Microcontent
There are at least two different interpretations of the term microcontent. Originally, Nielsen referred to microcontent as content that is taken out of its context (like an article headline displayed on a search result page) and which should therefore ideally be a clear explanation of the further article. Today, an RSS headline may also be thought of as such microcontent; browser bookmarks too typically use the title of a page as microcontent.
Original meaning
The original meaning of microcontent is by usability adviser Jakob Nielsen, who in a 1998 article [1] referred to Microcontent as short content, like headlines, which need to fare out of their usual context. For instance, on a search engine result page, the article headline may be displayed with only a short snippet but not the full text. As such it can make sense for good microcontent to have it work out of context, and be flexible enough to get its meaning across even with partial further information, and the main article body missing. "Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent," Nielsen said.
Other meanings
The second meaning of the term has been defined by Anil Dash[2] in 2002:
- "Today, microcontent is being used as a more general term indicating content that conveys one primary idea or concept, is accessible through a single definitive URL or permalink, and is appropriately written and formatted for presentation in email clients, web browsers, or on handheld devices as needed. A day's weather forcast [sic], the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent."
In the years of the booming blogosphere the term became important and useful to describe the emerging new content structures that were enabled by new technologies (like trackbacks, pings and increasingly RSS), new types of CMS-software and -interfaces (like blogs and wikis), and not least by new socio-cultural practices (people creating, bringing into circulation and re-using/re-mixing microchunks of content).
Microcontent could be other forms of media like an image, audio, video, a URL (link), Metadata like author, title, etc, the subject line of an email, an item in an RSS feed. In 1998, Jakob Nielsen offered tips[3] on how to write usable microcontent.
See also
References
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