Proof: why longform content rocks

One of the reasons I created this Tumblr was to use it as a 'first draft’ of a Content Hub (see post), an idea which crystallised after reading Sloan’s original content strategy piece on Stock and Flow.

The Hub is basically my way of saying that there’s more to life than the Stream. Unsurprisingly, Alexis Madrigal’s piece in the Atlantic caught my eye.

Above all, read the comments. Because Madrigal’s piece does not just argue cogently that the future of the internet is more than a stream of likes and tweets - it proves that quality longform rocks. How?

Well, read the comments. Notice how Alexis’ great piece of content stimulated people to contribute more great content? Try getting all those ideas and resources from a Facebook update.

For my part, the comments have given me the following Hub-related ideas to think about, and tools to investigate:

“[we] tell stories that persist over a period of time. When news happens today about the SFO crash months ago we don’t produce a new article (flow) instead we go back to the existing story and update it.”
- Digidave, describing Circa

“… evolving models to better mix stock & flow/stream. One way to think of it is as distilling, i.e. adding sorting/focusing loops by which we can refine from the many streams we move in, to focus attention, find value, and steadily form the 'stock’ of our self.”
- Tim McCormick, explaining his 'distilling’ model in “From reading drift to reading flow: how to reclaim focus (and self)”

“Streams organized by "who I care about” have dominated, but what’s coming are streams more granular and intelligently organized by “what I care about” … manual curation tools will increasingly be part of the “stream-based CMS”, as will the ability to “pin” and prioritize in simpler ways. … Most importantly, streams will increasingly support more ubiquitous data sharing, with dozens, hundreds or thousands of contributors to very contextual “what I care about streams”, with each stream authorizing read/write/edit permissions by their creators…“
-  Eric Alterman, describing Flow

Madrigal does an excellent job of tying together a number of developments over the past year showing how the Years of the Stream seem to be nearing an end, a number of which I’ve used myself - whenever people try telling me that blogging is dead, for example.

Not that the Stream is disappearing … it’s just that we have become a victim of its success, and it’s smothering us. We need a better model.

I for one, frankly, can’t wait.