Below you will find information on how our “Twitter-A-Book System” works.  It is an interactive and/or collaborative system that draws readers into participation with the author.

My “Twitter-A-Book System” will work for any book someone might want to Twitter. The book is typed; divided into multiple daily Tweets sufficient to satisfy the needs of one’s daily readers; the numbered individual daily Tweets separated by a “First” and “Last” dated marker Tweet; and each days book Tweets scheduled to be delivered to Twitter on a prearranged schedule, with the last tweet being sent first and each subsequent numbered tweet separated in delivery by one minute. It is a simple but elegant solution for publishing one’s book serially.

If you want to help promote the idea of publishing via Twitter and share this historic first with all your social networking friends, PLEASE, send out a tweet with the link to this journal: http://3circles.org/journal (it will be greatly appreciated).

I am tweeting this as an RSS feed as well (simply click on the orange “Subscribe to teh POSTS feed” button in the upper right corner of this journal blog). If you do a Twitter search for our TwittBook hashtag, (WITHOUT THE HASHTAG “#”) #3cccJournal2TwittBook, you’ll get all my journal tweets. Unfortunately, Twitter has changed how long they archive tweets and limited search results.  A search for “#3cccJournal2TwittBook” yields NO results, whereas a search for “3cccJournal2TwittBook” yields all the posts. Obviously, all technology has glitches from time to time. So the RSS feed will be one way to assure you get every journal tweet. Besides, it’s convenient to be able to import into your existing RSS Reader. The link is: HERE.

I created my identifying #hashtag based on what I needed to do for this project: #3cccJournal2TwittBook.

 I originally decided on #MyJournal2TwittBook but soon realized someone else might follow in my footsteps and use the exact same hashtag to leverage my pioneering work. I have no problem with helping others follow my lead, but I do have a problem with the confusion that would result if everyone used the same hashtag. Each author who chooses to use my “Twitter-A-Book-System” should create their own unique hashtag. Since my Twitter brand is #3ccc (for 3Circles Church Communities our online and offline communities) I simply replaced “My” with “3ccc”, making the entire #3cccJournal2TwittBook hashtag proprietary.

My simple method of tagging and segmenting each days tweets was to make sure readers could identify each day’s twittered tweets and easily pick up where they left off, even if they went on an extended vacation where no Internet exists (perish the thought!) OR even if Twitter’s Web-based database dropped some of their book Tweets. The latter is a common occurrence, something I noticed when I began using TweetDeck.com. Almost daily I see posts in my @replies or DM Tweets which appear in TweetDeck but never show up in Twitter for the web. Since all tweets are numbered, any missing tweets would easily be recognized and noted.

For those unfamiliar with how Twitter works I’ll explain briefly how you will be able to catch up, should you miss some of my journal Tweets. Just click on the twitter menu item titled “Search” (right now it’s located at the bottom of Twitter’s home page) and type in 3cccJournal2TwittBook – all journal tweets will be listed. They are numbered, starting with “0001”.

There will be a first and last tweet marking the beginning and ending of that day’s journal entries. The first place-holder Tweet will look something like this:

BEGIN 04/03/09 #3cccJournal2TwittBook. PLZ READ Intro: http://intro.3circles.net #tcot #phn #book #3ccc Pages: 1100-1125

And the last place-holder Tweet, which appears after Tweet number 1125, will look
something like this:

END 04/03/09 #3cccJournal2TwittBook. MEET AUTHOR: http://MeetTheAuthor.3circles.net #tlot #rtr #r3s #whatever #3ccc Pages: 1100-1125

Notice that both marker Tweets are identified with the date (04/03/09) and number of Tweets in the format “Pages: 1100-1125”. This would indicate that on April 3, 2009, I Tweeted 25 individual Tweets for my #3cccJournal2TwittBook, numbered 1100 through 1125.  

