Singularity Law

Several people have asked how I generate the tweets that I regularly post on Twitter (under @LawProf, @CopyrightLaw, @InternetLaw and @PrivacyLaw). There is actually no magic to it.

I use Google Reader to help me locate interesting blog entries, news articles, law review articles, etc. I subscribe to slightly more than 500 different blogs, so I receive hundreds of items per day from Google Reader. I spend on average about two hours per day reviewing all of these entries.

I review each entry to determine whether it is on topic, timely, etc. If I think it is, I then highlight the title of the article and use bit.ly (a URL shortener) to generate a tweet. The tweet consists of the title of the linked article (in quotes), plus the shortened bit.ly URL. I then post the finished tweet to the appropriate Twitter account.

You may see other tweets that contain the identical title (in quotes). That means that the other Twitter user used a process similar to what I have just described. It is a fairly standard process used by Twitter users who post the same types of tweets that I do. But usually the URL will vary, depending on what URL shortener they used.

Hope that explains the process. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me directly at mdscott@swlaw.edu.