Reducing the pop limit?

I’m giving strong consideration to the idea of dropping the Pop Character limit to 1,000 from 2,000. I’d like to explain my reasoning and give everyone a chance to weigh in prior to making a decision. At the end of the day, I need to make the decision that I believe best honors the integrity of what Clipmarks is all about, but I certainly don’t want to do that before hearing what our users have to say.

The reason we created Clipmarks was to give life to those wonderful bits of information that are buried within pages. I’m talking about the bits that literally make your brain come alive with interest, curiosity, bewilderment, passion, anger, hope, etc. They are the bits that you feel compelled to capture, comment on and immediately expose to other people.

Picture the offline act of reading a magazine or newspaper article and coming across something that so strongly grabs your attention that you immediately point it out to whoever is around you. You either blurt it out for others to hear or pass it along to someone, pointing to the specific piece of the page you want them to read. Well, our vision for Clipmarks is to create a global platform for that experience to occur in response to bits of “clipworthy” information people find on the web. Too many times I read a clip on the site and think that there is actually a clip within the clip that would have made a better clip…say that 10 times fast J

In my opinion, once a clip is too long, it’s impact as a unique form a content gets diluted. There is certainly no perfect size clip, but there is a size that, once exceeded, can no longer be considered a “clip”. We’re trying to find that fine line where the essence of a clip is honored, meaning is conveyed and an informed decision can be made by the reader about whether to click through to the source to read more. My gut is telling me that 2,000 characters is still too high.