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Courtesy of Amazon.com

Dom Sagolla’s book was released earlier this month.

BY JEFF DAVIDSON

In print | Published October 22, 2009

Dom Sagolla ’96 wrote in his culminating essay as an English Literature major that one day, hypertext — computer-displayed text that references other work at the click of a button, the World Wide Web being the best example — would drastically change literature and communication. He submitted it as a website to demonstrate the power of the Web, long before the Internet took on a pivotal role in every day life.

Ten years later, in early 2006, Sagolla found himself amongst a group of individuals in dire need of new direction for a company whose product, podcasts, was being usurped by big names like Apple. Sagolla and 13 others who worked at Odeo, Inc., an early podcasting company, spent a day brainstorming ideas for a new side project. The aim was to have direct and easy communication between multiple people.

Sagolla’s idea was audio-based, in which people dialed a number and left five-second blurbs about their statuses. He tracks this idea back to an old Voice Over IP system that was installed on campus early in his sophomore year; he learned the ins and outs of the system, building the basis for his knowledge of voice and phone messaging.

Co-worker Jack Dorsey pitched a similar idea in a text-only form. These two, and a few others, went to prototype stages for a few weeks.

In the end, Dorsey’s version won out, and a site was running that allowed users to send updates about their life through a barebones website. They soon acquired a phone number that allowed users to send updates via personal phones. In the beginning, this site was small. Users were limited to a very closed circle and everyone read everyone else’s posts. Big companies were not allowed and the users had to be secretive about the site. Sagolla went back to work with Odeo soon afterwards with some other co-workers in case the project was a flop.

They struggled with a code name and product name for the site – one user joked that “Friendstalker” would be an apt fit. They eventually settled on “Twttr.”

Today, Twitter has become a landmark revolution on the web with millions of users, changing the face of social media in ways not thought possible before.

“Hypertext has become ubiquitous,” Sagolla said. “More and more, we’re reading our news online. I didn’t really predict [the movement]. I just felt it was a natural thing that would come true.”

Tomorrow, Sagolla will be speaking and answering questions at 4:30 p.m. in Science Center 199 about his recently published book “140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form.” The book is a how-to guide aimed at anyone wanting a better understanding of how to use short form platforms like Twitter.

But Sagolla is careful to say that the book does not assert a single necessary style — it merely guides the reader. It addresses issues like giving out too much information and simplifying statements.

The book comes from the site 140characters.com, which Sagolla built after being inspired by the infamous change to the 140-character limit on Twitter from unlimited characters. At the time of the change, Dorsey said, “One could change the world with 140 characters.”

“When he wrote that, I said ‘I’m going to make it true,’” Sagolla said. “That’s why I made the site 140characters.com. I had no idea it would become a book. Years later, after writing a lot and looking at all the [short form] styles I could find, I started noticing all these patterns.”

Sagolla helps to lay out these patterns for someone struggling with the change to the internet and now short form.

According to visiting computer science professor Douglas Turnbull, Twitter created a new form of communication.

“In some sense, the success of the Internet is largely due to its role as a medium for communications,” Turnbull said in an e-mail. “Twitter represents a new outlet for individuals to quickly broadcast information using a short form of communication. This allows rapid creation and consumption of information in our ‘always too busy’ society.”

English Literature Professor Peter Schmidt, who graded Sagolla’s culminating essay, was surprised by the explosion of the Web.

“At the time Dom was here in the mid-90s, the Internet was just expanding and it was just becoming clear that webpages with sound, text and graphics could be very interactive, including via hypertext,” Schmidt said in an e-mail. “But I didn’t realize just how fast the Internet would grow and how quickly commercial it would get, though I’m sure Dom pretty much did.”

Schmidt is concerned about the many negative results of the huge push for short form online and looks forward to hearing what Sagolla has to say about them, but he is pleased with many good aspects services like Twitter have brought out.

“140-word messages filled an important niche in the Internet ecosystems that lots of us didn’t predict, but we were just blind,” Schmidt said. “Twitter postings can have a profound effect on networking, quick organizing, escaping censorship (as with the posting coming out of Iran during the elections there) and keeping active sites where folks can follow the adventures of their friends or others who interest them.”

Sagolla continues to keep a blog at Dom.net. He also founded the social iPhone app creator DollarApp and helped create the Obama ’08 app.

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