some ways, the argument of whether or not, or when to, post long articles as part of a web strategy.

Jacob Nielsen just posted a new alert about this, which is useful to include in the discussion:

Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy
http://www.useit.com/alertbox//content-strategy.html

and has an older article that calls this "information foraging" rather than "media snacking":

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030630.html

Not exactly the same concept, I know, but very much along the continuum, and Nielsen does use a similar "diet" analogy!

"The two main strategies are to make your content look like a nutritious meal and signal that it's an easy catch. These strategies must be used in combination: users will leave if the content is good but hard to find, or if it's easy to find but offers only empty calories."

Snacking is great but, ultimately, isn't a good, filling meal ultimately more important in order to truly build knowledge and move people to meaningful and informed action (whether for a cause, or based on something in their own lives)?

Marco