Short and Sweet, But Not Always

Jason @ 37signals posted a blog entry about how he'd like to teach a class where the goal is to learn how to edit complex ideas into various sized chunks that are still meaningful.

I think that's awesome!  I would love to improve my ability in this area.  I tend to ramble on about things when writing and often I can get off of my original train of thought.  I end up with long "papers" written about things I was excited to write about when I began writing.  Other people do this too and I get turned off by long essays - even on things I'm interested in - if my mood isn't ready to read something long and detailed.

Having the choice to get different sized versions of the same material is a sweet idea for marketing a product that conveys an idea.  Offer different price points that coincide with different sized versions of the idea and the customer decides which version / price / size they want based on their own factors.  This could even be applied such that the customer can "buy" the lower priced but shorter version as a trial (maybe for free?) and then opt to get a discount on a longer version that has more detail.

Or this could revolutionize the "news" industry.  Currently the fad is Twitter or articles, often they overlap.  What's missing is the sizes between 140 characters and full blown articles.  Maybe another part that's missing is the true long form version where detailed analysis and further investigation takes place.

If I ran a newspaper and I wanted to survive in today's world, I'd make an iPad / iPhone / Android app that delivers news in this way.  Then have it automatically pick articles you'd be interested in (a la Google News) based on browsing habits and present a 2-3 sentence or Twitter'ized version aggregated on a home screen but also pick the size you'd be interested in when you go to view the article with the option to see or "buy" other sizes of the same article.  Google News meets Twitter meets traditional news reporting meets LexisNexis.

It's MY SIZED news.  That's a good idea.