I was born to Hippie parents. (Not to be confused with the Yippies, or the Pippies who are devotees of Pipi Longstocking.)

That statement can mean so many things, but for me, its the power of collaboration. If the Hippie movement was anything besides good music, drugs, anti-war and all the other peace and love connotations associated with it, it was that people together are stronger than people apart.

So, as a child, I played games where a piece of paper was folded in thirds, and you would draw a head, a torso or legs (depending on your section) without knowing what the other two thirds looked like. Also hilarious, it taught us that different was okay, and that the power of one artist was not as strong as the power of three. (Yes, Star Wars came out when I was 6, so I think that there was some Star Wars Force believe intertwined there.)

We also partook in a collaborative story telling game. We would either sit in a circle and one person who tell the first line of the story, and we would go around the circle adding to the story. Or, at times, we would do it in a written format.

Being a semi-heavy (some would argue the semi) user of Twitter there is often series of tweets that when put together tell a story. For example, this past weekend Startup Weekend Boston took place. Many of the people I follow on twitter were there, and if you were to put all the tweets together in chronological order, it would tell the story of the personal interaction as well as the building of DeskHappy.

Why not get as many people together as possible, and tell a longer, perhaps neverending story? What would that story look like? How quickly would it build? How would it morph?

So I used three technologies to enable this: Twitter, to provide easy and structure. Tumblr, to consolidate all the tweets, and a nifty script written by Alan Joyce. And Tweetbook, was born. Its a collaborative story, told 140 characters at a time. Join the Facebook group (its Tweebook - I misspelled it), add to the story, but mostly just join in, it should be interesting…

How to become part of Tweetbook:

1) Sign up with Twitter

2) Follow tbook

3) send your 140 character addition to the story to @tbook

4) read it on Tweetbook

Update: I found two services that are a bit more involved than this: ublot and Novlet. If you want to write more than 140 characters, check out either of those two sites.

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