We began by asking critically acclaimed author Trish Cohen to abandon traditional publishing channels for her latest, as-yet unpublished novel, Littleman… and tweet it instead, 140 characters at a time.

Using Twitter as the primary channel in a way it had never been used before, she tweeted her entire novel over six days, making it the first novel in history to be published entirely on Twitter.The Twitter feed also led directly to the TVO website where people could learn more about the documentary special “Empire of the Word”.

The innovative use of Twitter garnered huge coverage amongst the social media community as well as substantial press coverage in traditional media, and massively increased ratings for the documentary special Empire of the Word.TVO received 7.2 million free media impressions. Its Facebook friends increased over 1,000%, and Traffic to the TVO website grew tenfold.

Also, ratings for the documentary were TVO’s highest ever, with a staggering 656% increase over their standard viewer-ship for the Twittered ‘Empire of the Word’ series.