{"id":2554,"date":"2012-02-09T08:45:10","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T13:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/?p=2554"},"modified":"2017-04-20T00:14:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:14:14","slug":"going-long-the-role-of-longform-web-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/blog\/going-long-the-role-of-longform-web-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Long: The Role of Longform Web Content"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Long
A long look at longform web content<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With 140-character tweets and short, scannable web copy often top of mind, it can be difficult to think of a situation where we would willingly want to publish thousands of words. <\/p>\n

But longform content is carving out a significant niche in the habits of online content consumers, as evidenced by trends in journalism and ebook publishing. In higher ed, there are opportunities to capitalize on this trend, as well as implications to consider.<\/p>\n

Longform Goes a Long Way<\/h2>\n

We\u2019ve been trained to believe that brevity is the soul of the web, yet longform narrative content is flourishing. Longform<\/a> and Longreads<\/a> have become two prominent curators of longform journalism content, creating websites, apps<\/a> and hashtags<\/a> dedicated to this subgenre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a human hunger\u2026 for deep information, real examination and the kind of reporting that takes time,\u201d New Yorker editor David Remnick said in an interview with AllThingsD<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

In an overly concise world, longform content is tremendously valuable. Why? Because that concise world also moves in real-time, where information is slippery and often escapes its necessary context. <\/p>\n

Longform content gives us the depth we need to understand a story beyond its first flash of relevance. \u201cPeople want a beginning, a middle, and an end,\u201d author Jeff Goodell said at a discussion of longform journalism held last April<\/a>. \u201cThey want context.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two challenges for longform content are a) relevance and b) format. Is the content something people want to spend a lot of time with, and does the presentation make this process easier?<\/p>\n

The Age of Ebooks<\/h2>\n

The most obvious format for longform web content is an ebook. People don\u2019t read ebooks because they are trying to complete a task or they only have a short amount of time. They read ebooks because they want to learn more about a topic of interest. And with Apple\u2019s iBooks announcement on Jan. 19<\/a>, creating and distributing an ebook suddenly became a whole lot easier.<\/p>\n

Besides iBooks, we\u2019re seeing the viability of ebooks and other longform content in the commercial market through the success of products like Amazon\u2019s Kindle Singles<\/a> and publishers like Byliner<\/a>. The Next Web posits that three factors have contributed to the success of ebooks and longform content<\/a>: <\/p>\n