socialmedian: Why The Fake AP Stylebook Is Blowing Up: It Involves Lulz

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Why The Fake AP Stylebook Is Blowing Up: It Involves Lulz

Submitted by Adamsherk from Google Reader

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

Two weeks after its creation, @FakeAPStylebook has netted more than 40,000 Twitter followers, 2,500 list mentions, and may soon have a book deal. What does it take for a Twitter account to blow up like that?

Tweeting a lot helps. Oh, so does being funny, particularly to AP-embittered journalists. For instance: “All mentions of the band Dokken should be followed by the parenthetical aside ‘(rhymes with ROCKIN’).’”

In two weeks, the Fake AP Stylebook has turned out 292 Tweets; that works out to about 20 a day. And it’s very responsive: it tosses out a lot of @ replies to its followers’ earnest style questions, which has no doubt contributed to its popularity, though it can be slightly annoying to the casual reader who can’t easily go back and see the original Tweets. But that’s more a limitation of Twitter than of the guide, which routinely turns out great stuff: