So, when I started blogging, I took a look around and noticed that the vast majority of blogs were cranking out short posts a few times a day. I also noticed a few amazing blogs in the lifestyle/personal development niche that were putting up ridiculously long posts and, against what was then conventional wisdom, building massive readership.

So, I decided to follow the emerging contrarian tact and go long with my posts.

And, it worked. That first blog, Awake@TheWheel, made some big moves very quickly, frontpaging on Digg, StumleUpon, del.icio.us and popurls a number of times in the first four months.

It seemed like long was the new cool.

But, then time passed. Flash forward 18 months, a/k/a, 180 years in blogosphere time. Suddenly long isn’t so new, so different or so fresh any more. It still works really well for a number of blogs whose readers have been patterned to expect it. But, so many blogs have joined the mega-post movement that the format is now less distinct.

And, it’s caused another interesting effect…Feed Reader Gridlock

I used to fly through my feed reader pretty quickly, because most posts were itty bitty, with a few speed bumps for a handful of longer ones. But, now I have so many long post blogs in my reader, if I actually read them all, I’d be left with about 38 seconds in my day to do everything else.

So, I’m thinking it may be time to once again go contrarian

To work on delivering shorter and maybe more frequent posts. Not Lifehacker frequent, But, ya know, daily candy that can be slurped down between subway stops, with the occasional mall-sized sticky bun post once a week or so. Maybe it’s time to go back to breaking mega-posts into series’ and tightening things up a bit.

Because, as a reader and consumer of mass quantities of information, I’ve become a bit too bloated. And, I’m thinking it’s time for the pendulum to swing back the other way.

I’m curious, what do you think?

Have you been having the same trouble keeping up with the growing volume of mega-posts? Or, is it just me?

Share your thoughts in the comments below…