A Quickstart Guide to Microchunking

You have taken the Fred Wilson & Umair Haque correspondence course on the future of media, and you’ve decided that you want you some of that right there. But how do you start your avant media practice? Let’s begin with the microchunk. Deceptively, deviously simple to put into play.

The platform: ideas that spread, win. Microchunking (serving up your stuff in easy-to-find, quick-to-consume, remixable pieces parts) makes it easier for your ideas to spread. Trust us: you will soon beg for people to pay attention to your projects. You may even start paying people in some currency for their attention.

So, on with the guide. The quickstart to microchunking:

* Carve it up into smaller pieces. Obvious, I know, but it bears repeating. You want us to grab the whole record, but we want the singles first. If you rock, we’ll come back for more. Cut your omnibus blog posts into a smaller series. All this video you kids are putting on the Web, cut it up. I’m looking at you, PodTech.

* Everything is addressable. It’s the Web, people, and we likes our URLs. Give every chunk a simple, findable, human readable, predictable address.

* Metadata, metadata, metadata, metadata. You want people to find your stuff, right? Tell em what’s in the box. Use rel-tags to help us discover the content. (Technorati tags are the branded form.) What, you already use tags? ZOMG! You are using microformats. Wasn’t that easy? Now, let’s start paying attention to how others are tagging our stuff: watch delicious and Magnolia to see how they think of the content, and then start using tags that make sense. Whenever possible, allow users to add relevant metadata.

* Syndicate it. Show off your feeds like a new puppy. Make it easy to subscribe by tag, category, author. Get it flowing.

* Ping, ping, ping. Geeky sidenote: make sure you’re telling all relevant ping servers when you have new content up. It’s like announcing to the world that a hot new microchunk of goodness is ready for action.

* Partial feeds are not microchunks. They are lame. That is all.

* No DRM or identity barriers. Sweet Jesus, play with the rest of us, will you? No barriers to flowing info. You’ll thank me later when you are still in business.

* Links back to the ‘whole’. Your chunks need some sort of equivalent of where people can ‘read all about it’. If you’re using Feedburner, give them a Feedflare back to the mothership. Videos or podcasts can bake in URLs for more stuff. You’re just trying to help people excited about the content find more.

* Make it legally kosher. Say hello to the Creative Commons. Learn about their content licenses that make it cool for others to remix and republish your work.

* Create the equivalent of a virtual endcap where people can stumble across your microchunks. This is what is behind the ‘greatest hits’ sidebar items you see in blogs. Or the ‘related’ posts widget in WordPress. Think Amazon: people who like this microchunk also lurved this microchunk. Help them find the good stuff.

* When possible, offer an API. There is a world of smart Web nerds out there who can think of cool things to do with your content. Let em at it.

http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/04/04/a-quickstart-guide-to-microchunking/