Alex Aciman and Emmett Rensin have signed a book deal with Penguin Books to rewrite 75 classic novels and plays as “Twitterature.” Twitterature, according to MediaLiteracy, “Twitterature is an amalgam of the words Twitter and Literature. Classic literature takes a great deal of time and concentration to read and digest. Twitter posts, called tweets, consist of 140 characters or less, making them short, concise, and fast reads.”

According to Emmet Rensin their work is “ like [CliffsNotes], but funnier — it reflects the narcissistic nature of Twitter.” Students should be really happy about this. In all honesty I was able to get by several times thanks to CliffNotes, now it’ll be even easier for non-readers to read. Of course, your prof can just make it a point to read the Twitterature version and ask anything that isn’t there. Whatever happens to students this the point is that this new development is just one more proof to the testament of how much social media is spurring things to change.

So what gives? Does this mean that mere mortals should give up their personal accounts in social media accounts since it wouldn’t turn your company into a Fortune100 company anyway? Does this mean that if you want to act all successful you should snub social media? Or does this mean that these CEOs don’t really care about connecting?

The answer to the last three questions are, no, you shouldn’t give up your social media accounts, no, it’s stupid to think even that, and not necessarily. First of all if you think about it most of these CEOs belong to companies that were already successful even before social media became really that relevant, so no one can claim social media to have been really key to their success. That doesn’t mean though that social media can not help you and your company succeed, especially now that social media is becoming more and more relevant. Second point, if you snub social media just to emulate the CEOs then it’s no wonder you don’t succeed because that is plain stupid. Figure out the CEOs business secrets that lead to success instead of just acting successful, anyway not having a social media account won’t make you seem more like a successful CEO anyway but more like a busy CEO, ignorant CEO, outdated CEO, or uncaring CEO. Either way, it won’t be flattering. Third point, those CEO probably do not really not care but have more immediate concerns with their obviously high-powered busy lives. Not that it’s an excuse since some busy successful CEO do have social media accounts that they actually use. They do have to start paying attention to social media though. As Uber CEO put it, “The long and short of it is that CEOs have the opportunity to positively effect their company’s perception, visibility and brand experience by taking part in social media activities. Right now, they’re absent from the discussion. With the public already skeptical about large corporations, CEOs can’t afford to pretend that social media is not for them.”

According to Saitz their latest product, called Windchill, was developed as a solution to difficulties encountered by companies developing products that have teams that are globally distributed. She also says that, “Product development has always been about collaboration and these technologies can take product development to a much higher level,” and that, “The combination of social computing with product development is the emergence of an initiative that we call social product development.”

If social product development seems very revolutionary right now Rob Gremly, executive vice-president of PTC, says that it is actually how the status quo of the work environment in the future. Gremly said, “Social product development is the next step in the evolution of how people work together. The idea that social product development was ever considered to be a new and revolutionary model will seem inconceivable to the next generation of engineers who have grown up with social networking as a normal vehicle for information sharing. Organizations that are able to harness the power of social computing in their product development strategy will quickly outpace their competitors with greater operational efficiency and ultimately better products.”

So make sure you aren’t left behind and start harnessing the power of social product development in your own business.

The social media aspect of Google wave is that a couple or a group of people can communicate online pretty much the same way they communicate in normal conversations. No waiting for other people to type in, easy to add people in the wave, editing previous statements, and so much more. It’s a bit like Twitter only much better.

Since Wave is still in the works though we’ll have to content ourselves with watching the developer preview, which I’ve embedded here for your pleasure. Enjoy!

So what does this mean for advertisers? It simply means that you shouldn’t really count on social media site ads to get much direct sales. Instead the goal should be more focused on increasing brand awareness. Furthermore it would be a good idea to dabble on other ways to make use of social media to help your business aside from paid ads. Make use of the social aspect and actually create an account for your business that you can use to interact with your clients. Remember the major benefit of social media is because it is SOCIAL, which means relationships. It’s not about how many people look at your ads but how many people end up customers but how many customers end up having a greater appreciation for your brand and how many of them start talking about your business to their friends.

So what’s the big hoopla all about? Twitter decided to remove the option of being able to view @replies of people you don’t follow to people you are following. The decision was made because as Twitter put it “receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable” so they went ahead and removed the “undesirable and confusing option.” Their mistake though is that the option is actually really confusing only to newbie’s, which due to the surge in new users can now be considered the mainstream users. It is NOT confusing and definitely NOT undesirable to its older loyal users, hence the uproar. Twitter users like it because it’s very useful for multiple conversations and discovering and following new accounts.

