The Wall Street Journal has taken note of the small form:

The literary topic du jour is Twitter, with an onslaught of book deals about the site being made in recent months. For example, former Gawker blogger Nick Douglas snagged a book deal with HarperCollins on a tome about the wittiest messages written on Twitter, to be called Twitterwit.New York Times technology columnist David Pogue will write a book called The World According to Twitter, which will be a communal effort of sorts containing the best answers to humorous questions he posts on the microblogging site.

And Dom Sagolla, the founder of iPhoneDevCamp and a contributor to the development of the concept of Twitter, has been blogging about writing in short form, and recently landed his own book deal on the subject.

Any bets on who will get the next Twitter/blogging book deal? (My money is onTextsFromLastNight.com.)

That’s a good bet.

I’m excited to announce that John Wiley & Sons have agreed to publish the book 140 Characters!

I’ve already begun to work with Shannon Vargo over at Wiley, to bring this work to print and digital download.

In addition, my company DollarApp is producing a companion application which should ship by the time the book appears in print this Fall.

This arrangement would not have occurred without the help of Erin Malone & friends at William Morris Endeavor, and Adam Jackson at the Internets. I’d also like to thank Jon Varese for encouraging me, and thank YOU for reading and commenting on this site!

The book is currently in development, but you may view a brief excerpt on the new About page.

Stay tuned!

Have you watched the video demonstration of Google Wave yet?

What we have here is shrinkage: shorter times to update, shorter updates themselves, by word in translation, or by character in live typing.

Any time we see an acceleration of realtime transmission like this, we witness a revolution. With the telegram, then email, texting, instant messaging, Twitter, and now multi-party live typing and translation.

So much more of which we have not yet dreamed awaits us.

The 140 character limit shaped Twitter and the short format. The limitations of this new “cursor presence” will shape Google Wave and the carrier signals that follow.

When you are typing in a Wave and your cohorts can see every action, the lessons of 140 characters matter even more. Your skills as a writer using Facebook and Twitter will shine in this new medium. Google Wave exposes your abilities even more clearly, and even helps you learn via playback, automation, and live translation.

Twitter is elemental.

Google Wave is atomic.

Be ready to learn from this new mode of writing and collaborating, and bid adieu to email as we know it. Nothing can really replace Twitter at this point, but we may soon have the perfect companion.

For the skeptics: watch to see if the experience degrades gracefully across devices. Consider Twitter or your service of choice to be your platform, the board that carries you across this wave. Don’t let go, but get ready for a wild ride.

On May 26th, I’ll be speaking at 140 | The Twitter Conference, alongside two of my heroes: @bs and @atebits:

What Makes a Great Twitter App?

Panelists: Loren Brichter, Britt Selvitelle, Dom Sagolla

At the core of Twitter’s popularity is it’s utter simplicity. Building on top of that functionality while retaining the ease of use and visual appeal of Twitter itself is no easy task. This panel, including both external developers and one of Twitter’s own user experience players, will talk about the design and functionality choices they made, how they worked with the API to streamline them, and how you can apply these concepts to your own applications.

We’ll be discussing:

• Purpose-driven user interface design
  
• Managing system resources
• The limitations of mobile devices
• Working with the 100-call hourly API limit

Hope you can join us! Our session is from 11:30-12:30 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Update: Scoble took these pictures and MSNBC has a few shots of us on stage in the background during their report:

Props to @NerdBoyTV for the find.

[Note: I actually wrote this 2 years ago, but here it is reprinted almost word for word.]

Getting overwhelmed with junk on Facebook? Annoyed by random spam targeting you? Tried Twitter for a while and now you think it’s about to Jump the Shark already?

Ease back on the throttle there, Fonzie. Twitter is no different than Facebook or Flickr or Blogger except in its immediacy and constant freshness, which accelerates everything. Every social Web app goes through the same cycle. You just have to master it, and not let it master you.

