The World According to Twitter [Paperback]

David Pogue (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

The wit and wisdom of the Twittersphere captured in a hilarious, occasionally poignant, and often useful collection of hand-picked tweets.

 

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has tapped into the brilliance of his half-million followers on Twitter by posting a different, thought-provoking question every night. The questions ranged from the earnest (“What’s your greatest regret?”) to the creative (“Make up a concept for a doomed TV show”) to the curious (“What’s your great idea to improve the cell phone?”). Out of 25,000 tweets, Pogue has gathered the very best 2,524 into this irresistible, clever, laugh-out-loud funny book. The World According to Twitter is truly a grand social networking experiment, in which thousands of voices have come together to produce a unique and wonderful record of shared human experience.

 

Some samples:

Compose the subject line of an email message you really, really don't want to open.

To my former sexual partners, as required by law (@markowitz)

RE: What seems to have been your car (@pumpkinshirt)

From: Your Publisher. Subject: Ha, good one! Could you send the real chapter now, please? (@ Lookshelves)

Make up a prequel to a famous movie.

Mr. Smith MapQuests Washington (michaelbuckman)

Snakes in the Terminal (@justinchambers)

We’re Running Low on Mohicans (@rllewis)

There Goes Private Ryan...I Hope He’ll Be OK (@slightly99)

Describe your 15 minutes of fame.

My stepfather was “The agony of defeat” guy on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, before the ski jumper (he was the car spinning out at Daytona 500). (@BigDaddy978)

I juggled for Clinton’s inauguration. 20 minutes of FBI pat-downs, and then I wound up throwing knives around the president anyway. (@McEuen)

I’m on a Girl Scout cookie box (have been for 9 years, so it’s longer than 15 minutes)! (@libbyfish)

Add 1 letter to a famous person’s name.

Yo Yo Mad: Angry violinist (@eboychik)

Gringo Starr: Best drummer north of the border (@eboychik)

Tronto: Sidekick of the Canadian Lone Ranger (@pumpkinshirt)

Thomas Hobbies: Life is just a bunch of nasty, brutish and short weekend projects (@louielu12)

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Pogue is the personal-technology columnist for The New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column, an online video, and a popular daily blog, “Pogue’s Posts.” He is also an Emmy award–winning tech correspondent for CBS News, and he appears each week on CNBC with his trademark comic tech videos. With more than 3 million books in print, he is one of the world’s bestselling how-to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the “Dummies” series, and in 1999 he launched his own series of computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes more than 100 titles. He has been profiled on “48 Hours” and “60 Minutes.” Pogue’s website is www.davidpogue.com and his Twitter screen name is Pogue. He lives in Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579128270
• ISBN-13: 978-1579128272
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #821,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Pogue is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column and an online video. His daily blog, "Pogue's Posts," is the Times's most popular blog. David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News and a frequent guest on NPR's "Morning Edition." His trademark comic tech videos appear each Thursday morning on CNBC. With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors. He launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes 60 titles. David graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1985, with distinction in Music, and he spent ten years conducting and arranging Broadway musicals in New York. He's been profiled on both "48 Hours" and "60 Minutes."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly Funny!, August 15, 2009

By 

Alyce R. Tapp "alytapp" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The World According to Twitter (Paperback)

From the chuckler to the real-deal LOL, this book delivers. David Pogue poses a question, and his half-million Twitter followers respond with hysterical, insightful, and ever-clever "tweets" of a 140 characters or less. This is the ideal bathroom book -- think Uncle John's Reader -- but it serves an even better purpose as an exquisite example of the "wisdom of the masses." When you assemble an enormous group of people and limit them to a short slice of an answer, you get economy and style. It's the English teacher's dream. I left this book on the table during two parties, and each time, guests gathered around to read and laugh, sometimes exclaiming, "Oh NO!" and other times muttering, "Yup, been there." The chapters are quick and dirty, but the humor is top shelf. You will love Pogue's exploitation of the Twitter machine, and you just might be inspired to tweet yourself. Fabulous!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Providing surprising insight into Henry Kissinger, September 5, 2009

By 

Debra Hamel (North Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The World According to Twitter (Paperback)

Impressed by the collective intelligence and humor of his Twitter followers, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue (@pogue on Twitter) decided to harness some of it and make it available to a larger, non-Twittering audience. He asked his followers a different question or posed a challenge every night (there were 95 questions/challenges in all), collected the responses, selected his favorites from among them, and got permission from the authors of the selected tweets (Twitter posts) to publish them. The result is The World According to Twitter, a book I wouldn't want to read straight through but which is fun to skim.

