@shitmydadsays: A Success Story.

Twitter, even with its 140-character limitation, can still be an effective storytelling tool. The New York Times reported on the Broadway show "Next to Normal"'s use of Twitter to introduce potential theatergoers to the storyline. They got over 550,000 followers before the NYT story, and are now at nearly 610,000.

Well here's a success story that's brewing right now. It's the Twitter account @shitmydadsays, operated by a guy named Justin. His bio says:

I'm 28. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says

And it's blowing up -- in a good way. On August 17, the account had 3,265 followers. Today it has nearly 42,000.

The biggest reason for this is that the content is great. Here's a sample:

"Your mother made a batch of meatballs last night. Some are for you, some are for me, but more are for me. Remember that. More. Me."

It's been Dugg, Reddited, Stumbledupon repeatedly. My hope is that it's organic, genuine, and that it works out for Justin. And definitely his dad.

People appreciate good content, whether it's made of moving pictures on a screen, or 140 characters on Twitter. Any medium can be used to tell a good story. This Twitter account has more character development than the last few movies I've seen. It's a pleasure to read, in small bytes, either whenever a new entry is published, or all at once.

The pressure's on Justin now, however. His audience demands more content. It will be interesting to see how, or if, he rises to the occasion.

But one thing is for sure. What he's done thus far is brilliant.

Comments

[Ryan Cohn]

How will he monetize this though?

[Ian Schafer]

He shouldn't monetize it directly. Hopefully, this will lead to professional reward for him beyond slapping ads on it.

[James McCarthy]

It's good but I prefer @andywarholsays

[David B. Thomas]

I expect we'll see t-shirts with the most popular of the quotes before too long.

[chris holmes]

i'm too old to find this funny or un-obvious but i would like to find out for sure if this justin is based in USA or UK. If he's in the UK, this is completely bogus for the purported old man's language. If the pair are in the USA ... well, that explains everything. Good luck to him/them anyway in sustaining the creativity and content. my bet is that he is a clever creative writer in his 40s with his finger on current jargon etc.

[sneezy1974@hotmail.com]

You'd have to be super clever. You can see that the old man went out of town probably to Tennessee, called home and got the answering machine, called home to tell Justin to water the plant, and then came back into town the same time Mad Men came on. A storyline without being obvious. Hard to make that kind of thing up if it wasn't for real.

[Reegan]

my favorite part is that he only follows LeVar Burton.

[Joseph Yi]

Do you think that part of his success is due him being "anonymous" or do you think that he would be even more popular had he made his account authentic with a photo of himself based on advice from "Twitter" experts.