As I’ve experienced them over the last 3 years, here is the cycle:

12 Stages of Social Media

1. Curiosity
2. Interest
3. Novelty
4. Excitement
5. Inviting Everyone You Know
6. Optional: Inviting the Wrong Person (skip to 9)
7. Massive Use / Addiction
8. Slight Abuse / Accidental Use
9. Annoyance / Frustration
10. Cutting Way Back
11. “Going Dark” / “Taking a Break” / “Going Private”
12. Acceptance / Renewed Curiosity

When your best friend from high school announces the birth of his baby boy on Twitter, you can’t tell me that Twitter is dying. For moments like these to be shared, you just have to tune in properly.

My advice to you: skip to Step 10. Try Jaiku or Facebook for a while, if you absolutely must escape. Get a better tool to deal with the deluge, or just create another account and live there for a while. (Update: There are 12 Antidotes as well, contained in the forthcoming book 140 Characters.)

Twitter does not jump sharks. People use Twitter to jump sharks. The Death of Twitter is a Myth, people. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

I visited Portland this weekend, and had the pleasure of being interviewed on the infamous Strange Love Live podcast during BarCamp. Queue up to 53:30 to hear some History of Twitter and Odeo:

Thanks to Toonlet for inviting me on, and to Small Society for sponsoring my trip!

Originally, Adam and I decided to combine our writing efforts, and spent over six months refining our ideas together and preparing a proposal for publication.

During this process we realized that we really enjoyed working together, yet our ideas and literary voices were quite distinct. After weeks of discussion, we’ve agreed to produce our own separate works, and help each other along the way.

Adam has helped me produce this site, find an agent, and secure a publisher. So will I help him create, promote, and sell a book based on his success in social media. Adam’s book (which has yet to be named) will benefit from the same rigorous design and production process that we’ve followed with 140 Characters.

Adam and I share the same agent (the fearless Erin Malone), and we share the same philosophy of simplicity, focus, and craftsmanship.

I’m really excited to promote Adam as he tells his story of heading West without a dime to his name. He found a job, a home, friendship, and support using a tool I helped to create. It is an inspiring story that will make a fine compliment to the principles and various styles within 140 Characters. He has been instrumental in the early success of this work, and I mean to see that he enjoys the same success.

Thank you, Adam.

Episode #0016: Interview with Dom Sagolla: The Guy Who Helped Create Twitter

Much more detail on the History of Twitter, and a few predictions thrown in there for good measure.

“We’re all learning still how this thing is unfolding, and our role in it.”

Thanks to Bo Bennet for reaching out via Twitter for this, I really enjoyed it.

When Twitter was hatched, it was called “twttr”. Jack Dorsey, coding up the very first working version of the site, sent the first recorded message at 12:50pm PDT:

just setting up my twttr

This message was written by @Jack’s system automatically by all users upon signup, and this practice lasted for a while. His second message was:

inviting coworkers

This is where Twitter’s story begins. @Jack invited us by pointing to the internal twttr.com server. Productivity around the office dropped precipitously as we each used it and debated its merits. There were doubters. My wife is probably the earliest Twitter-hater. @Blaine wouldn’t even try it for a while.

I can safely say that each of us knew deep down that we had something special, though. Love it or hate it, Twitter was alive and we all had to deal with it. We all slowly got used to being in constant contact with each other, and eventually established our own frequencies.

Three years later, the spectrum of voices is ever-widening.  We raise our collective glasses to Jack and the rest of the old Odeo crew for creating Twitter and the current team for keeping her afloat.

“So say we all!”

If you’re in San Francisco, please join us at the 21st Amendment starting at noon tomorrow, March 21st, 2009 for a few beers and tales of yore.

Update: Westwood One Radio was in attendance, and filed this report.

The response to “How Twitter Was Born” has been inspiring and overwhelming. Frankly the attention (while encouraging) has taken time away from finishing the book.

One of the inquiries came from Erin Malone over at William Morris Agency in New York. She read our recent profile in the New York Times, and reached out to help. Adam and I feel lucky to have signed on with Erin, who will represent us as we work with print and digital publishers.

You can always follow us on Twitter, and we might still be able to respond to email (slowly), and of course we’re happy to take calls if we know you.  For all literary and talent inquiries, please contact:

Erin Malone
ecm@wma.com
William Morris Agency
(212) 903-1581

Ok, now we can get back to writing.