The Twitter Book 88
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the read-all-about-it dept.
from the read-all-about-it dept.
stoolpigeon writes "Microblogging service Twitter has undeniably been a hit, with growth rates that were at times in excess of 1400%. The growth was rapid enough that the site became well known for its periodic, and, at times, extensive downtime. Even with these issues, the service continued to grow rapidly, and with celebrities getting into the mix Twitter was quickly on the radar of mainstream media. The ubiquity of Twitter and ever-increasing coverage of 'tweets' has also brought the inevitable backlash. As with anything that gains high-profile popularity, there are plenty of Twitter haters out there, though the role Twitter has played in the recent Iranian elections seems to have brought more legitimacy to Twitter in the eyes of many. With popularity come books, and quite a few are already out there about and for Twitter, but my favorite so far is The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
What makes The Twitter Book work so well is that it functions in a manner very similar to the service it describes. The book itself is small, 8x5.9x0.7 inches, and the font is a bit larger than most tech books. This means the most text dense pages probably contain the same content as one third of a page in a traditional O'Reilly book. Most pages aren't text though, there is a liberal use of color, bold text and graphics. When a page is relatively heavy on text, the facing page will be equally focused on graphics with pictures, graphs or large colored bubbles around text. | The Twitter Book | |
| author | Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein |
| pages | 234 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Media, Inc. |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | JR Peck |
| ISBN | 978-0-598-80281-3 |
| summary | If you want to learn how to use Twitter like a pro, The Twitter Book will quickly get you up to speed. |
All this combines to make The Twitter Book contain many of the same elements that create such a passionate response, positive or negative, to Twitter itself. This means if someone absolutely hates twitter, can't think of a single reason it should exist and wishes it would go away; they are probably not going to like this book. On the other hand anyone that loves Twitter and wants to learn all the ins and outs of the service, there is a high likelihood they are really going to take to this guide. It's format is one of those genius moves that seems incredibly obvious in hind sight. When I've shown it to other fans of Twitter, the usual initial response has been, "A twitter book, really?" and they are not all that enthusiastic. But once I start flipping through it and letting them see the way it is formatted, the reception becomes much warmer and quite a few have quickly flipped from skepticism to a desire to take my copy.
O'Reilly and Milstein both have been using the Twitter platform extensively and speak from experience and data that backs up their assertions. The format may make the whole thing look rather simple, but there is a lot going on here and one can very easily find a lot of bad advice out there on how to get the most out of Twitter. The Twitter Book leaves the reader in good hands that have already tread the paths they lead one down.
Of course this does raise and important question, is a guide to microblogging really necessary? All one does with twitter after all, is post 140 word updates. If kids can text vociferously, who needs how to do the equivalent to a web site? Well, there are two things in play that I think make this worth having. The first, and I think possibly the more important, is that Twitter is a social service. Beyond the simple technical aspects of the various clients, and technologies supported for the sending and receiving of tweets, there are the mores and customs of what has already become an established community. O'Reilly and Milstein aren't just guiding the reader through a simple how to, they are giving an introduction to a massive community that can save the reader from making more than a few mistakes that could really make getting going with microblogging a rough start.
The second reason is that while basic twitter functionality is drop dead easy, some of the more powerful or useful features are not built into twitter itself. They are methods and tools that have come up from the user base itself. Some of them require a little thinking outside the box as it were and are not immediately obvious. Others do seem incredibly simple once they've been implemented but their simplicity belies their usefulness. The book gives solid information on third party clients and tools. Tips on use are backed up with statistics on existing use within twitter.
As this is The Twitter Book, I have been talking about Twitter quite a bit. I'm sure the name is going to help the book sell but much of the information is just as valuable in the context of microblogging in general as opposed to just Twitter. The only real exception may be the clients and tools mentioned previously. Some of them have been slow to support other platforms. I think this book is just as useful still, to anyone microblogging with another service such as idenit.ca. Identi.ca is built on the free and open Laconica software. I personally base all my microblogging from identi.ca and forward things over to twitter. I still interact on twitter because at this point is where the majority of the players are at. But the social guidelines and strategies laid out in The Twitter Book carry over directly to identi.ca.
I don't really have any issues with the book. The scope is purposefully narrow and within the defined limits the authors have covered everything very well. I'd have loved to see something on identi.ca or Laconica but that would have widened the scope quite a bit and I think we can all relate to hating scope creep in a project. SlideShare has a nice preview of the book. Of course this format is not suited to every purpose. Any in depth study of just what makes twitter so popular and the impact it is or is not having on society will need to take place in a manner more suited to such topics. This is simply a case of using the right tool for the job. But dismissing this format as useless would be a mistake it is uniquely appropriate to the job at hand. I think this book is a lot like a screw driver. When used in the manner intended, no tool is better at the job. The only way to break a screw driver is to use it in an unintended way. In that case it isn't the tool's fault. Looking for a meaty discourse on the pros and cons of twitter? Do not look here. But if getting the most out of the service is the goal this may just be the best tool available.
You can purchase The Twitter Book from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really necessary to write a 200+ page book on how to write 140-character "microblog" posts?
And what could be more pointless than Twitter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still think Twitter is grossly overrated and expect that it has already peaked big time.