The questions Pogue posed were varied. For example:

What cool anagram can you make from the letters of your own name?
What made your first kiss memorable?
What's the best prank you ever witnessed?
Redefine an existing word in a punny way.

Of course, a lot of the tweets included in the book (a total of 2524) aren't, to my mind, funny or clever or worthy. But that's my subjective response, and everyone who skims the book will probably feel the same way, but will favor different entries. That's the nature of this sort of book. And some of the entries are worth reading. Here, for example, is my favorite response to Pogue's challenge to his followers to "explain a facet of modern life in the style of Dr. Seuss":

"I mail, I text, I tweet, I blog,
I build a Facebook for my dog,
I speak no words, I shake no hands,
I am at last a modern man."
-- @smacbuck

And I laughed aloud reading this series of responses to "Who's had a brush with greatness?"

"My dad once waited in line for a bathroom in between Henry Kissinger & Rupert Murdoch." -- @harrymccracken

"I peed at a urinal between Ronald Perelman and Henry Kissinger at the NY Hilton in 1990." -- @EricSails

"I once used the urinal next to Henry Kissinger at intermission of 'Guys & Dolls' on Broadway. Kevin Costner was also in the bathroom!" -- @nolanshanahan

"OMG, I once peed next to Kissinger too. Seriously." -- @vidiot_

In an inset box on the page Pogue writes: "I can't explain why so many brushes with greatness take place in public restrooms. I'm even more helpless to explain why so many of these bathroom encounters involve Henry Kissinger." Great stuff.

Anyone interested in reading more tweets about these kinds of insignificant brushes with celebrity should do a Twitter search for #lameclaimtofame. People regularly tweet their lame claims to fame using that hashtag (to make the related tweets easily found in search), and it makes for some funny reading.

The World According to Twitter isn't likely to serve a higher purpose than pure amusement (and I doubt it was intended to). It would be nice if it could help to convince Twitterphobes that there's more to Twitter than lunch menus, but (a) they probably won't be reading the book anyway and (b) it's too insubstantial a read to accomplish that task. (It's more likely the naysayers will be won over by Twitter's continued use in reporting breaking news.) This certainly isn't a must-have book, but if there's a reader of bathroom books in your life, then this may be just the gift for them. (Be sure to note the cool flip movie in the book's margins.)

-- Debra Hamel

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recipes, Advice and Concepts in 140 characters., August 14, 2009

By 

wavedeva (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The World According to Twitter (Paperback)

I was first introduced to twitter when my uber-geek friend tweeted from Mumbai that there were terrorists attacking hotels and that one of his friends was trapped on a top floor. I received his tweet on my facebook account and sent him all the information and contact numbers I could regarding the situation (which I obtained from watching CNN). So contrary to a lot of people who believe twitter is frivolous, I knew from my first usage that it can be an essential communications tool. This book continues in that tradition; not the "I'm here" tweet communiques. The idea started when the personal technology columnist for the New York Times, David Pogue asked his followers to respond to a question while he was demonstrating twitter live at a conference. His wife (behind every good man...) then suggested that he continue asking questions and write a book.

I'm one of Pogue's twitter followers and I have one of the 2,524 winning tweets in the book. I responded "If you can't be good be careful. If you can't be careful be good." to the question, "What's the best advice your parents ever gave you?". Mom is quite proud that there is now evidence that I listened to at least one thing she told me! Although I received a free, autographed copy I'm willing to spend bucks to get another copy of this collection of tweets. Yes they are that good--and the book is printed in the USA so I won't hurt our trade deficit. The tweets are so hilarious, insightful and touching that I want to mark my favorites and carry the book with me during my travels. Plus, fast flipping of the pages reveals a free movie in the book's right margins.

Behind every great tweet is a poignant question. Some of my favorite responses relate to formulas for disaster, take-offs on Dr. Seuss, haikus, work puns, and famous quotes in tech style. And who knew you could provide a recipe in 140 characters? Julia Child would be impressed. Seriously, there's not a bad tweet in the bunch. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll learn you aren't the only one who's been unceremoniously dumped. I'm looking forward to the second edition.