Books you must read: Twitchhiker – how one man travelled the world by Twitter

I thought I'd start sharing some of the books that I've been reading lately as a few people I know have been asking for reading recommendations. All of the books I'll discuss are to do with the web/entrepreunership so hopefully of interest to my blog readers. The first book is the excellent Twitchhiker from Paul Smith. For those of you who don't know the story, Paul decided to travel the world in 2009, raising money for charity and using nothing else but Twitter. The idea was that he would see how far he could get around the world using Twitter and people's generosity in donating transport and accomodation. Remarkably he ended up travelling 11,000 miles from Gateshead right to new Zealand. This paragraph from an interview Paul did in the Guardian really summed up the idea to me:

Beyond my social experiment, is the potential for Twitter to change the way we all travel. If you find yourself in an unknown city, a quick tweet will see followers suggest how you can best spend your time. Offering reviews of hotels and airlines, real-time travel updates, a spare sofa for the night, Twitter is an infrastructure that facilitates a global conversation, a social club, a newswire, a group hug, a support network, a human search engine - all at once. And it's growing exponentially. Spend a while cultivating your Twitter account, and you could develop contacts in every timezone.

Paul is also a freelance journalist and a very good writer. The book is full of great stories of his adventures around the world and some of the weird and wonderful people he met via Twitter. Oh and did I mention that I'm in the book too? Albeit briefly. It's only £5.92 at Amazon right now too. Bargain. Links: Interview with the BBC The Guardian feature on Twitchhiker The Daily Mail feature on Twitchhiker Next, watch out for the movie :) What I'm listening to right now: Funk, Soul and Disco