Robin Sloan

An important @robinsloan update

Hey, I’m going to go work at Twitter!

So, there are at least three things to cover. First: doing what, exactly? Sec­ond: what of all this around us—what of the vast robinsloan​.com empire? Third: whoah, let’s talk about how cool Twit­ter is! We’ll take it, as always, bird by bird:

First: doing what?

I’m going to be work­ing on media part­ner­ships with my friend and erst­while col­league @ChloeS. This couldn’t be cooler: it’s every­thing at the inter­sec­tion of Twit­ter and media, from live events on TV to cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism on the web to Na’vi tweets in IMAX 3D. (Just kidding—but you know Twit­ter is Eywa, right?)

Back at Cur­rent in 2008, Chloe was the mas­ter­mind behind our Twitter-​​powered elec­tion pro­gram­ming—prob­a­bly my sin­gle favorite project in all the years I worked there. So I’m hugely excited to be con­spir­ing with her again, and (soon) with all the pro­duc­ers, reporters, devel­op­ers and strate­gists at media orga­ni­za­tions that want to do cool, trans­for­ma­tive things with tweets.

Sec­ond: whither robinsloan​.com?

Don’t worry: all of this work con­tin­ues! I’m still plug­ging away on Pil­grim and still com­mit­ted to media inven­tion on a monthly basis. (iPad, hello?) This is def­i­nitely not a zero-​​sum game; in fact, I think Twit­ter is prob­a­bly the per­fect perch for a per­son inter­ested in—you know—words and tech­nol­ogy.

Third: wooo Twitter!

I’m excited to go work at Twit­ter because it’s a sys­tem and a ser­vice that I actu­ally, er, love. (Maybe you knew that already.) Now, okay, you don’t need me to tell you that Twit­ter is fun and use­ful. Got it. But let me just under­score three things that I think make it really, really special:

• Twit­ter is built around this one odd, remark­able constraint—and if you ask me, almost all of its magic flows from that fact. Maybe once it was entirely a tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion, an SMS thing. I think it’s become more than that. Frankly, I think it’s become poetry. Twit­ter makes me stop and think about lan­guage more fre­quently and more deeply than any other tech­nol­ogy in the world. What a great thing for a tech­nol­ogy to do—what a very human thing.
• I feel like I’m con­stantly learn­ing and re-​​learning how to use Twit­ter. And I think that’s because, paired with this odd con­straint, you’ve got this crazy openness—this refusal to spec­ify exactly what you’re sup­posed to do with the ser­vice, or how, or even why. So those deter­mi­na­tions fall to us, and as a result, the whole thing seems to be con­vuls­ing and trans­form­ing, like, every six months. Do you remem­ber when hardly any tweets had an http://? It wasn’t that long ago—but now whole ecosys­tems have sprung up around the busi­ness of prepar­ing links for Twit­ter. That kind of fast, organic change indi­cates real health and strength. It’s also just really fun! Like a good story, with that cen­tral, dri­ving ques­tion: What hap­pens next?
• I’m not a great pro­gram­mer, but I do dive in from time to time, and my first hands-​​on expe­ri­ence with the Twit­ter API, back dur­ing the elec­tion, was a rev­e­la­tion. Using ludi­crously sim­ple tools, and with­out ask­ing any­body for per­mis­sion, you can plug into this thing and get—well, jeez. You can get life. I don’t think there’s another API in the world that’s so sim­ple but so vital. And hon­estly, I don’t think we’ve come close to har­ness­ing all that it has, and will have, to offer.

So, those are all things I would have told you even if I wasn’t going to go work at Twitter—but they should help make it clear why I’m so excited that I am.

Okay, that’s the update. I’m going to con­tinue my wee­knotes here, but they will change in char­ac­ter some­what. There will no longer be any­thing about the per­ils and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of being your own busi­ness, obvi­ously. Instead, they’ll sim­ply chron­i­cle my “extracur­ric­u­lar” writ­ing and invent­ing, and the process behind it.

And as for all the cool Twit­ter media part­ner­ship work ahead: there will be a place to talk about that, too! When it’s ready, I’ll point you to it.

I start in mid-​​February.

Now I’m going to go tweet about this.

The great unboxing

I am so happy to be alive at a time in which unbox­ing is a thing that peo­ple do. (Well, not just do, but record and share—but that’s what the word means, right? The act of unbox­ing is really the act of shar­ing it.)

I’m going to try to keep a record of all the Annabel Scheme unbox­ings so far:

• The full photo-​​shoot from @OffBeatMammal.
• With acknowl­edg­ments high­lighted by @jenosaurus.
• Nice clear shot of the cover by @trammell.
• Every angle (includ­ing the back) from @museofchaos.
• One of my favorites—it actu­ally looks sorta quan­tum unsta­ble, doesn’t it?—from @jameystegmaier.
• Another good shot of the cover from @lenkendall.
• Another snap from @rjurney.
• Annabel in Sacra­mento from @howardweaver.
• A ter­rific shot from Mel—check out the rug in the background.
• This is sorta like the book’s mug shot from Rich Magahiz.
• Four copies splayed like play­ing cards from @vuokko.
• A nice self-​​portrait-​​with-​​book from @beckzorz.
• WHOAH how great is this shot from @jackcheng?
• Look­ing rather Scheme-​​like your­self here, @EC.
• Look­ing a bit sus­pi­cious here—but that’s to be expected from @magicandrew.
• Per­haps the best-​​composed shot of the four-​​pack—but that’s to be expected from @rodnaber.
• A gallery from @couch.
• A moody por­trait from @mbaratz.
• Scheme on the tree (with her ghostly face very appar­ent) from @BrianDeacon.
• And here’s a video (!) of the unbox­ing from @shamptonian!
• A mega-​​unboxing video from the Children’s School edited by Anthony Albright!

Also, check this out: @mmai made a Twit­ter list of Annabel Scheme back­ers! Worth fol­low­ing; it’s a fine group of people.

Let me know if you see any more (or did one your­self) that I missed!

P.S. The Twit­ter search for #annabelscheme is a river of delight.