Reader’s Companion to “The Story (so far) of Twitter”

Twitter overload

Firstly, my thanks to @scotthogrefe for introducing me to @davepeck, who is a card-carrying social media guru and gave us some good early pointers on where to look, including a whale of an article by @dom Sagolla. Even though Dom is writing a book — plug plug, 140 Characters: Style Guide for the Short Form — he still took time out to exchange emails on the early days of development, a thread I hope to continue as we expand the web version into print form.

The Origins of Twitter

LA Times | Technology blog – Twitter Creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site’s founding document

- great article, inspired biographical reading (via Wikipedia, of course) on Jack, Biz, and Ev

140 Characters – How Twitter Was Born

- compelling behind the scenes look at development, gave us lots of fuel for the early alpha and beta time period, and helped us identify some of the “big wave” events that brought exponential growth, including SXSW Interactive 2007 and the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

Wikipedia – various entries on the foundation technologies behind the Twitter UI, including Instant Messaging, LiveJournal, SMS, and Unix Talk.

Twitter Culture

There was a lot we wanted to capture, but space constraints insisted that we hit the high points. But we found some cool resources, including the mystery of how many people are actually using Twitter. (one guess is as good as another).

I really wanted to document the first known usage of the term “tweeps” – which just irritates the hell out of me. According to the Dictionary of Twitter lingo, @scottk75 gets credit, but there was no link to the original post. So we left it out.

And finally, everything you could possibly want to know about Yiying Lu’s illustration, now infamously known as the FAIL WHALE. (I also found out that Mike really hates the fail whale. I was shocked! I really dig it.)

Fail Whale - an homage d'lego

Twitter + Fame

Maybe we’re missing the point, by trying to make any single twitter post into a noteworthy event. But it was cool tracking down the following tweets:

@barackobama’s first entry

@the_real_shaq’s first entry (cited by the NY Times article)

@britneyspears’ infamous hacked entry (and there were others, as well)

And this…

The timing of the piece was interesting. We were doing layouts when the word of the Twitpocalypse started floating around, and by the time we finished rendering, it had already passed. Then, the same day we submitted final art, some of our friends’ avatars started turning green.

Finally, I’ll mention that the artwork at the top of this post was Mike’s first attempt at the gonzo Dan Z style, and that he sent it in to me before I sent him any story elements to work on. Brilliant.