Broadcasting Brain - Latest Comments in Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

TerriRains — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:07:47 -0000

Balance it out. A shorter book AND a whole lotta Tweetin'.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:02:00 -0000

It might just create the world's thickest book, too.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Michael Kozakewich — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:32:05 -0000

A regular novel page is about 5.5" x 8", right? What if you made a novel that was 5.5" x 1", and each page contained no more than 160 characters?

It would be a fantastic project.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Ravi Sagar — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:14:11 -0000

:) Nice analysis

..but writing a book does not mean that you can connect to the same number of people. Writing random twitter messages is much easy than writing a book :)

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:02:32 -0000

I think I should write a book someday, but it has nothing to do with Twitter. :)

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Brandon_Sheley — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:59:00 -0000

What really gets me is the people that think just because they have 3,000 followers on twitter, that they "should" write a book. :)
Personally I like Twitter for the reason you mentioned, the conversations you have on twitter, wouldn't equal the contacts you could make writing a book with no following.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:32:32 -0000

As I've explained above, Raj, "there is probably a lot of crap in my Twitter stream that isn't worth preserving. It is an interesting idea, to pull it out into book format like you describe, but it's of limited long term value. I was more interested in the sheer quantity of words." So I don't disagree with you on that point. It's merely an expression of magnitude. Also, it's an alternate way of looking at things, as in "Hm, what would have happened if I put the same time and effort into writing a book instead?" I'm not implying that the content in my Tweets warrants a book, not by a long shot. I'm saying that a similar amount of effort, applied differently, would have yielded a big deliverable. But I'm sure you're a smart guy, Raj, and that you probably figured that out on your own. Right?

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

raj — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:08:46 -0000

Seriously, you can't compare 130K words of tweet text to the equivalent of a book. As someone who has written a book and also write over 2 million words in the past 10 years, I know that the latter collection has a lot of garbage that even I don't want to read ever again. So those 2 million words are hardly something bigger than the individual pieces of quality. (Though I might able to extract quality nuggest and add all new text.)

On the other hand, if you have common themes running through your tweets, maybe you can write a book around those themes, explaining why/ how/ when/ etc those tweets came about -- in the context of how to be an effective "microblogger".

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:59:03 -0000

It took me over a year, Shelly. :)

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Shelly O'Brien — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:47:49 -0000

Yep, unless your tweets stay on topic ALL the time I don't suppose it would read well as a book. Interesting concept. Maybe you could mine the good stuff tho' =) BTW how much time DOES it take to tweet 8600 times!

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Roberto R. Cerrada — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:32:08 -0000

It's enough easy write 8900 differents piece of 140 characters information, about different things and events, that write a compelling book that you can maintaing the prospect attention along 500 words.

Write an book is more about build and unique history around one concept, technique or strategy. Twitt 140 charateres is about make a conversation, share fresh information or some thing like this.

Anyway, are two different things that you can't compare...

Regards
Roberto R. Cerrada

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:50:00 -0000

Interesting concept, but the link that you provided tells me to go to a different webpage where I have to log on using by Twitter account ID and my Twitter password. Sorry, not ready to do that.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Pierro Marie — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:10:54 -0000

Yeah twitter needs a lot of time too, but i still love it.
So take a look at http://www.tweetbook.in and "write"
your book :o)

Salut

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Mark Dykeman — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:28:31 -0000

Things is, Ari, there is probably a lot of crap in my Twitter stream that isn't worth preserving. It is an interesting idea, to pull it out into book format like you describe, but it's of limited long term value. I was more interested in the sheer quantity of words.

Re: Twitter or write a book? Hm…

Ari Herzog — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:22:22 -0000

Why don't you build some tool that exports your 8600 tweets and imports them into a Scribd-like format so you can truly show them off in a book?