If you’re smart and savvy but have not yet been wooed to the world of Twit­ter, All a Twit­ter is for you: All a Twit­ter: A Per­sonal and Pro­fes­sional Guide to Social Net­work­ing with Twit­ter.

Author Tee Mor­ris writes this book more to the folks who are not quite wooed by Twit­ter yet but who are twi-curious. The first half of the book is bor­ing but addresses all of the ques­tions of the what, when, where, and how of Twitter.

The sec­ond half of the book is not only inter­est­ing but has Tee writ­ten all over it and offers up the who and the why with quite a dose of sub­jec­tive opin­ion, which I find very attrac­tive since too many of these Twit­ter books don’t come from a place of the per­sonal testimonial.

While the first half may be bor­ing, it is super-useful, tak­ing you by the hand and show­ing you through all of the steps required to wade into Twit­ter fully out­fit­ted, includ­ing help with my Android G1 phone (some­thing sorely lack­ing in Twit­ter for Dummies).

Another thing you might like about this book is that it spends as much time talk­ing about why Twit­ter sucks and why you should not jump in as it does, con­vinc­ingly, talk­ing about the why and how, both from the point of view of some­one who wants to become part of the Twit­ter­sphere and from the point of view of some­one who wants to use Twit­ter as a busi­ness or pub­lic rela­tions tool.

The chap­ters on the tools, gear, ser­vices, appli­ca­tions, and applets is exhaus­tive. There is actu­ally no bet­ter review of ways to inter­act with Twit­ter that I have found in an offline book.  One omis­sion that I did find in Twit­ter For Dum­mies is a list of how to use Twit­ter from the “com­mand line:” “d chrisabra­ham blah” allows you to send a direct mes­sage to me. “f chrisabra­ham” or “fol­low chrisabra­ham” fol­lows me with­out hav­ing to click, click, click. There are oth­ers short­cuts if you’re using SMS to engage Twit­ter. This was omit­ted and I use these every day, espe­cially when I am at a Tweetup and want to fol­low the per­son I am talk­ing to — I will drop a “fol­low teemon­ster” to add Tee Mor­ris to the folks I follow.

Aside from this arcane omis­sion, which is prob­a­bly the result of an edit from QUE (“do we really need to include this? I think it will con­fuse folks!”), the book is comprehensive.

In fact, Mor­ris doesn’t pull any punches. He tells it like he feels it. He even sac­ri­fices our beloved-but-on-our-shitlists Guy Kawasaki in a nation­ally — pos­si­bly inter­na­tion­ally — pub­lished book about Twit­ter. I mean, I am not only amazed but, snap, he really has an opin­ion not only on Twit­ter but on how it can and should be used — and his advice is good.

You should lis­ten to him. Every­thing he says you can take to the bank — at least until you have some time in the cock­pit yourself. If you fol­low the advice that the author out­lines, you’ll be golden. You will thrive in Twit­ter­ville, Twit­ter­verse, the Twit­ter­sphere — what­ever you call it. I am going to get my assis­tant on the line and make her bird-dog Tee down and book lunch, maybe beers if I am lucky. I feel like I know him after the book’s 280 pages, and I like him.

Because I like Tee so much after read­ing the book, I accept the fact that he wants this book to be suc­cess­ful! Yes, it is true that Tee Mor­ris did send me a review copy of his book, but who told him he could harass me like he’s been doing via email and Twit­ter — talk about enti­tled! I mean, there’s no guar­an­tee that you’ll get any sort of response from a blog­ger if you send him a copy of your book.

Tee must have known that I grew up Irish Catholic and that guilt was just the right away to get me to blog about his book. Well, it might have felt that way to him but I actu­ally wasn’t mess­ing with him — I like him (though we have never met, even though he is surely a local Vir­ginia boy — why haven’t we met yet?).  What hap­pened is that I only got through half the book before I received a copy of Twit­ter­ville: How Busi­nesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neigh­bor­hoods, a book by Shel Israel and a book that men­tioned me on page 79, I might add — Shel is one smart cookie.

I am sort of psy­ched that I waited a while between the first and the last half. When I fin­ished the first half of the book I was super-tired of all of the gear, apps, and tech talk. I was tired of the what, when, where, and how. If I had pow­ered through, I might not have given the book the time and atten­tion it deserved.

In fact, to be hon­est, Shel did it right. He wrote the who and why part of the book first and added the techie glyphs at the end; how­ever, that’s nei­ther here nor there because I have been tweet­ing since early spring 2007 and have over ten thou­sand fol­low­ers and actu­ally have a PR com­pany that offers Twit­ter ser­vices — of course the reme­dial and basics stuff would lose me. Don’t let that turn you off.

The only rea­son I men­tion it is because the Twit­ter gurus of the world should not give this book a pass just because they’re Twit­ter rock­star them­selves — the sec­ond half of this book is pure gold for every­one, espe­cially we “gurus” (he hates that word) who are con­stantly navel-gazing. Be sure you get your dirty hands on this book and burn through that Twit­ter 101 stuff, spend some time with the apps, and then power on to the who and the what and the why of it all.

Really, every­one should be all a-Twitter.Chris Abra­ham is co-founder and prin­ci­pal of Abra­ham Har­ri­son LLC, an inter­na­tional con­sult­ing group with spe­cial­ties in online word-of-mouth/conversation mar­ket­ing and online busi­ness & tech­nol­ogy strat­egy advis­ing. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris via email, Twit­ter, or leave a com­ment below.

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