If you had been near Paul Smith during his 30-day expedition facilitated by the goodwill of fellow ‘Twitter’ing social networkers, you would have known. He was wearing ‘the same pair of underpants.’ For the rest of us, here is his book ‘Twitchhiker: How one man travelled the world by Twitter’ ( >www.jaicobooks.com ), which tells a tale about ‘an adventure wrapped in nonsense,’ with travel and accommodation offered by people on Twitter.
“My rules didn’t restrict my means of transport, but accepting long-haul flights at every step didn’t sit easy with the spirit of my challenge… Both the US and Canada were teeming with Twitter users. I wanted to experience the hospitality of strangers and embrace the spirit of Twitter, rather than fly 9 kilometres above it at 900 km per hour,” he reminisces on day three.
Towards the conclusion of the book and the project, Smith declares that Twitter proved without a shadow of doubt that it is much more than a social network, but a user-defined infrastructure that can be harnessed to change lives and expectations, to share and enhance unique experiences and viewpoints. His key messages are that kindness is universal, that the whole can be infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, and that social media may begin online but it will converge with the real world whenever and wherever we let it.
This is a book that can tempt you to launch something similar through a decisive tweet.
