Archive for February 13th, 2009

The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide

Friday, February 13th, 2009

They’re no Strunk and White, but Dom Sagolla and Adam Jackson are aiming to do for Twitter what “The Elements of Style” did for good writing on paper: outline elementary rules of usage, composition and grammar.

140 Characters

The bulk of the book, titled “140 Characters, A Style Guide for the Short Form,” will revolve around eight key lessons from the Twitter universe, such as the importance of simplicity, honesty and humor. The project will also highlight notable figures worth following on Twitter, anecdotes from the community and even examples of the few occasions Twitterers have gone overboard: For example, Mr. Sagolla points to “bathroom tweets,” or messages about bodily functions, as falling into the category of things not to post to Twitter.

“This is a new genre of writing,” said Mr. Sagolla. “A new form of literature, in some ways.”

A portion of the book will also double as a memoir from the perspective of Mr. Sagolla, who was involved in the early stages of development for the tool. Mr. Sagolla, who now works at Adobe Systems as an engineer, is also planning on including a mini-dictionary of Twitter lingo, like “retweet,” the reposting of another Twitterer’s message, or “twoosh,” a message that is exactly 140 characters.

The book came about after Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sagolla met after an informal gathering of iPhone developers and began chatting about Twitter. Mr. Sagolla decided to bring Mr. Jackson, who he said updates his Twitter feed as many as 10 times an hour, into the fold.

The two expect the book to be available for download on Apple’s iPhone by the end of the month. Although the plan is to eventually get a version of “140 Characters” in print, Mr. Sagolla said releasing the book through iTunes first would be a good way to reduce the need for a major investment upfront, as well as a springboard to attract interested publishing houses.

“140 Characters” isn’t the first book written about the popular San Francisco, Calif., micro-blogging company. There’s also “Twitter Revolution,” “Twitter Means Business” and “Twitter for Dummies,” for starters. But Mr. Sagolla says that while the previous publications tended to home in more on the business and money-making potential aspect of the tool, “140 Characters” is an attempt to create easy rules for all sorts of social networking sites, including Facebook.

“Our goal is to make Twitter applicable to any kind of user,” said Mr. Sagolla.

The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

Sometimes you don’t need to understand the language to get the message….

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Love & Kindness are universal.

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  • March 11
    “So they sat in their quiet sorrow: they did not harden themselves against the consolation of the world; they were humble enough to acknowledge that life is a dark saying, and as in their thought they were swift to listen to see if there might be an explanatory word, so were they also slow to [...] […]
  • March 10
    “Dependence on God is the only independence, because God has no gravity; only the things of this earth, especially earthly treasure, have that — therefore the person who is completely dependent on him is light.” ——————————————————– ~Source: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “What We Learn from the Lilies in the Field and the Birds of the Air” [...] […]
  • March 09
    “Worldly similarity, if it were possible, is not Christian equality. Moreover, to bring about worldly similarity perfectly is an impossibility. Well-intentioned worldliness actually admits this itself. It rejoices when it succeeds in making temporal conditions the same for more and more people, but it acknowledges itself that its struggle is a pious wish, th […]
  • March 08
    “My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in [...] […]
  • March 07
    “Now if the learner is to acquire the Truth, the Teacher must bring it to him; and not only so, but he must also give him the condition necessary for understanding it. For if the learner were in his own person the condition for understanding the Truth, he need only recall it.” ——————————————————– ~Source: Philosophical Fragments (1844) Author: [...] […]
  • March 06
    “The secular view always clings tightly to the difference between man and man and naturally does not have any understanding of the one thing needful (for to have it is spirituality), and thus has no understanding of the reductionism and narrowness involved in having lost oneself, not by being volatilized in the infinite, but by [...] […]
  • March 05
    “Imagine hidden in a very plain setting a secret chest in which the most precious treasure is placed — there is a spring that must be pressed, but the spring is concealed, and the pressure must be of a certain force so that an accidental pressure cannot be sufficient. The hope of eternity is concealed [...] […]
  • March 04
    “When the religious speaker, in explaining that a man can do nothing of himself, sets something wholly particular in relation to this principle, he gives the auditor occasion to secure a profound insight into his own inmost heart, helps him to penetrate the delusions and illusions, so as to lay aside at least for a [...] […]
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