Nick Douglas - Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less

Its easy to assign less weight to a pun than a poemafter all, laughter lightens the load. However, the significance of humor as a delivery mechanism for important information should not be underestimated. Satirist Stephen Colbert called Twitter the answer to the question you didnt know you had until you had the answer. In poking fun at this new form of communication, Mr. Colbert highlighted the very essence of innovation; breakthroughs like Twitter often occur by happy accident. In the past decade, something interesting has been happening.

People have been moving their electronic communication from closed systems like e-mail to open systems like social networks. Theres more value in messages shared publicly because more opportunities arise. A kind of social alchemy takes place when a seemingly valueless message finds its way to someone for whom it strikes a chord. Lead can be turned into gold on an open communication network. Simple, rudimentary exchanges of information between individuals in real time enables a flock of birds to move around an object in flight as if they were one organism. Speed and simplicity work together to create something of beauty.

There are over a billion Internet users on this planet but there are four billion people with access to mobile texting. Twitter blends these networks with speed and simplicity and opens the combination to development. That means more opportunities for beautyand well-timed zingers. The first weekend we began experimenting with the concept of Twitter, I was tearing carpeting from the floor of my home in Berkeley, California. It was a hot day and my back was aching. My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a tweet by my friend and long-time collaborator Evan Williams: Sipping pinot noir in Sonoma after a massage. The striking difference between our two activities in that moment made me laugh out loud. When I realized our experiment was making me laugh, I knew it had potential. Weve seen people use Twitter to help each other during disasters, to break incredible news, to raise money for charities halfway around the world, to organize protests, to fight injustice, and simply to have fun. Through it all, there has been quickness, grace, simplicity, and humorthere has been wit. No matter how sophisticated the system becomes, it will never be about algorithms and machines.

Wit is a powerful reminder that Twitter is not about the triumph of technology; its about the triumph of humanity. However, Oscar Wilde famously wrote, It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously. As powerful as this system has the potential to be, wed be nowhere without a good dose of funny. Humor makes life worth the effort. If everyone were serious all the time, Im pretty sure wed never get any work done. Were hiring pretty aggressively at our company these days, and key factors we look for are a good sense of humor and an active Twitter account.

Some of my favorite tweets are those that make me laugh all over again each time I revisit them. My friend Philip is an incredibly brilliant person. Hes a musically and mathematically gifted serial entrepreneur with a goofy laugh and an impressive array of idiosyncrasies. Hes also very tall and quintessentially geeky. In the middle of the night he Twittered, Taking a bath. Come over if you want to learn about water displacement.

It wouldnt surprise me to learn that he was prepared to discuss fluid mechanics with anyone who responded. Wit is a wonderful word to associate with something that may turn out to be a favorable mutation in the evolution of human communication. Sharp, quick, inventive, and intelligent, with a natural aptitude for words, ideas, and humor: The very definition of wit brings to mind the people with whom I share my days. The heart of Twitter is the small team of folks working out of a loft in San Francisco, but our soul is made up of everyone around the world sharing, discovering, and building on this service. A spark of genius from my friend and cofounder Jack Dorsey has transmuted from a simple idea to something mysteriously powerful. Given a limit of 140 characters, people consistently reaffirm that creativity is a renewable resource.

Its easy to dismiss this simple new format upon first introduction, but tune in to the right frequency and youll enter a world this books curator wanders as a curious explorer. Keep your wits about you and enjoy this collection of Twitticisms. Nick worked hard to harvest the best. Biz Stone (biz), Cofounder
Twitter, Inc.

Twitter, said user Henry Birdseyeor, on Twitter, tehawesomeis that friend you can turn to and say, This is bullshit, when theres no one else around. Of course, Twitter is plenty more.

Technically, its simply a social network where millions of users send text-message-length status updates to a list of followers. As a simple platform for sharing messages of up to 140 characters, Twitter makes no demands of genre or intent. Since it began in 2006, the only guideline on the site is the prompt, What are you doing? The most interesting users ignore that. The Twitter format serves a few forms of information particularly well: on-the-spot news updates, or questions like, Anyone know a lawyer? Its particularly great for whining or bragging. But the perfect use of Twitter, what the platform is practically destined for, is the witty one-liner. Comedy always takes too long.

The easiest way to improve any joke is to shorten it. And Twitter makes you do that. Even the British comedian Russell Brand (rustyrockets) has snipped out the spaces between words, struggling to fit a three-sentence joke into 140 characters. One of my favorite Twitter gags is just seven words long: You know what this guitar needs? Lessons (Tony_D). Twitter is the modern haiku, albeit with fewer cherry blossoms and more wisecracks. Brevity is, here, the soul of wit.

The tweets in this book came from hundreds of users. Anyone can write one particularly funny tweet. Thats the democratic beauty of the one-liner. But some people turn Twitter wit into an obsession. They hit the star next to other peoples funny tweets, so the tweets show up on third-party sites like Favrd and Favotter. Every day Favrd shows the most-starred tweets, drawn from a growing pool of hundreds of star-conscious Twitter users, not just as a popularity contest but as a way to find more wits to follow.

The Twitter wits chasing these stars often meet in person. Avery Edison and Abby Finkelman (aedison and clapifyoulikeme) met on Twitter, then got engaged over it. Scott Simpson, Merlin Mann, and Adam Lisagor (scottsimpson, hotdogs-ladies, and lonelysandwich) started a comedy show online called You Look Nice Today. And, of course, this book wouldnt be here without the contributions of hundreds of witty Twitterers. The Twitter wits dont consider themselves an Algonquin Round Table, no matter how many times I try to label them as such. But Round Table member Dorothy Parkers assessment of New Yorks casual club of comedians applies to funny Twitter users as well: Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them.

Of course, then Ms. Parker says, It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didnt have to be any truth. Thats not true of the Twitter wits. During the 2008 presidential election, they spread a populist kind of political commentary. When Sarah Palin announced her daughters pregnancy, John Gruber (gruber) Twittered, The press should only pay as much attention to this story as they would have if, say, Chelsea Clinton had gotten pregnant at 17. These back-row-of-the-country remarks, which feel like Jon Stewarts Daily Show commentary in real time, climaxed in Scott Simpsons verdict on the second presidential debate: That won.