Toilet Paper, The Book. (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel the need for this book about as much as a book on using toilet paper, which oddly enough, has something in common with Twitter. They're both used to collect shit. That's about it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Young people mostly don't use Twitter - it's just older people desperately trying to be cool. A perfect market for this book.
It is what you want it to be. (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't hate Twitter because it is popular; I hate it because of the overexposure. Twitter is just a service; it is what you want it to be. I don't care if you're reading about Ashton Kutcher shopping for groceries or Iranians being oppressed; all I ask is that you don't hype it up so much that I want to punch you in the face (alternatively, I would settle for actually punching you in the face).
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. Making money by printing shitty books might work in the short term, but if you damage your brand such that people can't rely on your name "Oh, I'll get an O'Reilly book - they're never shit!" then in the long term you'll make less. Yeah, I know, it's all about the short term these days.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
True.
+1 Insightful
-dZ.
Twitter is actually pretty handy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it: Everybody asks each other how they're doing. It's even customary business etiquette; even if the two parties could care less how they're doing, they ask each other anyway to relieve tension and make small talk. Sometimes, it remains just that, but there are other, much rarer, times where someone's day actually is quite interesting.
Maybe that person had some life-changing experience that could change one's life upon hearing about it. Maybe they learned of critical news that could change one's life for the better. If one never asks, one will never know. Hence the premise of Twitter.
For most people, Twitter is pretty useless; George Carlin put it best, "People are fucking boring." However, it's those other people that make it the amazing and highly informative service that it is. I've found out about exclusive parties, specials and news that can only be found through the agility and brevity offered by Twitter.
So if you don't see the value in it, make a couple of friends and try to find it. At worst, I can see it being bought out by a bigger Internet presence, like Google.
Re:And what could be more pointless than Twitter? (Score:4, Insightful)
99% of Twitter traffic boils down to "I had a bagel for lunch" and "I'm going poo-poo and Twittering it on my iPhone."
Well that is like complaining that phones or the web are overrated and pointless because most of the content is of no interest to you. You don't have to read those posts you know!
I don't post on twitter, but I do find it useful to get a real-time sense of what is going on. Searching it for phrases to see if something is down for example, or getting a sense of peoples reactions.
And following the odd celebrity like the mythbusters [twitter.com] is interesting.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is O'Reilly doing publishing this book?
That probably has something to do with the fact that Tim O'Reilly co-authored the book, since he's apparently an avid user himself.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the better question is how is Twitter getting all of this press? Twitter is really really useless. Its uselessness is clear within minutes of you logging on. Yet celebrities are flocking to it, and the site is a media darling (I am pretty sure TechCrunch and SAI have a whole twitter department at this point). To me, it just doesn't make sense. I am highly skeptical that these sites really care all that much about Twitter, and I feel there must be some "convincing" going on to get all this press. Maybe their PR firm is that good, maybe they are utilizing their social and business networks to call in favors to get the coverage, or maybe their is just a whole mania going on (and tech blogs are that desperate for something to write about), and we all know that no one knows how to go overboard like the technology field, but I feel there must be some underhandedness going on.
This situation reminds me very much of Second Life- a massively hyped service that had absurd amounts of exposure in the media that was more or less... useless. I tried hard to get into Second Life, I spent a few hours there, talked to people, asked where the cool things were, and found... nothing. Undaunted, I just assumed the learning curve was high, I spent almost two weeks walking around the place looking for something interesting, because I figured with all this press, there must be something really cool here, I was just too much of a newb to find it. The most interesting thing I found was someone taking me to their "dungeon" so I could press a button and see my avatar do things with someone else's avatar in an awkward animation. This at least held my attention for a few minutes. Yet somehow this site was being written about daily. It just didn't make sense, everything else I did there was just boring, it was a glorified chatroom that got overloaded once there was more than 50 people in an area.
Maybe it is just the faddish nature of these things and there are no other machinations going on, but I would really like to know who Twitter uses as a PR firm, and where those "marketing" dollars are going. Maybe I am being a bit too tinfoil-hat, but does anyone else feel that Twitter is getting plugged to the point of absolute absurdity? To the point where it seems there isn't a reasonable explanation anymore as to why all these organizations would give it so much coverage?
Twitter was cooler... (Score:5, Insightful)
... when it was called finger.
Blogs were better when they were called 'homepages'
Now get off my lawn.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you need a tutorial on Twitter, maybe computers just aren't your thing.
Dude count the Charachters below (Score:2, Insightful)
"I've just been Diagnosed with Hepatitis C (AIDS,Clamydia, etc)"
"I just found out I'm pregnant"
"My (insert favorite relative) just died"
"My birthday is tomorrow"
"I just got in a car accident"
"I'm choking (seizing, having a heart attack/stroke, killing myself) send help"
"Has anyone seen my purse (keys/dog/kid/spouse etc)"
Those are all some pretty significant frickin things to find out about, and lemme tell ya, I guarantee someone has found out they need to be STD tested via a tweet, or found out they need to have a paternity test done, etc via tweet
Not that those things are "good" or "moral" or "intelligent", but take any random sampling of 20 people you find on the street and find more than 30% of those people that ARE good or moral or intelligent......your average Joe is an unconcerned, uncompassionate, stupid douche bag.....thus is life
Re:And what could be more pointless than Twitter? (Score:3, Insightful)