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Persian poetry by Twitter

More Twitter storytelling: Persian poetry written and shared by Twitter.   Parham Baghestani seems to be using the 140-character limit as a helpful constraint.

So far as I can make out, these are lyrics, rather than pieces of a coherent narrative.  Anyone else have further experience with Farsi, or these poems?

Of the I to you

It's a sort of poetry scratch mix, starting with the smallest elements.  The most popularly used words on Twitter, according to an Oxford English Dictionary team:

the=407614
i=401053
to=350737
a=298042
and=190859
is=186112
in=170708
it=169459
you=168292
of=167362

Dead people Twitter

A new Web service offers Twitter feeds from dead people. Tweeji offers feeds from famous dead people, and not in a morbid way.  These are historical, literary, cultural figures.  For instance, Rimbaud:

(Although why Chester Arthur?)

Is it Gothic?  Mashable finds this distasteful.  "a morbid marketing angle that leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth."  But we've seen other Twitter feeds from famous writers, like Thoreau, Orwell, and Oscar Wilde.  It depends, perhaps, on which dead person.  Mashable picks Ian Curtis.  Others might be irked at the Jesus or Derrida feeds.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Relaunching the Count

It's time to send Jonathan Harker eastwards by train, to rouse the vampire brides, to flirt with Lucy Westernra, and to prepare the Count for his trip west.  Yes, it's May, and the hour has struck to relaunch the Draculablog.
("Dracula's Castle", by borderlys)

If the project is new to you, it's one where we post the entire Bram Stoker novel, each bit of content appearing on the date the book says it does.  So a journal entry dated May 3 (no year) appears on May 3rd of this year.  You can start with this post from the most recent running of the Count (in 2007), and work your way forwards.

I must confess to being outrageously busy.  I can get things going and add some more content, but would really appreciate help from any interested person.  So consider this a call for help, all brides and grooms of Dracula.

Twitter murder mystery from Brent Spiner

A Twitter-based murder mystery comes from the feed of actor Brent Spiner.  He's positioned himself as the main character, bringing in his acting career (Star Trek references, of course) and frequent flashes of wit.  He's also an unreliable narrator, with missing memory and dubious relationships.


(thanks to Karen Hanson and Gabor Por)

Easter tale by Twitter

Another story retold by Web 2.0: the Passion.  It's being Twittered by a New York church.

twspassionplayvia @_Peter_of_: is waiting in the courtyard of the High Priest Caiaphas. I ran scared when the officers came but I need to see how this ends.
8 minutes ago from GroupTweet

twspassionplay via @ServingGirl: Darkness and earthquake. I heard the curtain in the temple was torn in two. I wonder…
less than a minute ago from GroupTweet

twspassionplay via @Pontius_Pilate: They want this done by nightfall. I sent my soldiers to break the dead men’s legs. Are my hands clean of this?
less than a minute ago from GroupTweet

twspassionplayvia @ServingGirl: is so tired. Caiaphas and the priests have been up all night questioning a man who claims to be the Messiah. And I wait on them.
8 minutes ago from GroupTweet

twspassionplayvia @_JesusChrist: Let the scriptures be fulfilled. It is as the prophets wrote. I am who you say I am.
1 minute ago from GroupTweet

That's http://twitter.com/twspassionplay.

(via MetaFilter)

The Bill Gates Facebook page

Facebook gags keep coming, this time with Bill Gates' page:

Previous examples of Facebook interface humor and/or stories:

• Scary stories on Facebook
• Hamlet via Facebook
• Pride and Prejudice via Facebook

Three more microblogging storytelling projects

Several Web 2.0 story projects come from A Storied Career.

"Adrift" is a science fiction suspense story.  It's been running since February.

Note this solution to the reverse chronology problem: making a chunk of the series readable in progressive chronological order.

The Twitter of Oz retells Baum's story through Twitter streams for each major character.

Twitterfiction offers complete stories in individual tweets.  Microfiction.  Reminds me of the Feneon republication project.

A new charge in blogging; will fear creep in?

One hint of a new angle of blog-fearing:

Consider the erotic potential between blogger and commenters.

The rest of the article has nothing to do with fear, besides the little tensions generated by a love story.  But that first thought is a fascinating one for all sorts of reasons... the one we can zero in on, here, being eroticizing this piece of blogging.

Cyberfear has often dwelled on sexuality, as my research has shown for more than a decade.  Inappropriate sexuality, locally transgressive sex, representations of sex charged with influencing offline behavior, the works.

Anxieties about online life have also often focused on social networks.  How and when we interact badly with each other, what online abuse is, the notion that the internet simply reflects online behavior, the other notion that cyberculture magnifies our worst instincts: blog posting and commenting is a part of that, one which has grown with the blogosphere's near-decade of expansion.

So it's possible, I hypothesize, that we could see scary stories appear which work this poster-commentator angle.  Consider the psychology of posting.  We bloggers hurl posts into the social world, immediately triggering an expectation dynamic, which may or may not be satisfied.  We are accustomed, perhaps, to negative replies: criticism, corrections, abuse, and the delights of spam.  At the same time we (some of us) thrill to the feedback, relishing the thoughts, creativity, support, and criticism we receive.  There's a lot of room for delight and fear.

And, of course, face-to-face relationships.  Gawker twits the Times article nicely on this score.

We can find early examples of this sort of things. For instance, Mister Welldone writes disturbing posts, which call out fearful responses from readers.  And he did offer a disturbing reply to one of my posts, a little over one year ago.

The article offers one nice, small example as well:

After he offered his Social Security number, in case she wanted to run a criminal check...

So keep an eye out for blog post-comment scary stories.  While the New York Times sees Austen in that dynamic, we might also spot some Radcliffe or Lewis.

(Notice, too, the Web 2.0 storytelling angle.  Even the New York Times gets it!

The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship —a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett — and the wackiness of 21st-century life online.)

Web 2.0 serial: Machine Man

More Web 2.0 storytelling: Machine Man, a straightforward Web serial. 

Each day one "page" appears, a bit of microcontent.  It's all text so far.  Comments have been enabled (example), which gives a workshop feel to the project so far.  Hooks to other social services are also built in: Digg, etc.

The genre seems to be suspense or sf.  It begins with the narrator recuperating in hospital, hinting at a cyborg plot, and blundering into legal threats.

The serial aspect is apparently live, as Berry says he's composing the story daily.  The author also references the serial format reflectively:

I see a difference between a serial and a novel. A novel, you want to sit down with a solid block of time and disappear into that thing—the author wrote it to be consumed that way. Machine Man is a different reading experience. It’s a drip feed, designed to be read one tiny page a day on your way to work, or when you first turn on your computer.

The delivery mechanisms are various.  Email is one option (and popular, so far), as is RSS.  Apparently formatting and delivery is enabled for phone, too, although I haven't tested this.  There's an archive, in reverse chronological order, blog-style.

Business model: at some point the author's going to declare what's already published to have been a free trial, then start charging for the rest.

(via BoingBoing)