Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less
Edited by Nick Douglas
Published by It Books
Release date: August 25, 2009

My first thought was “you’re missing the point” when I heard someone was planning to publish a book containing only 140-character messages from micro-blogging site Twitter. Then I discovered that this someone was former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas and my thoughts instantly shifted to intrigue.

Douglas is a talented wordsmith, who in years past, has demonstrated a vivacious ability to both inform and entertain readers, [See, Everything indie sucks now]. Having been with Valleywag, it’s obvious that he understands technology from all angles, including the cultural level. If anyone is qualified to create a book of tweets worthy of being collected and bound for $12.99, Douglas is certainly a front runner. Twitter Wit is such a book, featuring about 600 tweets and a foreword by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

The cover proclaims the collection as “…the funniest Tweets of All Time.” That statement is somewhat misleading since the intent is to highlight great displays of witticism. Don’t get me wrong, Twitter Wit is plenty funny, but because a main characteristic of wit happens to be comedy. For example “I don’t believe in holidays Google doesn’t change its logo for,” (bengold) is funny if you use the Internet like you breath air. If you don’t, well its not really funny, but that doesn’t matter because you aren’t going to buy a book about Twitter unless the title begins with “How to.”

Point being, that tweet is still witty. And while Douglas does include the occasional explanation of features for anyone who might not have caught on, this book is for people who are submerged in the culture of Twitter.

For people who follow 50 or so feeds — that is to say, people who haven’t yet experienced the full potential of Twitter to amuse — Twitter Wit is well worth the buy. For the overly active users (myself include), it might seem like a lot of hit or miss. The reason for this is largely because the authors of messages are only identified by their user name and not their real name. For instance “I saw a guy dressed as Superman in Grand Central. I thought I recognized him but he wouldn’t put on his glasses so I couldn’t be sure” seems hokey unless you realize it should be repeated in your head spoken by (fake) Christopher Walken.

Also absent is tweets separated by categories — removing any notion that this a coffee table reader that can be easily quoted from. This might be because this was the first attempt to create a Twitter book or it could be because they plan on releasing themed books — similar to the nauseating Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I’d love to see a Twitter ‘geek’ Wit filled with messages like “Who would win in a fight between dinosaurs and Transformers? I know what you’re going to say, but not all Transformers turn into dinosaurs,” (bnlandry) which is buried at the end of the book.

Either way, the level of wit in the next book will be a significant improvement.