Vine Videos – and Books

A recent article told of multiple college professors complaining that many students now lack the concentration to read books considered ‘classics.’

Is that surprising? So many distractions and communications and forms of entertainment bombard our lives daily that finding time for reveling in a book for hours at a time can be a challenge. Taking hours or days to enjoy a single book becomes a luxury, as well as an exercise in patience, when attention spans have been accordioned via programs and apps that favor brevity – including Twitter (only 140 characters allowed per Tweet – that’s characters, not words).

Medieval architects knew their stuff – this site would impress anyone in fewer than six seconds

My friends, the Hongolas in Ventura, informed me that Twitter now hosts Vine Videos. Each video can be six seconds long.

Six seconds.

I’d like to criticize this communication/entertainment/art form, but after watching a few, I find some impressive. Yet I doubt many books or articles will be compressed into video vines.

Here are a few vines related to books, reading and marketing:

Aloha, Maui

Cool ways libraries can use Vine

Vine Best Practices for Journalists

7 Ways to Promote Your Book with Vine

Like it or not, vines are spreading. Are they here to stay? It’s too early to say. Don’t be surprised if you’re soon ambushed by book marketing vines.

Nature also knows how to grab our attention in less than six seconds