I wrote the Book for @Meredith.

Thanks to Case, Varese, Britt, and Jack for encouraging me.

Thanks to my son Leo for inspiring me.

Thanks to Adam for prompting me.

Thanks to Jenna for writing about this.

Thanks to Erin for reading on a weekend.

Thanks to Shannon, Deborah, and Matt for picking me up.

Thanks to my reviewers and contributors, especially Mom, Dad, Mark, Ben, Erik, Andrew, and Alex for comments.

I wrote the App along with the help of many people from iPhoneDevCamp pictured above, including @ravenme, @grigs,@jtkeith, @lyzadanger, @aileen_jeffries, @schwa, @bmf, @mantia, @tristan, @emory, @twittelator, and @atebits.

@Jack, @case @ceedub and @rr contributed to the App design.

@24klogos did the artwork including the hummingbird, feather for the Book cover and baby feather for the App icon.

There have been many other contributors to the text and the testing community. Thank you to everyone, and please keep the comments and suggestions coming.

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.

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.

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.

Welcome to 140 Characters, the hub of our combined efforts to write, edit, publish and distribute a book about Twitter. Updates on our work, excerpts from the book and exclusive short form content will be published here by Dom & Adam. We’re not alone though. When we say, “our combined efforts” we’re talking about the community as well. Every tweet is a contribution to this book. The Book on Twitter has been created by you and is a collection of information collected by Adam and Dom over the last 3 years using Twitter, tens of thousands of tweets. Thank you for visiting and we are pleased to have you here. Subscribe to the RSS feed and stick around. This is going to be a wild ride!

Hi. My name is Adam Jackson. I was born in Central Florida in 1986. In my 22 years on this planet, I’ve driven a tractor trailer professionally, operated a tractor, acted as The Assistant Manager at an Apple Store, Configured my high school’s wireless network and LAN infrastructure, worked on enterprise server systems for SMBs and dabbled in photography / graphic design. I moved to San Francisco in June of 2008 and began my career as a social media marketer. I’ve broadcasted my life 24/7 from a webcam on my head and sent 31,500 tweets to Twitter in just 18 months. My passion for Twitter is from the heart. The service has changed the way I live life and has enabled many opportunities for me. 31 thousand tweets has allowed for some amazing exploration on how the human mind thinks and responds to small bits of text. I’ve mastered the tweet and I want to share that with you. Twitter is a service that can work for you in many ways but my contribution to the book should help answer some questions and help you get started.

——-

Hi. My name is Dom Sagolla, age 34.  I’ve been writing since before the advent of blogs over at Dom.net. I was working at Odeo with Jack when he invented Twitter and got to help it grow. Being user number 9 on a system of millions of real people has been an incredible experience that I want to share with everyone. I believe that Twitter represents the world’s fastest, easiest way to produce hypertext, on top of an ubiquitous platform who’s power is yet untapped. Also, I’m pretty fanatical about grammar and style so this book should be the perfect outlet for me.

My company DollarApp will be providing the iPhone design and development services for our app.  I think this type of small-form content is perfect for the one dollar price point.

We’re really excited to announce this project today — it’s been a long time coming.  Thanks for joining us!