Arjun Basu invents the "Twister", writes short stories in 140 characters

@arjunbasu a.k.a Content Director of Spafax Canada and past president of th Canadian Magazine Awards has coined the word "Twister" to describe the short stories he writes and posts on his Twitter micro-blog.

An example: 

Another example:

These Tweets are the property of Arjun Basu & are reproduced here for research and educational purposes because they represent a unique use of Twitter--or at least one that was previously undocumented on the What Would Morgan (a.k.a. E.M. Forster) Do? blog.

Two observations on a Friday night: when all the best Tweeting happens [unless there is a monster storm]. Twitter builds physical community? during & after Sandy; @shawnmicallef shows once again that he is the Tom Eliot of the digital age

I saw two things in my Twitter feed today that I decided merit mention.

1. @TheMatthewKeys wrote:





I wrote: Both heartwarming and simultaneously deeply ironic. Up there with @carr2n's "little campfire of Twitter posts" in his hands: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/how-sandy-slapped-the-snark-out-of-twitter/

Also: So interesting how for years the Internet transcended geography to create virtual communities and now Twitter is doing the opposite.

People including @TheMatthewKeys write about how Twitter has helped build REAL "meet the neighbours" communities during & in wake of Sandy.


2. Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef writes poetry.
Maybe not T.S. Eliot; maybe Jack Kerouac.
Or some combination of the two.

Here, in reverse order; i.e. in the order in which he Tweeted (paragraphs are mine KN):

  Shawn Micallef ‏@shawnmicallef

The bored looks of the Ossington-Dovercourt Dundas Corridor. 

They are so bored. 

They are out but Friday bored. 

They twiddle their hair.

 Exposed brick. 

They are bored with exposed brick. 

It's time to cover the brick up! 

Exposed brick is for dads.

Repoint! 

They shout we must repoint this exposed brick

then they twiddle the hair.

Steve Ladurantaye's real time book review

On the evening of Oct. 26, Globe & Mail ROB media beat reporter Steve Ladurantaye started reading Brian Lilley's CBC Exposed on his e-reader and began Tweeting about it. After one or two posts, he declared that he was going to stop.

But followers immediately weighed in, encouraging Ladurantaye to keep going--which he did, for a couple of hours and 35-plus very entertaining and insightful Tweets (plus diversions into secondary conversations), pulling readers along through the book.

I don't know if this is the first time anybody has ever done this but it is the first time I have watched this being done so it's made this list. It was better than a lot of T.V. (perhaps not CBC; but certainly, if I can offer my own opinion, anything produced so far by Sun Media).

If Rick Mercer had written for Winston Churchill: Andrew Coyne Tweet Rant for the Edification of All

On the night of October 25, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne let loose with a tweeted rant about transfer payments.

On Twitter, I commented that this read as if Rick Mercer had written a speech for Winston Churchill.

I have a vision of Churchill striding or marching around some Churchillian street--wide boulevards with waves breaking on a barbed wired-beach in the background--rather than graffiti-painted alleyways. I have not yet come up with a suitable setting for @acoyne.

Yet I decided this use of Twitter is different from what I have observed and documented to date. The transfer payment Tweets struck me as deserving their own category.

They are not reportage--or breaking news--or coverage/description of a talk show or interview being conducted by another person--and nor are they, like Noreen Flanagan's column, Coyne's next column divided into 140-character bursts (although I will check this to make sure that it's not the case, and report back if it is).

Instead,  they read like a 15-Tweet piece of political poetry.

I will upload the Tweets: they will be in reverse order, as they appeared on Twitter.

Note: this content is the property of Andrew Coyne.

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Noreen Flanagan Nov. ed note: Twitter as delivery mechanism for print journalism

This fall, Noreen Flanagan, editor of the Canadian edition of Elle magazine, a rare fashion and beauty publication that consistently publishes writing in which individual writers' voices shine through, Tweeted out her editor's column in bursts of 140 characters or less.

 I watched it appear live on the screen, as she Tweeted this piece of writing, and it struck me as a different category of Twitter use than the ones I had previously identified.

Flanagan Tweeted her November editor's note, which, interestingly, was on the subject of her first Tweet.

The writing was engaging, as Flanagan's works does tend to be, but there was something captivating about watching it unfurl in real time.

 Rather than Storify, I suggest that people look the posts up and read them as they originally appeared on Twitter: @Noreen_Flanagan #ednote, Oct. 13, 2012.

There are 18 Tweets and they are fun to read, even as static posts.

 I will do my best to reproduce those Tweets here.

NOTE: This content is the property of Noreen Flanagan and Elle Canada.

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Twitter as sheer entertainment

THIS IS FROM EARLY AUGUST; WAS SAVED AS DRAFT; STILL WORTH POSTING. Sheer entertainment:

Sharing the various McKayla Maroney "not impressed" Tumblrs which have been capped by McKayla Maroney satirizing herself:

@Bankoff

Gold medal in the meta-meme goes to @McKaylaMaroney ... not impressed by the pool being closed. http://sbn.to/P9wIrJ via @sbnation

Twitter as live micro-blogging device

Having posted the example from Matthews Keys's Twitter work in the summer, I have spent the past month paying attention to news and other events that are live-blogged using Twitter.

There appear to be two distinct categories:
1. Reporter/writer goes out into the world, observes something, writes the play-by-play. This would fall under my original "reportage/observation" category.
2. Reporter/writer monitors another news or information source and provides readers with a play-by-play. This is what Keys did; it's what the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale is doing this afternoon with Toronto mayor Rob Ford and his councillor-brother-sidekick-mouthpiece Doug on their weekly talk radio program.

This secondary media coverage--usually used, as far as I can see, with live television or radio broadcasts of interview/talk shows, is an interesting use of the micro-blog.

Examples from Daniel Dale's 1010 Tweets:

Daniel Dale ‏@ddale8

NewsTalk 1010 host Jerry Agar will be a guest on the NewsTalk 1010 show hosted by the Fords today. 

Daniel Dale ‏@ddale8

The first 20 minutes of the show have been devoted to the Chicago trip. The Fords believe it was a major success. 

Daniel Dale ‏@ddale8

Blake Hutcheson, Oxford Properties and Build Toronto chair, is now on air talking about the value of the trip. 

Daniel Dale ‏@ddale8

About an hour into the show, we're done with Chicago; Fords are now interviewing Hadfield, talking Summit Series. 

I plan to keep a list, here, adding to it when my Twitter feed brings in other examples of this kind or people suggest good examples of Twitter as a source of live but moderated media.

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