On social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, tiny stories or stories told in about 140 words (to match the number of words in text or tweets) are attracting more and more followers.

Creative shops and social platforms are emerging to meet this need, providing readers with a range of in-house and text-contributing works. Brands that target their user base at millennials are starting to shun traditional channels to promote them and are turning to these social platforms.

Even very short stories or tiny ones have a long history. A fictional story has become the world's most famous micro-story created by Hemingway. He is said to have once had lunch with friends and bet that he could write a short story in six words. Then he wrote on a tissue: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." (For sale; Baby shoes; never worn) "

There is no doubt that it is very difficult to tell a story in so few words. Of course, many of the content that appears on popular micro-talk platforms may leave you unmoved, but they occasionally make the reader's heart hit.

The earliest and most popular micro-talking platform was "Terrible Little Stories" (TTT), which posts stories on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and its own apps.

TTT was founded on Facebook in 2013 by Anuj Gosalia, 31, with a team of 15 authors, and publishes a micro-story every day. At the time, he ran an advertising ad company called Not Like That. Chintan Ruparel, 30, was one of the team's screenwriters and co-founder of the company in 2014.

"TTT is designed in plain white text against a black background - stand out from the chaotic 'cat memes and jokes on social media,'" says Ruparel. "Gosalia saw the potential of the story and decided to open the platform to the audience. They created a URL through which the community user base can submit their work, and the team curated and published the work. Today, TTT has about 903,000 followers on Instagram, 1.1 million on Facebook, and more than 100,000 apps installed. That's why well-known publishers are willing to work with them.

Instagram currently has a number of such pages, which are based on user submission and editorial management. The sloppy, randomly scribbled stories are among them, and most of the readers are Millennial users. According to user data shared by the two founders, about 55%-65% of tiny users on Instagram say they are between the ages of 18 and 24.

For marketers, this age group is also the most elusive. Brands are committed to attracting young people, and in recent years the younger generation has been particularly hard to reach because of their indifference to traditional media and any social media platform used by parents.

It also means a convergence of interests - tiny platforms have become highly monecurable, while brands like to reach millennials at a relatively low cost. But it's as difficult as walking a tight wire. If users think your goal is commercial acquisition, then resistance and resistance will follow. So ads on these platforms also need to be language-speaking, and sometimes they have little in common with traditional advertising.

Often, a brand's audience writes its own ads as part of its promotion. Brand identity may have a strict appearance, but the slogan or brand name of the content is avoidable. "We would never throw a product directly into people's faces," Ruparel said. "

Mohit Kumar, 19, one of the partners who founded The Scribbled Stories (TSS) with Omair Tarique, 20, says that "brands that openly advertise are actually less engaged and influential." TSS also appears on Snapchat, and the platform's users are mostly 16- to 19-year-olds. "

This has become the main source of revenue for the tiny platform. Depending on the size and engagement of the audience, the cost of a month's collaboration with a platform is between Rs 300,000 and Rs 1.2 million (approximately RMB284,000 to RMB947,000).

"The two-year "Summer of Love" campaign launched by ice cream brand Cornetto on TTT was very popular, with 200 micro stories printed on a $1 billion ice cream cone across the country," says Gosalia. "

Big Bazaar, a large consumer goods retailer, has also collaborated with TTT on a fasting event called Neki ka mahina, which produces a series of micro-stories about doing good. Yash Sanghvi, marketing manager at Future Group, says this is a way to keep well-known brands such as BigBazaar young and popular. If small stories are becoming more popular, so are small videos. Both TTT and TSS have a short film division that produces brand-related video content.

Ruparel says they see video as a natural extension of text. TTT also took private selfie-style videos in the first person on Instagram's video platform, IGTV.

Most platforms like TTT actually start on Facebook, which has more followers than Instagram. But according to all the founders, Instagram is much more engaged - the number of people reading and commenting on each post - than Facebook. For example, a one-line micro-story on the TTT homepage on Instagram - "Bride Burns, Lights Up Another Data" - has more than 6,000 likes, while the same content on Facebook has just 150 likes.

Ruparel says Facebook's appeal is that you don't need to promote your posts to reach a significant number of people before the algorithm runs, giving priority to your friends' posts over news pages. "So, thankfully, Instagram is there."

Small, visually appealing posts like TTT are great for Instagram. But according to the latest published article data, the number of people reading and commenting on each post is much higher than the latter. "HaikuJAM's users are already writers or literary enthusiasts, and we've been encouraging new writers and voices to emerge," says Vaishnavi Singh, head of content marketing at Penguin Random House, an Indian company. "

Realization through these platforms is the next stage of development in this area. Karwa says it is now moving from brand partnerships to "strategic partnerships" with like-spirited brands like Penguin.

TTT and many other platforms now post longer posts - poems, short stories and even letters, although the most influential lines still appear on the cards. Megha Rao, 22, a full-time curator and author at TTT, says: "Longer reading patterns can make your reading experience more immersive. "As a publishing writer, she likes TTT because she doesn't have to tame her work on mental illness or feminism, which is probably what she has to do in mainstream publishing.

Purists may scoff at literary works that are smallly lazy, but for fans it has the same touching influence as long-form literature.