By Sarah Moomaw, News Staff
A Northeastern professor combined his love for both social media and books into one concept with the launch of this summer’s Twitter book club.
Jeff Howe, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and author of “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business,” is behind 1book140, a Twitter-based reading group lead by @1book140. The Twitter club is partnered with The Atlantic magazine’s online entertainment section; Howe is also penning a companion blog for the magazine, taglined “TheAtlantic.com’s Reading Club.”
This is the second year 1book140 has existed, although it was renamed from “One Book, One Twitter.” Also new this year is that the group won’t disperse after one book, but will have monthly discussions. Howe organized “One Book, One Twitter,” while working at Wired Magazine last summer.
“I really wanted [the club] to be about strangers from vastly different places, countries, languages, getting to know each other and bonding,” Howe said.
Howe based his project off “One Book, One City,” a program designed to get everyone in the same city to read and discuss the same book, and its successful run in Chicago where it was sponsored and supported by the Chicago Public Library. Howe said he thought that if the concept worked in one city, why not aim globally – so he took to the Internet to test out his idea.
Readers can follow the blog on TheAtlantic.com to keep on track with the discussion schedule and help prevent spoiled endings. It will also link to other blogs, Tumblrs and sites following along with 1book140, as well as highlight favorite tweets and portions of the conversation not to be missed.
The functionality of the ‘reading club’ follows regular Twitter social norms through the use of hashtags. Tweets pertaining to the club itself are hashtagged with #1book140 or tweeted directly at @1book140.
Discussion and chatter about the book is facilitated through the use of a modified hashtag pertaining to the club, such as #1b140_2 or #1b140_4, specifying chapter two or four, in hopes of preventing spoilers.
Howe claims he is not pursuing becoming the largest or the only book club on Twitter, just using his club to encourage people to make connections.
“I was never competitive in my mental state of it. I never wanted to be the only book club and I’m sure others will follow,” he said. “The aspiration was always to not be as big as possible, but to be as global and international as possible,” he said.
With roughly 9,000 followers, Howe’s met his aspirations. By using Twitter as a medium, the club knocks down neighbors’ doors, erases state lines and crosses country borders as it eliminates the geographical constraints that usually come with book clubs.
Weeks into the program, on Monday, a follower complied and tweeted the link to a map of readers’ geotags, which pinpoints user’s locations, showing the success behind the book club’s global reach – four continents are represented on the map, and that represents just a portion of the readers.
June’s book, which was voted on by Twitter followers, is “Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood. The book, released in 2000, recalls the events of two women’s lives before World War II. To choose the first book, 1book140 received almost 300 nominations. For next month’s book, the selection process will begin June 15 with reading and discussion beginning July 1.
Surprisingly, Howe originally avoided calling 1book140 a book club because the literary analysis element wasn’t as emphasized as in a “read a whole book and sit with your friends… [in a] deep, lengthy discussion-style book club,” he said.
“The problem with not calling it a book club is you get into some semantic acrobatics trying to tell people what it is,” Howe said. “And it is. It’s an asynchronous, global book club that takes place primarily on Twitter and almost exclusively over the Internet.”
