A shadow economy controls all of the systems of monetary influence in the world. This system derives value from sharing wealth, in the form of information. It is the economy of words, metered by our attention.

This economic system has the largest and most complex trading floor ever designed by mankind: the public commons. It regenerates in direct proportion to the number of people connected to it, which has no apparent limit.

We are limited by our ability to transform this wealth. Which is to say, the human mind has cognitive bounds, and can only process so much information at once. That is why the average number of words in a sentence is around 16, and the average number of overall characters is around 160. A German man once did that math, and wrote 160 characters into his global standard for mobile text messaging (GSM).

Twitter has a limit of 140 characters, in order to include the identity of the sender in each text message. This constraint has created a marketplace of ideas that may only be expressed in a short format of words, symbols, and hypertext links.

Currency in this system may or may not be persistent; what is written now is not guaranteed to grow in relevance over time. This currency is measured not only in numbers (follower count, mentions, click-throughs), but also influence and authority. In other words, it matters less how large your audience, but rather who is reading.

With Twitter we are each reporters, breaking the news of our daily lives. Individual messages may be profound or mundane, but taken in aggregate the public sentiment can be a powerful economic indicator.

Each voice has a distinct value depending on context. In the case of text donations to Haiti we have seen how valuable the space of one sentence can be.

As part of the Declaration of Amsterdam at the Worldwide Congress on Information Technology, we must to bring this “text-messaging Internet” to the places where literacy and commerce are most needed.

We literati are the gifted few in society with the responsibility to propagate access, extend the public commons, annotate, curate, analyze, and add value to it. Let us take information technology and enable electronic communities to form in the most desperate places on earth.

Give a voice to every man, woman, and child on earth. Then listen for the tweet heard ’round the world.

I had an amazing time in Amsterdam, and will be writing lots more about it later. For now, enjoy this brief interview with the Dutch Cowboys at iPhone Developer’s Camp.

Thanks to all who attended—this is just the beginning.

I enjoyed speaking with Henry Tenenbaum on Sunday morning.

I see the future following the model of the past, which is: we started out with this SMS application.

Thank you, @HenryTen and @KRON4News for a great experience!

It’s been an amazing couple of weeks on the Book Tour and now back in San Francisco. More great news is coming but I’d like to share with you a list of recent press, bound to entertain:

• San Francisco Chronicle: Big companies competing in app marketplace (11/11/09)
• Social Media Hour: #31 (11/10/09)

• The Bulletin: 10 Books to Read in November (11/06/09)
• KKZZ-AM 1400: Coach Ron Tunick’s Twitter Intervention (11/06/09)

• Haraka Haraka Haina Baraka: Dom Sagolla and the “140 Characters” Book Premiere (11/04/09)
• Swarthmore News: Twitter Co-founder Dom Sagolla ’96 on the Short Form (11/02/09)

• Two Jacks in the Hole: Trick or Treat Huff’s Birthday Tweet w/ Guest Dom Sagolla (10/29/09)

• lalawag: Highlights from the #140conf (10/29/09)
• Publisher’s Weekly: San Francisco Panel Urges Publishers to Keep Experimenting (10/29/09)
• 140 Characters Conference Presents: What’s Next in Social Media? (10/28/09)
• The Daily Gazette: Dom Sagolla ’96 Presents New Book About Twitter (10/26/09)
• Zahid Lilani: Book Review: 140 Characters by Dom Sagolla (10/22/09)
• Swarthmore Phoenix: Twitter Co-founder, Alum, to Speak About New Book (10/22/09)
• PBS: 5Across: How to Deal with Technology Overload (10/08/09)

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 was lucky enough to be available for this Nightline piece on Twitter. I spoke for about half an hour with the irascible John Donvan, which got boiled down to about 30 seconds about our book (starting around 5:22 in the above clip):

[Dom skateboarding]

John Donvan: He’s writing a book about his Twitter experiences, in which he argues that having to say something in just 140 characters — that’s a new kind of literature.

“Your ability to express yourself is pretty laid bare, and I’ve struggled really hard with a style that is both expressive, but also unique and recognizable out of context.”

Peep the full video featuring Biz and Ev, thoughtfully captured by Adam.

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.

Thus begins an article on our book in the Bits & Blogs section of the New York Times. From her summary, what impresses me most about Ms. Wortham is that she understands how Twitter users are collectively creating a new genre of literature.  One of the best parts of this article is in the comments, however:

Does anyone see the irony in a *book* about how to write for Twitter?

Yes, BarbaraKB we do, and what delicious irony it is. Our “book” will be in hypertext first as an iPhone App, and then later published in print. During the entire process we hope to add the latest feedback from the community and stay as fresh and current as we can.

This is going to be a challenge, but we’re committed to staying relevant.