Somewhat related topic: search Twitter for #vss (include the hash). It stands for "very short story." People generally use this tag to mark a post as a self-contained story (at the cost of four or five precious, irretrievable characters). Sometimes they're funny, or intense, or just plain stupid. But they're very brief.

Others use #asy (A Short Yarn?) and the highly bloated #nanofic.

A couple of examples:

The mugger ran away with his camera and left him bleeding, quite unaware of the award for the whereabouts of this terrorist mastermind.

"You don't hear it when it happens," he said, as the watermelon plummeted towards us from the errant B-52.

Gardener shoved the seed in his mouth. It will grow, bursting forth from his body into a tree--dripping fruit of heart, liver, lungs.

Rex was out of time. He had finished his last meal. Now he would take the long walk. Waiting for him at the end, would be his bride.

I look at the girl and picture her life. The destitute existence I dream up is crushed by the Bentley that rescues her from my fancy.

Mom knew. She always knew. You can't siphon 150GW from the town grid and not send up a red flag. Still, she never asked about the cats.

The burglars made it to the second floor, but there, the hungry carpet surprised them.

"Never did this before." said Gina. She fumbles with the lock and opens her door. Inside I hand her the $50. She hands me the homework

Peter had a penchant for french kissing Jesus. He found the instant conversion of saliva into wine addictive, yet dehydrating.

"afk, tornado"

Whiskers, having opted to use all nine of his lives concurrently, had the mouse surrounded.

Amateurs!

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn. - Ernest Hemingway

Still the best.

In the vein of Hemingway's story, here's a great link: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

Plus 7-9 word stories are becoming incredibly popular and there have been several online contests. The winners of these were often published. I introduced the idea to my dad and he spent his entire day off one day calling me to tell me another little quick story he'd concocted. He had a lot of fun and drove me slightly insane. I think everyone has a billion little stories in them and technology helps us to reach out and ask for an opinion or just to share our own tiny marvels.

I stumbled across Brent Spiner's twitter page and loved his twitter story. It lasted for weeks and kept me endlessly entertained. His dry humor, sense of the absurd and self-mocking trekkie references tickled funny bones I never knew I had. I have a whole new appreciation for the possibilities of the quirky medium. Is there nothing creative people can't use to amuse us (and themselves)??? I enjoyed having it delivered in instant spurts, scattered over time.

Sample:

" Bob loved you, and you killed her. I loved you, you framed me. And Harry, believe me, you're next. How could so much love lead to this?" 9:45 PM Apr 30th from web

"Amber, you'll regret this. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." Amber and Harry stood frozen. 9:47 PM Apr 30th from web

The room was silent.Then, a man stood and raised his hand. "Mr. Spiner, do you think it was a mistake killing Data at the end of Nemesis?" 9:53 PM Apr 30th from web

Harry pulled a pistol from inside his coat."Someone's got to stop him before he kills again!" Several people screamed. Mostly women. And me. 9:59 PM Apr 30th from web

Martinez grabbed Harry's arm. Shots rang out. The crowd became hysterical. Absolute chaos. A cop grabbed me but some fans pushed him away. 10:04 PM Apr 30th from web

The room has gone mad. Like one of Tod Hackett's paintings in Day of the Locust. Bullets flying. Felt something burning hot graze my temple 10:08 PM Apr 30th from web

The room was spinning out of control. A black hole opened. I was sucked in... 10:09 PM Apr 30th from web

After drifting in space for several hours, regained consciousness in a jail cell in downtown LA. My head still aches. Bullets will do that. 8:32 AM May 1st from web

----

Hope he comes back from commercial break one day to begin another tale. Link at sig.

I'm one of those Twitter fiction writers. My agent is finding most publishers don't know what to do with it. So you're right there. But I did a quick survey (albeit of my followers) and within a few minutes a few hundred people said, yes, they would buy a book. It will be interesting to see what happens. My agent is concentrating on the big publishing houses - as well as some "novelty" publishing houses. No luck so far. Perhaps Twitter fiction is an electronic medium only and needs to go straight to eBook. We're in new territory here. My work can be found on Twitter. I'm @arjunbasu.

As I read this story I grew more and more interested and excited about the possibilities of this for poetry. Then I got to this:

For Japan I actually found myself ransacking old notebooks from the days when I first tried short (when I even embraced the fumy term "prose poem," quickly abandoned as unwise for an aspiring comic author)

Once again promoting the old cliche / misconception that "poetry" must be dull, serious, and unfunny. There are lots of poets who can and will take advantage of this new form, hard as it will be for them to let go of their quill pens and parchment paper.

What's even more exciting to me about this is the blurring of the line between author and reader, professional and amateur, "literature" and low culture, which so many new writing movements -- yes, even in poetry -- claim to want to do but often don't.

Anyway, thanks for stirring up some possibilities...

I guess I'd call these "book jacket blurbs for the attention deficit crowd". Some are amusing, most are just trivial. (As someone noted, in comparison the little fragment from Hemmingway comes across as artistry.)

Blurbs, and their visual equivalent -- movie trailers -- ARE often more intriguing and snappy than the real thing. That's the point: they exist to entice you. But here, there is no actual delivery system...it's like all advertising and no product. It's for people who like the beer commercials on the Superbowl more than they like football.

It also reminds me of "Short Attention Span Theatre". How dumbed down can culture get before it descends into the dark ages? I guess we'll find out.

Increasingly we are all like those Japanese commuters, sitting on a train or bus or in a car, and staring hypnotically at a tiny screen, hoping anyone is listening or anything is worth paying attention to for more than second or so.

I was at the movies last weekend, and in the two rows ahead of me, almost every person was huddled in their seat, staring at a bright cellphone screen (despite pleas on the movie screen to please shut the damn things off; apparently these are futile). They were obsessed with who was calling, who might have called...their own self-importance as magnified by their list of "friends". And to extent, that they would pay $10 for a movie but be entirely unable to sit still for 2 hours and actually pay attention to it. Their ability to focus is unbelievably compromised.

Such people (the majority were well under 30) could not possibly wade through an entire novel. My close friend's 15 year daughter told me very solemnly last year that she had decided to never bother reading a book again (except what was required for school) because "you can always watch the movie, and it's so much easier and faster". I tried to tell her that the book a film is based on is frequently far different, or more complex (or both), but she was adamant. Furthermore, at her highly regarded white suburban high school, teachers are not troubled by students who review BOOKS based on having seen only a MOVIE.

Such people will adapt well to a strange new world of cell phone novels. I guess I won't; I am already a dinosaur.

I will close now, so I can go downstairs and make a call on my 75 year old, black bakelite dial phone. Then I will probably read some actual BOOKS.

Sad, dopey me.