Microcontent
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There are at least two interpretations of the term microcontent.
Usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...
adviser
Jakob Nielsen Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to: * Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland (died c. 1309), great grandson of Valdemar II of Denmark * , Norway (1768-1822) * Jakob Nielsen (mathematician) (1890–1959), Danish mathematician known for work on automorphi ...
originally referred to microcontent as small groups of words that can be skimmed by a person to get a clear idea of the
content Content or contents may refer to: Media * Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers ** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
of a Web page. He included article headlines, page titles, subject lines and e-mail headings. Such phrases also may be taken out of context and displayed on a directory, search result page, bookmark list, etc. The second use of the term extends it to other small information chunks that can stand alone or be used in a variety of contexts, including instant messages, blog posts,
RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
feeds, and abstracts.


Original meaning

The original meaning of microcontent is by usability adviser Jakob Nielsen, who in a 1998 article referred to Microcontent as short content, like headlines, which need to be immediately clear and inviting to a reader, and which still make sense when removed from their original context. For instance, on a search engine result page, the article headline may be displayed with only a short snippet but not the full article. "Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent," Nielsen said. He discourages traditional newspaper headline techniques, such as
pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic ...
s, teasers and other wordplay, which are more effective when the full story is already visible. He views the first word or two of each headline as extremely important to readers scanning a page.


Other meanings

The second meaning of the term has been defined by
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
ger
Anil Dash Anil Dash (; born September 5, 1975) is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, Prince scholar and writer. He is the Head of Glitch and VP of Developer Experience at Fastly. Career In 1999, Dash launched his personal weblog, dashes.com ( ...
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 , 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 blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can p ...
the term became important and useful to describe the emerging new content structures that were enabled by new technologies (like trackbacks,
ping Ping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Ping, a domesticated Chinese duck in the illustrated book '' The Story about Ping'', first published in 1933 * Ping, a minor character in ''Seinfeld'', an NBC sitcom * Ping, a c ...
s and increasingly
RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
), new types of
CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2 (programming language), used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum collection * Color managem ...
-software and -interfaces (like
blogs A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
and
wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
s), 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 An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
,
audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...
,
video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
, a
URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
(
hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...
),
Metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
like author, title, etc., the subject line of an
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
, an item in an RSS feed. In 1998, Jakob Nielsen offered tips on how to write usable microcontent.


Further reading

A sum-up of the discussion (with links to other definitions) and the implications for web-based learning can be found in the research paper "On Microcontent and Microlearning" (2006; link to online version).On Microcontent and Microlearning
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See also

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Microformats Microformats (μF) are a set of defined HTML classes created to serve as consistent and descriptive metadata about an element, designating it as representing a certain type of data (such as contact information, geographic coordinates, events ...
*
Microlearning Microlearning refers to a set of compact e- learning modules that are designed to reduce learner fatigue. The modules can be educational, professional, or skill based, and are usually designed to be less than 20 minutes long, with a single learnin ...
*
Microlecture The term microlecture is ''not'' used here to refer to microcontent for microlearning, but to actual instructional content that is formatted for online and mobile learning using a constructivist approach. More specifically, as described in the Chro ...
*
Micropublishing Micropublishing is used in three senses: *Publishing on microforms as pioneered by Eugene Power. *The book publishing industry sometimes uses this term in discussing publishing companies below a certain revenue level. *It is also used to descri ...
*
Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...


References

HTML Hypertext Web 2.0 neologisms