Blog posts fed into major media websites. User-created video clips syndicated to publishers’ pages. Lists of product reviews written by users and fed into their MySpace profiles. Photos pulled into blog postings and reviews. What is this all about? A new trend in Web content delivery, one which brings the user bite-sized chunks of tailored information. More than simply on-demand, this latest format distributes structured content prime for remixability as well as consumption.

The new phase of Web has both created and enabled a major shift in media and information exchange. As exemplified both on and offline through technologies such as YouTube, Tivo, Bittorrent, and iTunes, the user is now in control of what they consume, when they consume it, and how they consume it. We are witnessing the evolution of the audience. A progression which has put the reins firmly in the hands of the user who has transitioned to become a co-creator of their own online experiences. On the Web today, the user is empowered to dictate exactly how they prefer to consume their content.

In our age of partial attention and maniacal multi-tasking, users only want to consume the content that interests them. They don’t have the time or inclination to deal with large bundles of data, they just want the juicy bits that appeal to them. Users want a song available for download, not the whole CD, they want to read a relevant blog posting, not the entire blog, users would rather watch a skit from SNL rather than the whole program. This type of content which has been broken down to its most basic form so that it focuses on just one subject or idea is called microcontent, and the process of reducing it to this atomic state is known as microchunking.

Microcontent is structured media and information which has been freed from its container. The music track is microchunked from the CD which contains it, the photo is a microcontent bit freed from its Flickr wrapper, and the blog post is unbundled from the blog which packages it. Other examples of microcontent might be bookmarks, movie reviews, video clips, and lists. The idea is that the user is concerned with the content, not its wrapper. These bite-sized microcontent bits have the ability to be rebundled and remixed by the user in new and creative ways.

This new form of digital content distribution comes at a time when attention is scarce and choices are immense. Major media companies have begun to take note and are beginning to both contribute this type of microchunked media, as well as aggregate it. Applications are being developed which reduce the need for users to travel to whole websites as syndicated microcontent is collected and distributed in other formats such as mashups and widgets. In addition to its pliability and appeal to the time-starved masses, this bitty format is made-to-order for the Mobile Web.

Format and Structure

Microcontent can be described by a few basic characteristics unique to this format. One such characteristic is its structured nature. Microcontent is created in a structured format through the use of XHTML, XML RSS, Atom other technologies. Each microcontent object is described by numerous metadata fields. This structure allows the content to be syndicated for reuse. Microcontent is self-contained and therefore can be unbundled and rebundled without a loss of meaning. It is focused on one subject or idea and in that way is considered “micro”. The actual size of the file or object is irrelevant. Because it has been reduced to this atomic level, it cannot be further broken down or microchunked without losing its original value. In example, a play from a sporting event clipped further to a player doing no more than holding the ball is not relevant. Lastly, microcontent may be syndicated to multiple users and websites because it is continuously accessible through a Permalink.

Just as Atom and RSS are standards used for structuring and syndicating blog posts, open standards have begun to appear for this new format. The microformats.org community has developed several methods for structuring information such as business cards, calendar events, classified listings, and reviews of all types. Involved in this effort is Technorati which has just released its Microformats Search, an engine which will seek out structured events, contacts, and reviews on the Web. Their Pingerati distributor can be used by creators to notify microformat-enabled aggregators and indexers. Alongside Technorati, are numerous other companies and organizations from the open source community and beyond who are supporting and implementing microformats such as Flickr which publishes hCard profiles, Upcoming which publishes hCalendar events, and Microsoft’s “Live Clipboard” which enables users to copy and paste hCard contacts and hCalendar events from web pages to desktop applications and vice versa.

Microcontent Aggregators

There are many ways in which users are already reaping the benefits of microcontent syndication today.

Personal Content Networks
These aggregation tools gather dispersed personal content from third-party websites into a single profile for the user. A buffet-style application, this type of aggregator utilizes RSS technology for do-it-yourself content bundling. One such tool is Superglu, a site in which users can create a personalized page to combine their data from many different websites. Depending on which source feeds the user specifies, a Superglu page will display a user’s del.ico.us bookmarks, blog entries, life goals from 43 Things, locations from 43 Places, media from All Consuming, photos from Flickr and more. Content is displayed in blog-style posts which are formatted in a daily, chronological order. Each profile displays a collective tag cloud which reflects the tags from all of the microcontent aggregated in the profile, providing users with their own personal folksonomy. Other applications with similar functionality include Peoplefeeds, which allows users to consolidate content from their blog, del.icio.us accounts, Flickr, and any RSS feeds. And 43 People which allows users to consolidate all of their 43-related data along with All Consuming, and any other RSS syndicated content through a feeds page.

As with many Web 2.0 sites, these applications are useful for both personal organization and discovery of new resources. Each allows users to browse and compare their content with others’.

