You’ve probably heard about the 300 page iPhone bill a woman received recently from AT&T.

When I first heard this I jumped to conclusion based ONLY on the headline.

A 300 page bill; you’re kidding. What the heck is AT&T doing?

I began to rant in my mind about the exclusive contract Apple entered into with AT&T. I built an entire case  in the span of two minutes about how bad of an idea this was (which it was) and how this 300 page phone bill would make Apple look bad.

Then, while driving in my car, I heard–on NPR–the actual story. You can listen to it here.

It turns out that the proud owner of the bill had 30,000 text messages in one month. Yes, that’s the real number–30,000.

Apparently, she’s a life blogger with a twitter account. With the aggregates from her twitter account and her life blogging adventures, she had 30,000 text messages in one month. I hope life blogging is a lucrative business–for her sake.

Even though I still think the exclusive contract is a bad idea, I had to do some major repenting for my internal rant. AT&T had offered the woman, like all iPhone users, an online option for her bill. She opted for the print version. So, they simply gave her a bill that reflected her actual use. It wasn’t a dumb mistake on their part.

The Point: We live in a sound bite, headline driven world. If you don’t augment the sound bite, people will believe the "bite" without even reading the story. This is true whether the headline is a one line banner on Yahoo! News, or the latest talk around the water cooler.