IMPORTANT UPDATE (June 11, 2009):

About 3 or 4 weeks into this project I heard rumors that Twitter was going to limit searches to a maximum of 3200 Tweets (I read this on a blog) or 14 days (my experience when searching for the first day’s Journal tweets about a month after I started). Regardless of the exact parameters, I’ve been unable to reach a single support person at Twitter, nor have I been able to get someone to pick up the phone at corporate headquarters. So, in the interest of my readers, I’ve had to find a permanent solution that wouldn’t depend on Twitter. Anyone can still follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/3CC_Community and read my Journal on a daily basis, but they can’t fall behind more than two weeks. To eliminate this problem for those who are extremely busy and fall behind, I’ve created this Journal blog (http://3circles.org/journal ) so you can read the archived Tweets. 

IMPORTANT UPDATE (July 28, 2009):
 I just did another search using #3cccJournal2TwittBook and it works just fine in advanced search on Twitter. So it looks like they’ve fixed the # issue, now it works with or without the hashtag. However, they’ve shortened the archiving to one week.  I couldn’t retrieve the tweets from two weeks ago, nothing more than 7 days it seems.

How To Find and Read My Journal on Twitter

In case you were invited here by someone else, please go to your account on Twitter.com [easy and free to signup if you don't have a Twitter account], click on “Search” in the Twitter menu at the bottom [top for some].  When the Twitter search page comes up click on “Advanced Search”, below and to the right of the search box. Here’s the direct link to Twitter’s Advanced Search feature.

Once you’re at the Twitter Advanced Search page, enter “3cccJournal2TwittBook” [without the quotes and no "#" hashtag in front of it] in the box marked, “This exact phrase”.  Next to “None of these words” type in “vondag” [no quotes; this is my wife's Twitter ID, short for Vonda Grey and since we're trying to help as many people as possible be aware of our ministry/business, 3Circles Church Communites, Inc., we're freely sharing my journal on both accounts simultaneously; if you are one of Vonda's followers, then replace vondag with 3CC_Community so you won't see each tweet twice]; next to “Written In” choose “English” and under “Dates” choose the day or days that you want to retrieve.  All Tweets of my journal are posted by time of post.  Simply refer to my “TABLE OF TWEETS” chart below to determine the date or dates to search for.   You’ll need to put in two dates, one for “Since this Date” and one for “Until this Date”.   If searching just for one day, for instance the first day that I started Tweeting my journal, May 5, 2009, just put the same date in both fields by clicking on the calendar next to the empty box and choosing that date.

You could, of course, use Twitter’s simple “Search” but you’ll get ALL the tweets at once, beginning with the most recent Tweets.  This will force you to click “More” at the bottom of your Twitter page as many times as it takes to get to where you left off in my journal.   This is a good place to share the best Twitter app I’ve ever come across (it only works with Mozilla Firefox but if you don’t use Firefox, you’re missing out on tons of add-ons from third party developers).   The third-party Twitter application is called “Troys Twitter Script“. Once installed it will auto-advance your screen when you scroll to the bottom, saving time.  It also shows conversations in nested format, so you don’t have to go searching to see the tweets being responded to; shows videos and pics with the Tweet when people post links to them; shows the long form, original URLs in each Tweet; and identifies Tweets from people you’re following with a smiley face in the corner of their photo.

TABLE OF TWEETS TO DATE (Day | Date | page# – page# | Description)

To connect with us on any of the major social networks, or to learn more about our beliefs and principles or the works of 3Circles Church Communities, visit any of the following:

To keep in touch via: FriendFeed

Our Skype contact ID is: Leroy-3CirclesCommunityUSA

Our blog at http://3circles.org/transform and our membership site at http://3ccc.3circles.net.

I especially recommend my article, “Truth Bombs”, which compares seven truths that Jesus taught with what the Christian religion is teaching today. You can find the article here: http://truthbombs.3circles.net

If you’re interested in building your own online social networking site here’s the one we decided to use after days of exhaustive reasearch:  IGROOPS.We also highly recommend GVO.com as a great webhosting service that specializes in meeting the needs of Internet businesses. Tell the owner, Joel Therien, that Leroy Grey sent you!