Friday, March 26, 2010

1b1t

I suppose you're wondering about the cryptic title. Well, I stumbled upon this a few days ago. For those too lazy to click and read, let me sum it up for you. Jeff Howe, a writer for Wired magazine, has proposed a sort of Twitter book-club. The idea is that Howe is going to try and get as many people on Twitter to read the same book as possible. They'll discuss it on Twitter, and present arguments, like a book club you'd see in a library or some sort of Desperate Housewives-esque setting.

I know what some of you are doing. You're scoffing, and saying "Me, read? HAH!" Well, I would like to point out that you're reading right now. You're also arguing about this text with me by saying that you don't read. All you'd have to do is write it out in 140 characters or less.

Now, beyond the somewhat advertising nature of this post, I genuinely think this is a great idea, and I want to say that I will be participating in this. Twitter is well known for its ability to communicate news at lightning speed in vast quantities (an example from my experience: while I was watching the Canada-USA men's hockey finals, I managed to find out about Crosby's goal on Twitter before I saw it - live). Some examples of this are the Haitian earthquake and the election dispute in Iran. For months, neither topic would come off of the trending topics. What Howe is trying to do is transplant that unity on Twitter that I'm calling "Twinity" (I want a copyright on that, Twitter) from the area of news topics to books. And books, last time I checked, are an endangered species.

Also, if proven successful, this might become a practice in some schools. I know in my school, we've already integrated the blog. Why not the microblog?

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