140Char

Just spotted an amusing exercise to try and condense the plot of Hamlet into 140 characters on Twitter .

It was kicked off by JP Rangaswami, and it’s just a bit of fun – just tag your effort with #TwitBard.

Already one of the contributors has added Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It’s quite a challenge in some cases, equal to the venerable site ‘The Four Word Film Review’, which unfortunately seems to be offline at the moment.

And of course, 160 character review site Blippr, (I interviewed the founders on 140char a while ago).

It’s started me thinking about the many criticisms claiming that microblogging and Twitter are reducing us all to quick and superficial short updates with no meaning – isn’t that overlooking the fact that often a short message can encourage us to look deeper – such as a 140 character summary of Hamlet reminding me of family trips to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company, and wondering if I can find time later to reread Henry V?