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On June 15th, The FIRST murder mystery will launch using Twitter and various other social media tools as the delivery vehicles. This interesting experiment reminds me of Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick. But don’t be fooled, this is no board game. It’s an interesting way to entertain tweeple using Twitter.

This week I was able to share a few emails back and forth with Jenn Bailey from The SocialLites to get the scoop on this new Twitter experiment. Following is the interview and don’t forget to use tmod hashtag to see the thread.

What is Tweet Mystery of Death?

Tweet Mystery of Death is a Murder Mystery we’re writing on Twitter, 140 characters at a time. It isn’t a novel. It’s more like a play. A play that will last for 6 weeks. I personally see it as kind of an old-time radio show or one of those B-reel serials they’d show at the movies before the Main Feature. We’re doing that, but on Twitter.

Who are the master minds behind the Tweet Mystery of Death campaign?

Greg Fishbone is the big master mind. The idea is his. The rest of us are other writers who thought his idea was fun and we wanted to participate. Although we’ve created this together we’ve never met. We’ve worked out the plot arcs and story concept through email, a wiki and a Ning. So, besides Greg , your other Authors are:
Jenn Bailey, Sue Ford, Lisha Cauthen, Colleen Cook, Mary Pierce, Jan Kozlowski, Dawn Metcalf, and Rhonda Stapleton

Follow the authors and characters of Tweet Mystery of Death:

Follow Greg R. Fishbone author from Boston, MA and plays Dirk Rockwell the actor.

Follow Sue Ford author from Olathe, KS and plays Carissa Ainsley the model.

Follow Dawn Metcalf author from Connecticut and plays Lilli LeMue the artist.

Follow Rhonda Stapleton author from North Olmsted, OH and plays Pheonix MacAllister the rival.

Follow Colleen Ryckert Cook Cook author from Lenexa, KS and plays Sam Marlowe the reporter.

Follow Lisha Cauthen author from Kansas City, MO and plays Coffee Boy the gopher.

Follow Jan Kozlowski author from Southington, CT and plays Hanna Bleckter the stalker.

Follow Mary Pierce author from Rhode Island and plays Alex Berkley the agent.

Follow Jenn Bailey author from Overland Park, KS and plays Miss Plupp the assistant.

What was it like coming up with the characters?

More fun than you can imagine. We’ve spent hours giggling and building in back story. At times we got rather carried away, but that’s what happens when you throw together a bunch of dangerously creative people. Each author was responsible for their own character but we definitely collaborated. There are no Prima Donnas here.

How will tweeple/peeps interact with the characters?

Tweeple won’t be interacting with the characters so much as following along and interacting with each other as an audience. This experiment is a lot like a play. Everyone can follow the characters on Twitter but we’ve also set up a Ning were the audience can ask the authors questions or share “Who Done It” theories with each other. If we let people talk directly to the characters, there would be too much noise and followers might lose the plot points in all the chatter.

If people are late following the campaign, how are you going to get them up to speed?

We will have Daily and Weekly briefs that followers can subscribe to on the Ning . There will be no problem “catching up” if someone missed a day or joined us during the play.

You can also follow the Tweet Mystery of Death with hashtag tmod

How are you using twitter and other social media tools to promote Tweet Mystery of Death?

The story will take place entirely on Twitter. We’ll be using twitpic, blip.fm and perhaps some audioboo to enhance our messages. Besides the character accounts on Twitter, we have a @tweet_mystery account for any news, links, etc that we want to share with the readership. Our Ning is where the Daily Doses and Weekly Die-gests occur as well a place where fans can chat amongst themselves or talk to the authors. We’ve got RSS feeds so readers don’t have to “follow” all 9 characters (unless they want to) and we are building a facebook page. Lovely people like yourself are blogging for us. An early fan has already designed a T-shirt too so, who knows? We may be taking that to the Threadless community.

How can people get involved and help your efforts?

Join the Ning! Subscribe to the RSS feed. Follow the characters. There is going to be a contest too, so take the quiz and earn a prize. We authors are having fun and we want our readership to have fun too. The great thing about Social Media is, if we’ve missed a way to connect to our audience, our audience will create that way and lead us to it. We just hope folks give us a look-see.

Follow the Tweet Mystery of Death Cast

Dirk Rockwell recently divorced from Carissa Ainsley with an up and coming acting career. Look for a cat fight between Dirk’s ex-wife and new girlfriend, Lilli.

Carissa Ainsley While her modeling career is the place, she spends most of her time battling internal demons after the bitter divorce from Dirk Rockwell. I think a suicide would be good for this character.

Lilli LeMue she the typical artist type and apparently she’s a hot topic when it comes to the rumor scene. You can be guaranteed drama with this twitter follow.

Sam Marlowe the reporter in the group. I’m guessing there will be lots of reports about Lilli.

