I LOVE a long essay, a deep-dive, a chunky book, and many of you probably do, too.

But be honest: When’s the last time you read something that was longer than 1,500 words online without skimming?
You probably can’t remember.

Reading really long stuff online is hard, and that’s because the Internet isn’t designed for long-form (at least, not anymore). We’ll stick with something long if it’s really good, if we trust the author, if it hooks us right away, or if we’re super interested in the topic.

But over the past six months, I’ve talked to a LOT of people about how great it is to find a good micro-blog. Old-school blogs are an amazing way to meet both the demands of the medium (i.e. it fits the culture of how people engage with stuff online) and the demands of an audience or readers (who care about engaging with something genuinely useful or entertaining or thoughtful.)

Micro-blogs used to kind of be the norm for writing online. Loads of people had personal blogs and they weren’t too fancy or polished. The goal wasn’t to be writing New Yorker essays; the goal was to connect with people and share your ideas or your work. Then came SEO and the “skyscraper technique” and blogs got longer and longer and longer and loooonnggggeerrrrr.

And they didn’t become New Yorker essays either, essays that demanded that length and fulfilled that demand. They didn’t hold our attention or drop tons of amazing new ideas. They were just long.

Blogs used to be a way to connect with people. Then, at some point, they transformed into a bait that was focused more about getting people onto your site than saying something interesting once they got there.

This collective blog is part of my ongoing scheme to get more people back to the plot of blogging: sharing ideas, connecting with people, and learning from one another. Old-school blogging isn’t a replacement for social media (great discoverability), newsletters, or SEO / AEO / GEO / EIEIOs.

But it is a great format for connecting and collating ideas in one place and creating little pockets of great ideas on the web that others can come back to again and again, and find resources and community.

That’s what I hope this place will be. So if you’re knee-deep in the content world and looking for a place on the web you can bookmark to learn from the best in content — I hope you’ll join us here. ■

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Rachel Bicha is a freelance content writer and strategist who helps companies create meaningful content that connects and resonates with their audience. She’s also the creator of a number of “content experiments,” including organizing this blog and her print newsletter.