Tweeting Your Way Into Print

(The following article is a reproduction of an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Speakeasy on November 23, 2009.) Seems like everyone's got an idea on how to try to make money off of twitter. Starting today, a new service allows people to collect their best tweets and have them printed in book format. TweetBookz.com comes from Jacob Shwirtz and Asael Kahana, founders of Definitely Something, an Israeli-based web strategy company. So why would someone want to put their tweets in a book? "You'd be surprised how nostalgic you can be for something that happened five minutes ago,"says Kahana. The books are printed on demand by Book1One, a Rochester, NY -based print-on-demand service, and will retail for $30 hard cover and $20 soft cover. Each page can only contain one tweet. "We wanted something closer to a book of inspirational poetry rather than an encyclopedia," says Shwirtz. TweetBookz joins a crowded marketplace of businesses that hope to profit by using Twitter. Justin Halpin, who writes the widely-followed Sh- My Dad Says on Twitter, recently inked a deal with CBS to turn his tweets quoting his father into a sitcom, according to recent reports. Clothing company Threadless sells shirts with popular tweets on them. TwitterPeek is a BlackBerry-sized device that only receives tweets. On crafting web site etsy.com, sellers offer everything from women's stockings with the phrase "Follow Me" on them to pillows with the Twitter logo. But what does one do with a book of one's own tweets? Put it on the desk and hope a co-worker notices it? Leave it casually on the coffee table when a date comes over? Shwirtz and Kahana think they would make fine stocking stuffers. "We live in a world where if you don't capture a moment on video, audio, or blog about it, it doesn't exist," says Kahana.