Another Twitter First: The Audiobook
BBC Audiobooks America project begins with Neil Gaiman tweet, then 1000 more
Raya Kuzyk -- Library Journal, 10/12/2009
- Inspired by Twitter opera
- October 13 launch date
- The year of Twitter
At 12 p.m. EST on Tuesday, October 13, New York Times best-selling and Audie Award–winning fantasy author Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) will launch the world’s first audiobook generated via Twitter by tweeting the first line of a story, after which anyone can jump in and contribute.
The BBC Audiobooks America team will then edit and rearrange the first 1000 subsequent tweets into a narrative. It will be read by an as-yet-undetermined narrator and available for free as an hour-long downloadable audiobook through the BBC Audiobooks America blog as well as through iTunes and other audiobook retailers. The story in progress will be chronicled on the BBC blog, which also contains official participation rules and a legal waiver.
BBC marketing director Michele Lee Cobb told LJ that the initiative was in part inspired by Twitterdämmerung, a fan-twittered opera that debuted last month at London’s Royal Opera House to an audience of approximately 1000. (Watch highlights of the performance.)
2009, The Year of Twitter
Though Twitter is just three years old, the free social networking and microblogging site is currently worth an estimated $1 billion, a value bolstered by headlines resulting from Iranians’ use of the site to organize protests and to mega-celebrity Oprah’s April 2009 registration. Below, a few other 2009 Twitter milestones:
- February 11: The first annual Shorty Awards Ceremony honors the best producers of short content on Twitter in categories including advertising, finance, humor, news, and travel. Acceptance speeches are restricted to 140 characters.
- September 5: The first Twitter opera premieres at London’s Royal Opera House—Twitterämmerung, a 20-minute libretto whose lyrics are "written" by 900 tweeters.
- December 29: Penguin Classics to publish Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less, by 19-year-old college students Emmett Rensin and Alex Aciman.