Major Media Sites
In addition to creating microcontent themselves, major media sites have begun to rebundle third-party content for community use. By partnering with content delivery networks, publishers are able to offer user-generated content from numerous other sites. Pluck’s Blogburst service provides publishers with blog feeds containing highly attuned posts for them to feature alongside their own professionally produced content while offering bloggers a share of ad sales. Blogs included in the service are pre-approved by Pluck and are filtered according to subject area. Currently Blogburst has been adopted by the Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Gate and others. Another such network is Brightcove which delivers well targeted video clips to affiliate sites such as The New York Times, through its Internet TV syndication service. The Associated Press, the Washington Post and the Hearst Corporation are all members of the Mochila network which syndicates media of all kinds such as text, audio, and video, as branded content to publishers.

Todays publishers are presenting users with a rich site experience by integrating remote microcontent pieces tailored to their interests. Tomorrow they may allow the user to choose which pieces they see and how they are assembled. The New York Times is currently developing MyTimes, a personalized page for users to choose their favorite content from throughout the Web creating a build-it-yourself online newspaper. By offering users permutations and flexibility in assembling microcontent bits, publishers could shift in the direction of the portal which would allow users to have their own personal content alongside their copy.

Blogs
The most recognizable form of microcontent found on a blog is the blog post itself which is both created and aggregated here. The Blogroll is a list of links to RSS feeds of other blogs. Photos stored online at sites like PhotoBucket and Flickr and fed into the blog are another microcontent format. Other possible microcontent found on blogs include: bookmarks from del.icio.us, a tag cloud, (which is but a list of stored searches), microcontent from websites, (such as All Consuming and 43 Things), and widgets containing maps or information.

Portals and Start Pages
Portals such as MSN, My Yahoo!, AOL and others allow users to subscribe via RSS to their own personalized microcontent in conjunction with portal content. My Yahoo! allows users to add any RSS feed to their page, browse popular feeds, add additional pages, and rearrange the modules containing the content. They offer news, blogs, podcasts, and videos, as well as customized widgets incluing: Yahoo! Calendar, a Hot Jobs widget linked to the user’s resume and searches, local weather and television listings, and more. AOL and MSN have similar options.

Ajax and other start pages such as Live.com, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Protopage all have the ability to allow users to add microcontent to their pages in the form of widgets. More customizable than portal pages, these personalized sites act as a shell for numerous small applications containing various types of microcontent. Netvibes offers users an entire ecosystem of microcontent types including: blogs, feeds, podcasts, modules, events, and tabs.

Microcontent Applications

Widgets
Widgets are lightweight applications which display microcontent, often through an RSS feed. These tools can be utilized both on the Web or on the desktop. They can display as well as aggregate microcontent, and they can be dropped into aggregators themselves. Widgets can consume content ranging from blog feeds and eBay auctions to bookmark lists and daily calendars.

These versatile applications can be found on the new breed of Web 2.0 start pages, portals, and community websites. TagWorld has released a gallery of over thirty widgets which will display TagWorld content for use on any website. Consumer review website, MyPickList has recently developed a widget for MySpace users to feed their reviews into their profiles. Yahoo! boasts nearly 3,000 of the little gadgets for the desktop in their Widgets Gallery which range from a Facebook widget to a gadget which monitors local gas prices. Microsoft’s Gadget Gallery has hundreds of widgets including a Today Show recipe widget for the desktop.

Widgets are useful for displaying user-created microcontent such as: Flickr photos, Writely documents, events calendar, and to-do lists, and del.icio.us bookmarks. Similarly, these gizmos are an effective way of enabling non-user-centric microcontent such as updates on sporting events, stock quotes, quotes, news, and Sudoku puzzles. Start pages may be considered a superclass of widget themselves, allowing users to add multiple widgets within them. Pageflakes has over 70 “flakes” or widgets available for users, and Netvibes offers over 150.

Mashups
Since microcontent is created in a structured manner, it can easily be rewrapped, reworked, and reconstructed in new places for a variety of uses. In addition to enabling the development of applications which repurpose content, microcontent lends itself to layering in order to create more complex products. A great example of this is its use in mashups such as Housingmaps.com. Real estate listings were syndicated from Craigslist.com and layered on top of a Google Map in order to create a new application.

A similar remixing of content is being practiced by the classified listing site Edgeio. Sellers who wish something listed with the website service are instructed to create a blog post and tag it with the term “listings”. Edgeio crawls the blogosphere for these microcontent pieces, and authors who have tagged them accordingly will find their posts automatically aggregated onto the classified site.

The Business Plan

Although this type of content delivery method is still relatively new, there have already been several business models which have surfaced. The first is the advertising-supported revenue model in which microcontent is used to drive impressions, or page views. The next business model concerns the direct sale of microcontent, adopted most recognizably by iTunes who offers customers one song for .99 cents and episodes of Lost for $1.99. Another is the subscription model, utilized by companies such as Thumbplay which offers its customers ringtones, screensavers, and games for their cell phones for a monthly subscription rate. Going forward there will surely be hybrids of these models, as creators will search for ways to monetize this product for an ever-increasing market. One area which will offer exciting new possibilities is the mobile market as microcontent, with its highly focused, tightly targeted, microchunked format, is perfect for display on the small screen.

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Thanks to Tantek Çelik of Technorati for his helpful information on microformats.