Tag Archives: twitter

Interesting (failed?) experiment in microserialization

From Galleycat:

Earlier this week, the literary journal Electric Literature launched a “microserialization” experiment by publishing a new story by Rick Moody(pictured) on Twitter–co-publishing the story on other Twitter feeds, including the Vroman’s Books feed. Jacket Copy summarized the frustration that some Twitter users felt with the simultaneous delivery: “In the past, having bookstores, bloggers and other magazines simultaneously pass out a short story would widen the circulation. Today, many of those people are in overlapping social networking circles, and the result is repetition rather than reach.”

Two Years

Two years ago today, this happened. And I don’t mean my son’s tooth coming in; of course, I mean that I first tweeted.

What a weird two years.

As I’ve become increasingly engaged with some kind of Twitter community, I’ve encountered: love, anger, births, deaths, proposals, breakups, people gone missing, people found. Warmth, filth, and everything in between. Competitiveness and apathy.

Most of all, I’ve found laughter.

Wait, what? Those things aren’t weird at all. They’re what life is made of, online or off. Turns out we aren’t really living all that differently because of Twitter, we’re just doing it cracked open for everyone to see.

All the better to let through a little of that interior light we keep so hidden.

Seven Things

The seven things meme, as rendered by yours truly (@mikemorrow). Not really all that interesting—this is definitely harder than I thought, but I also didn’t want to spend too much time agonizing over what to say.

Stick around here long enough and you’ll get to know me better, I’m sure.

Not that I was asking for it (thanks @frageelay).

1. I have absolutely no fear of speaking in front of groups or crowds, but one-on-one conversations tend to paralyze me with anyone but my closest friends. Hence my fondness for Twitter.

2. I’m a Deadhead. As in, I used to go to shows and even still listen to the music Deadhead. As in, I just paid waaay too much money for tickets to the new Spring Tour Deadhead. Actually, I love improvisational music of all kinds.

3. At the same time I hold a deep love for really rigidly orchestrated, almost mathematical music. During the same peiod I was going to Dead shows, I also saw Rush in three cities in the same week. Rush! Pretty much the antithetical live experience to the Dead. I guess I love it all.

4. I am a direct descendent of Jeremiah Morrow, 9th Governor of Ohio, Ohio’s first member of the House of Representatives, and namesake of Morrow County. That’s where any connection to fame ends, though I did once have a conversation with Allen Ginsberg.

5. I turned down a job in 1996 from a start-up search engine that wanted to become a “human index” of the web. They were going to pay me to surf the web (such as it was then) and categorize the pages I found. Did I mention I TURNED THIS JOB DOWN? Although looking back it seems like the ideal dream job, that refusal started me on the direct path toward the job where I met my wife. I think the company was called C-Box? A quick Google turns up squat.

6. Speaking of The Mrs, my wife and I dated secretly for a year-and-a-half. We worked together at a tiny little consulting firm that required nearly every ounce of our being, and to keep things real we did everything we could to keep our relationship apart from that weird, weird place. I have a lot more to tell you about that job someday.

7. When I was an adolescent, my grandmother predicted that I would marry a woman named Jennifer—a fact which I completely forgot about until after I proposed to my wife, Jennifer.

And so it goes.

Multiples of 7

In the event you’ve been hiding from Twitter for the past week, you may have missed that many of your friends have revealed up-to-and-including seven things about themselves. The lovely and talented @TBMimsTheThird has compiled them here. Go.

If you have a Twitter nemesis, you no longer have an excuse for not capitalizing on your deepest secrets and weaknesses.

(and no I haven’t done a list of 7 things BECAUSE NOBODY TAGGED ME. Boo-hoo.)