We have been sharing our thoughts on all things digital and a part of it covered digital communication. Prateek read a newsletter by 9 Clouds which talked about the same, so we decided to write our own post as a critique of the newsletter.

Please read the newsletter before you read further; they have a point.

Snackification 9 Clouds

Digital communication has changed the way we interact with information. We are forced to push character limited messages, which are shortened and condensed for a quick consumption . 9 Clouds defines this transformation as snackifcation. 9 clouds is propagating a noble cause of fighting this process ‘by creating information with depth that shares why and how’.

At once, this seems like a genuine and an urgent cause.

9 clouds used a statistics to show that longer and in-depth content gets the most number of shares, but do those shares get converted into reads?

Their reasons are justified, but those reasons are not absolute and there is a scope of debate.

1. Majority of the world is working at a fast pace and everything changes just as quickly with technology. It is only probable that some of the content we publish now is bound to get outdated or obsolete soon.
2. Writing short and crisp articles require an enhanced sense of word use. They can be written with as much passion as longer articles.

We too believe that it is important to restore attention span and that the information must gain depth but the need is subjective. The information has to be shared as per necessity. Sometimes the ‘what’ of the information is enough and at other times, ‘why’ and ‘how’ is required too. So the focus should be on writing better because the size here does not matter.

All we’re saying is that a snack is just as important as a meal.

Since this article is a critique and not a complete dismissal of the idea of fighting snackification here’s our take on why it is required-

If people start writing in-depth content that covers ‘how’ and ‘why’, the quantity of information online will reduce. Only the ones who are passionate and knowledgeable will take on a topic, and deliver the content they care about. This will eliminate frivolous information.

Here’s a proof of our discussion-

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-Abhishek