If you squint, and remove your “purist” filter, USAToday looks like a microblog. The paper has little bite-sized media bits, easily consumable, with nuggets of data that are useful and fast to absorb. CNN Headline News does the same thing. They work the short form news format, with fast info, quick data dumps, and as they are trying out lots of personable interactions, it’s even turning a bit two-way. (Not that long form is bad, and there should definitely be a place for lengthier journalistic work, but as a consumer, I believe we’re trending more towards the short info.)

We think often about how the web is so amazing and how communication works online, but to really get a sense of dynamism, don’t forget to look at what’s going on offline. This makes me want to look at my blog differently. I wonder if Chris Pearson is up to the challenge of making a magazine formatted theme, or Thesis skin. Wouldn’t this blog be a lot more consumable if you could switch between smaller pieces and long form?

Thanks, USAToday, for what you’ve contributed to information consumption/display models.

One reason is that products like Twitter and Seesmic and uStream.tv all give us even faster, simpler conversations. We don’t have to synthesize information, compose a position, and build a post. Instead, we can talk back and forth about things we like. Another reason is that the feedback loop is so much tighter when doing a ping pong game of ideas instead of the blogger-to-comments model.

But wow. I sure miss you bloggers and podcasters that I know in love. Thanks to Mitch Joel and Christopher S. Penn and Valeria Maltoni and a whole host of others who keep writing and/or recording something interesting and useful daily. To the rest of you, come back?

**Update: Inspired in no small part by a great Mitch Joel post, though I didn’t realize it until Mitch commented. : )

Photo credit FotoDawg

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What’s really cool about Identi.ca has nothing to do with the site itself (no offense meant to the team building it. It’s neat, and thanks for doing it). What’s neat is that it’s built on an open source platform called Laconi.ca, which is basically Twitter-in-a-box. That’s the nugget, tough guys. It’s a head start on building your own Twitter inside your business, behind the firewall, and that’s something noteworthy.

I haven’t read the other reviews of the platform from other notables. I’m sure there’s a buzz.

I’m blogging this mostly to raise awareness that it’s out there: an alternative to Twitter that you can pick up and run with. The parts that aren’t there are fairly important: short codes and SMS integration, some of the central nervous system stuff. But is it a neat starting point? I say yes.

I probably won’t use the platform much, so I’ve stopped doing friend connections over there (sorry). I just wanted to dive in and check it out.

But are you using it? Have you tried it out? What’s your take?

I’m still sticking it out with Twitter as my presence/status/micromessaging site of choice. What about you?