Hanna Bleckter the stalker in the cast. What mystery story using twitter wouldn’t have a stalker in the group?

Pheonix MacAllister He wants all things Dirk; he wants Dirk’s girlfriend Lilli and his movie start career! The rivals must have confrontations over twitter!

Miss Plupp loves marine life, but her true passion is being Dirk Rockwell’s assistant. I’m guessing she’s the quiet one in the group.

Alex Berkley is an agent in Hollyweird (too funny) and his newest client is Dirk Rockwell.

By: Anne Haynes

If you want to comment on this post – I’m a cobbler with bad shoes ;-) talk to me via social media @AnneHaynes

I remember in 1995 when AOL was the number 1 platform for internet access and Yahoo! was the number 1 search engine. During this time, when I socialized and talked about the internet everyone would talk about AOL. I was a producer for KSJS radio station and we broadcasted video and audio over the internet with an 8100 PowerPC AV. The show was Sound Bytes and Dan Fortune (my mentor) was the host for the technology radio/internet show. Dan Fortune was the first man to play guitar over the internet. All I wanted was to learn about building website. I knew I needed to be into HTML in order to have a website and by having an internship at KSJS an entire world opened up to me. I still can’t believe I’m writing about real-time video and audio in 1995 in the times of social media in 2009.

Bottom-line during the 1995-1997 era, mainstream people thought “the internet” was AOL. And in my world Netscape was “my internet” and Yahoo! was my number 1 search engine. When I talked about “internet radio” everyone mentioned AOL and not Yahoo!. AOL was the “Internet” and AOL members recieved applications via their service provider = AOL; AOL decided what you would see and what you would like as a paying subscriber.

After I graduated from San Jose State University with a Management Information Systems Degree and started working at Cisco System as an Information Systems Analyst I figured it out. At Cisco Systems I worked with teams to turn excel spreadsheets into databases with a pretty HTML/CSS look and feel (geekstrs:cgi and perl). It clicked and I figured it out; you were not informed if you were using AOL as your internet service provider (ISP). AOL was an application service provider (ASP).

Now fast forward to Facebook, the Harvard environment opened up and everyone can be a member of Facebook. It didn’t take long for Facebook applications to take off. Remember how AOL was the application service provider. Now 200 million plus Facebook members are haunted by applications. As much as I like a few of the Facebook applications, I don’t like the advertisements and forced “Send to Friends” features. I’ve seen so much spam and advertising rip-offs. All I want to do is hang out from a social media perspective. This is why my primary non-facebook applications are Brightkite.com > to Twitter.com> to Friendfeed.com> to Facebook. I have the easy button for social media and if you need some help send me a message on any of the solo social media applications by searching on @AnneHaynes. I will find your message and respond.

Remember, if you’ve never had an AOL account you are in good shape, but note Myspace and Facebook are ASPs.

Following is a thread from FriendFeed tonight. I reieved a +1 thanks @.LAG for my comment that “Facebook is the AOL of our time”.

FriendFeed Thread:

It’s been a busy couple of days but it’s good because I’m giving clients the “hook” for their fishing poles. I have so many thoughts about what is happening in social media:
1. Facebook is the AOL of our time – I don’t want a service to feed me applications and services.

Cee Bee and edythe liked this

2. Friendfeed is the “stream” in Facebook but in real-time. I’ve seen the FB “stream” updates and heard about the hompage being updated with real-time “stream” data, but Brightkite did/does the real-time updates best on their homepage http://www.brightkite.com

3. When is the consolidation going to happen? I’m grateful that I’ve found my easy button, I don’t see consolidation for many months/dog years to come.

4. There is much to be discussed regarding social media ROI and engagement using twitter. I have a client that used twitter 5 times and within a week had 1200 request for samples. Yes everyone wants free stuff, but the viral aspect of coupon moms and savings is huge right now. Note majority of the 1200 were bots!

Bottom-line I don’t want my internet freedoms taken away from me! The internet is not traditional media and it’s best kept this way. I’m excited to participate and not lurk in the social media industry.

+1 for “…Facebook is the AOL of our time.” i agree, though i do feel FB is more instructive than AOL: they may end up being a giant R&D lab for the future. as long as your data stays locked inside FB, the AOL analogy holds. – @.LAG

@.lag I don’t think R&D labs fit the future. The R&D life-cycle is too short from a technology application perspective. I wish I could say the same about cancer cure life-cycle. Now the average “Joe” does R&D. I wish so much I had time to study APIs and code more. More and more I see coding as an embed cut and past. I don’t like hashtags why can’t we have a button.

I want someone to write a book title “Don’t Make Me Read”

If you love FriendFeed as much as I do, you will love using this script to make FriendFeed your all in one social media desktop application. You can access twitter and and other social media services without ever leaving FriendFeed.

 
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