Twijote Project to Put Text of Don Quixote on Twitter
Posted on January 14, 2010
Fans of Cervante's Don Quixote de la Mancha are determined to put the entire book on Twitter, one tweet at a time. They estimate that it will take 8,200-odd tweets to get through the first volume. That's a lot of tweets.
The Twijote project, as it is known, aims to publish the 470-odd pages of the first volume of Don Quixote's adventures using just the 140-character blocks of text allowed by Twitter. It has set itself strict rules, of the honourable but potentially foolish kind that Don Quixote and his creator, Miguel de Cervantes, might have approved of.Volunteers from all over Latin Amrerica and Spain have signed up to help with the project. Some Spanish speakers from Finland have also signed on for Twijote. The project is in Spanish, but if it succeeds perhaps an English version might happen as well.The 8,200-odd tweets needed to get to the end of the first volume must come from one-off visitors to the Twijote site. They are given the next block of 140 characters of text to put on Twitter. "We reckon it will take about a year, if people stick with it," said Pablo Lopez, a web designer from the north-western Spanish city of Vigo who thought up the project. "The idea is to show that culture can exist in social media - that it is not just a place for nerds and freaks," he said.
Twijote has no sponsors and no ambition to make money. "It is something we put up to see what would happen," said Lopez, who pulled in web designers from his company to help. "I had the idea one day and came into the office and persuaded people it was worth doing."