@shamsensei

The hype surrounding the One Book, One Tweet project started by @crowdsourcing has all the ingredients of being tagged #EPIC. The book American Gods by Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) could have been an overnight hit. I wouldn’t be surprised many people went searching for their copy or even buy or borrow, just to get involved in what is deemed as a truly worldwide book club. The twitter account @1b1t2010 was even created so that people can follow developments. However, some problems threaten to pull the plug on this exciting experiment.

Problem One: Spoilers
Unfortunately ppl get excited to see others get disappointed (there’a a word for that). So they will purposely irritate the genuine book reader who wants to share his passion with the world only to put off by such mischief.

Problem Two: Spammers
Once this becomes epic, it WILL trend on twitter. and when that happens, the spammers enter. Noise becomes unbearable. Ppl will switch off and read another book. Like the Catcher in the Rye (hint hint).

Problem Three: Pissed off tweeters
Just those two above will definitely make anyone curious abt the book swear off. and not read Neil’s book. N u know how twitter spreads…

Only day two and the proof is in the pudding. The traffic for #1b1t has gone down. Hashtags are still flying around. Everyone’s grasping to save the show.But all we need to do is understand how twitter works, and specifically how hashtag searching works. Here’s what you do:

1: Open a site that streams tweets real time. I like TweetGrid by @jazzychad cos it’s light on resources and previews twitpics and yfrogs in the stream. Big shout out to them. Many live events were tweeted from here. (others like monitter is great as well)

2: open at least 2 frames to stream. One frame for the main #1b1t, and the other for chapter 1 (ie #1b1t #1c). So ONLY tweets with #1b1t AND #1c will appear in the second frame. but it will still appear in the the first one, which will behave now as a general space for ALL #1b1t matters. (i like using 3 frames in case i feel like reading other feeds in the meantime)

3: That’s it really. Looks something like this http://twitpic.com/1li3ui

What this does is a few things. First it provides ppl (like me) who have not read the book a way to view chapter by chapter tweets and not get distracted by the general #1b1t chatter. 2nd, those who have read can actually share with everyone the essence of the book, which will surely bode well for Neil (immediate reviewers). 3rd, those who use those chapter tags have deliberately chosen to be visible. And from past twitter happenings, anyone spoiling the chat should be ignored or flagged if necc.

BREAKING! In the middle of this blog, and @1b1t2010 have made the official hashtag system. Now for chap one, it’ll be #1b1t_1c. http://twitter.com/1B1T2010/status/13488511796

Now, why having SPACES is impt for hashtag search? having the underscore is well and good, but this will make it invisible to ppl searching for #1b1t only, since they mite not know the new system. And that defeats the purpose of it being crowdsourced. If there is multiple hashtags WITH spaces, then for newcomers searching for #1b1t they can be drawn into the chapter discussion since #1c will also be visible to him, so he can join in. since it’s supposed to be worldwide, then timezones come into play, and the schedule need not be followed if i’m tweeting from singapore.

#1b1t is perfect since its short and sweet. and will last longer since there is less syntax to remember. adding underscore is fine, but pressing the shift+- is such a pain (personal peeve) and typos can occur.

We got to use the search engine the way it should be used. and from wat i see, ppl are excited to use twitter to connect with fellow readers. once it gets popular and more ppl will notice, then this prob will start all over again. So if the next book comes (like catcher in the rye) we could search #1b1t #1c #JS for JD Salinger. if we talking abt worldwide then gotto deal with massive numbers.

And with twitter, it’s all abt filtering.

Shamsensei

(this is a rushed job, so pardon my bad grammar.)

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