Results

In October of last year, I hosted a small panel presentation on mobile development platforms and their future at Adobe MAX. At the event, I was introduced to Dom Sagolla(@dom) who joined me on the panel as an expert on development for the iPhone. Since MAX, I have kept in touch with Dom and got the chance to read his upcoming book (140 Characters) . I really enjoyed it, and thought I would share my impressions:

Nothing frustrates me more than those that accuse SMS, instant messaging, and tweeting of bringing about the decline of language. It is even more annoying that this type of commentary often comes from people with little or no experience with online social networking. How many times have you heard statements like the following:

“I don’t want to spend time keeping up with what people are having for lunch”

“Most of the stuff on Twitter is just people talking about crap”

“I’ve just heard so much trivial, superficial, shallow hype attached to it, I find myself not wanting to jump into that pool.”

People with this view see the message as being tidally locked to the medium in a downward spiral. The assumption is that the constraints of the short form are so severe that quality writing is unachievable.

Dom challenges this perspective in his first book 140 Characters – A Style Guide For The Short Form. He takes off his software developer hat and turns back to his days as an English major. He sets out to explore the history of the short form of writing and it’s dramatic resurgence due to the rise of modern day social networking.

The main body of the book draws out all of the most cherished literary devices in writing and reexamines them for use in the short form. Dom urges writers to spend more time distilling the essence of meaning and emotion from their thoughts. Select tweets are used as examples, showing wonderful invocations of irony, sarcasm, suspense, awe, and humor. The mechanics of poetry are even explored in detail, with suggestions on how they can be applied to the short form.

Younger generations are growing up with the short form as the primary communication format in their lives. I would certainly recommend this book to English teachers for use in high school level curricula as a way to explore creative writing in a way that is useful, relevant, and engaging for modern students.

For all of us Twitter and Facebook users, this book is a refreshing change of pace from the usual social networking “expert” discourse on things like:

• Strategies for obtaining new followers
• How to get Retweeted
• How brands can leverage social networking

Technical tips on all of the above are valuable but tend to generate a lot of noise on the network. In contrast, those that take the advice in this book, will quickly find themselves focused on generating a more engaging and meaningful signal.

Tony MacDonell (@tmtek)