Meet Shakespeare and his billion monkeys on Twitter

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Meet Shakespeare and his billion monkeys on Twitter

Written on February 17, 2008 – 2:16 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Are you a Twitter-user and fond of Shakespeare? Start following @billionmonkeys . Behind this account, @bopp and @jadwigo have instructed a monkey to post an update every once in a while. What does the monkey say? So far it has mentioned 14,481 lines from almost three Shakespeare books. The little creature has just finished @Romeo’s and @Juliet’s love story. Its instructors were inspired by the famous quote:

“Given enough time, an infinite amount of monkeys will reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare”

It’s not right there yet, but @billionmonkeys has already surpassed some of the most famous twitter-users in the number of updates. That makes you think about the value of this number. In the lively Dutch Twitter scene it’s pretty important how much you’ve updated. When Hollands no 1 Twitter-user @erwblo reached his 20,000th update, it was a really big thing.

I think it’s better to focus on quality instead of quantity. I’m not saying that Erwin Blom aims for updating as much as possible, he has just started early. No, I’m talking about people who mention they just ‘finished first cup of coffee’ or ‘waiting in line for the ATM’.

In an email conversation I had with Reinier Ladan from Digital Energy, we discussed this phenomenon. . Reinier came up with the following calculation:

Let’s say you start ‘twittering’ today in order to reach the magical 20k as well. Imagine you’re updating every minute. That’s pretty fast, I know, but it’s worth trying. It will cost you 320 hours of twittering, that’s 40 working days. Yeah, you’ve read it right, this comes down to 8 weeks of working. Think about that, next time you want to aim for that update no 20,000.

I hope you like that post!

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erwin blom, microblogging, shakespeare, twitter, updates

About the author: Ernst-Jan is a blogger and journalist, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five.

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9 comments/trackbacks to “Meet Shakespeare and his billion monkeys on Twitter”

Apr 9, 2008: Tweet Clouds: what are you twittering about?
[...] and hope you come back again! Twitter users can discuss the way you ought to Twitter for ages. Should you solely tell what you’re doing? Or is it better to post interesting links? Tip: if you’re trapped in a discussion like this, [...]

By Robert Gaal on Feb 17, 2008 | Reply

Couldn’t agree more. I’m actually actively un-friending people who update too much useless info, or just disregard the 140 chars rule and use 8 tweets for 1 topic or something. That kind of works for me right now.

But Jaiku beats Twitter anyway, so…
By Marina Martin on Feb 17, 2008 | Reply

I’m at just about 7,500 updates right now on Twitter, but a lot of those tweets have actually *saved* me time and money (or even made me money, in terms of client referrals).

I’m an efficiency consultant, and now that I’ve built up a strong community on Twitter, my Google searches have gone way down. Why filter through the Internet myself when someone with more expertise on Topic X is on Twitter and can point me in the right direction in 140 characters or less?

Sure, there are inconsequential tweets, but I really enjoy a lot of the insight those random thoughts provide about a person. “I ate toast for breakfast” might be boring, but I can’t recall the last time I saw a tweet like that. Instead, people are listening to a new song I might like, headed to Capitol Hill for coffee (where I might join them - invited, of course!), or struggling with a problem that I might have the answer to.
By Doron on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

“finished first cup of coffee’ or ‘waiting in line for the ATM’. Isn’t that exactly what Twitter is all about?
By Marc on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

I actually like to see short “finished first cup of coffee” lines every now and then (but not all the time of course). In that way you also get to know people better, and it’s fun to see what people are up to. It’s part of Twitter, sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it banal and sometimes it’s fun. A nice mix, that’s what it comes down to.
By Marloes on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

Guilty! but why not say “Its cold and grey but the city calls” to let followers know you are on your way to work? I rather read lines like that then the tweets of people who’s only aim is to get more traffic to their blog
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

In movies even ordinary couples usually have great conversations. In real life however, conversation is more mundane. Sentences like “I’m tired”, “I finished my coffee” or “Are you cold too” make up 99% of our conversations. Twitter therefor sounds more like real life. We can’t all write and speak like Dostoyevsky but that doesn’t mean our conversations are boring or unnecessary.

So, keep those Tweets coming!
By Monkey Man on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

“The quality of mercy is not strned…” Oooh ooh ooh ooh!

[ Need more coffee - must find an ATM. ]
By Arne Hulstein on Feb 18, 2008 | Reply

I am a happy twitter user posting regularly. I am now on 4K, which is nowhere near the 20K mentioned and I believe it will be a while before I am on it. However, for me it is about quality, not quantity. And quality is not defined by the length of the words used, or their difficulty, but quality is defined by the way in which it contributes to building your social network.