Twitter won’t be Twitter though if they don’t get the real time message so it isn’t surprising that Ev Williams, Twitter’s founder and CEO, tweeted his response. Evan William’s tweet reads, “Reading people’s thoughts on the replies issue. We’re considering the alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.” Pretty sure they will come up with a good compromise soon, unless they just decide to bring it back. However, we can also be sure it won’t be back till their engineers fix the technical problems, which according to the Twitter blog has something to do with scalability.

UPDATE: Right after posting this Twitter posted an update on what they plan to do about the replies issue. Their battle plan includes changes in ability to view updates beginning with @username and improvement in settings control of each user regarding what they can see for accounts being followed.

Though some think that this will have Google quaking in their boots Siegler of TechCrunch points out that Google has no reason to be afraid. According to Siegler, “Twitter Search isn’t meant to replace Google, that’d be dumb. At this point, no one is going to beat Google at its own game. Twitter Search is meant to be a different kind of powerful search engine in its own right. A smaller, potentially curated, real-time search engine.”

Aside from expanding their search index Twitter is also planning on coming up with a ranking algorithm based on reputation. As of now the actual rep-based algorithm is still in the works but we can be sure it will make your Twitter account more valuable, at least if you’re doing your job of building your rep on Twitter. The rep-based ranking system should help filter out low-value retweets.

So now whether it be social media or search it seems like Twitter is the happening place to be.

Aside from the usual advice of making sure you have very interesting and viral content and of course the title to capture people’s attention (your content might be great but with a boring title no one will even give it a shot) here are some tips I’ve rehashed from Dave Naffziger post “Maximizing the Likelihood of Getting Dugg”. It may be more than a year old but his advice is really sound. So here’s what he said you should do.

Submit your story during the weekend. Tuesdays and Wednesdays get the most number of story submissions but Saturday and Sunday are the best days to submit a story. If possible submit Sunday afternoon to night because that is when most stories are Dugg. Note though that this only works for timeless pieces, which means stories that will be interesting regardless of when you post them. For news stories you really have to be fast and be the first to post it on Digg. So disregard the time/day tip for such stories.

Submit tech and geek stories. Apparently Digg is populated with people interested in tech stuff so between a movie story and tech news choose to post the tech news. Of course you can always post both. Since Naffziger’s post is more than a year old I don’t think the data is the right one to use now especially when it comes to the economy and finance stories. I’m pretty sure more people are paying attention to and Digging such stories. What this tip simply means is that you should follow trends so that you can post more of the kind of stories that are popular.

Good luck!

How To Use Twitter Effectively for Business, Advocacy and Policy
Speakers: Chris Abraham of AbrahamHarrison LCC and Anamitra Bannerji of Twitter
Moderator: Owen Linderholm of WebinarAce.
When: Thursday April 30th at 1 PM EST and 10AM PST.
Cost: Free

Why a Content Marketing Strategy is Critical to Your Business
Speaker: Joe Pulizzi of Get Customers and Junta42 Blog
When: Thursday, May 14 at 3:30 p.m. EDT.
Cost: Free for MENG members, $49 for non-members

Twitter: Why It’s Relevant and How to Use It Strategically
Speaker: Stephen Denny
When: Tuesday, May 19 at 8:00 p.m. EDT.
Cost: Free for MENG members, $49 for non-members

Facebook for Business and Brands
Speaker: Richard Krueger, Co-Author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies,
When: Tuesday, June 9 at 12:30 p.m. EDT.
Cost: Free for MENG members, $49 for non-members

Why Search Marketing Strategies Are Still Relevant in Your Online Marketing Toolbox
Speaker: Niki Fielding of Digital Brand Expressions
When: Tuesday, June 16 at 12:30 p.m. EDT
Cost: Free for MENG members, $49 for non-members

1. Be transparent – Do not post as someone else, especially as a customer just to appear like someone’s interested in your company and/or product. Disclose your true identity and intentions.

2. Never fight, provoke, flame or offend – In short, be courteous! Act like your meeting your other half’s parents for the first time. This will not only make you ensure that you put your best foot forward but will help you avoid any potential lawsuits.

3. Inform/Educate – Do not promote. Though sales is your end goal leave the hard selling techniques to the other marketing methods you are currently employing (ads, your websites, etc.) and use your social media account to simply drum up more awareness of your products/services and company.

4. Don’t insert links in forum posts – Allow the signature to act as a link. The only exception is when someone asks specifically for a link or for information wherein a link is needed in order to give complete info.

5. Don’t respond to post more than 3 months old – Exceptions are posts that have been revived by someone looking for more current info on the same subject.

6. Don’t answer a question that has already been answered unless you can honestly add something useful – Enough said.

7. If you are posting as yourself or your own web personality, do it from home – I guess this part is more of a reminder for employees who tend to abuse their office internet access. It doesn’t have much to do about your behavior in social media sites.