Who said twittering was a shallow, empty pursuit?

Nick Douglas, a 24-year-old freelance writer in San Francisco, has just landed a book deal from HarperCollins to compile others’ tweets. Twitter, of course, is the popular social networking site that allows users to communicate 140 characters at a time.

Douglas said he is shooting for 1,000 of the wittiest Twitters he can find for “Twitter Wit.” He said he isn’t daunted by the fact that much of what drives the pithy messages are, well, not really that interesting to read the first time around.

Douglas said he was inspired in part by the book, “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs By Writers Famous and Obscure.” This won’t be the first book to capitalize on the success of Twitter — others include “Twitter Revolution” and “Twitter Means Business.” All the while, the site itself has yet to turn a profit, said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. (Douglas says he got a five-figure contract for the book; HarperCollins won’t confirm.)

Stone says he doesn’t mind.

“If Twitter is making enough of an impact that folks feel the need to write books on different aspects of our service, that is wonderful,” Stone says. “We’re happy to be part of the creativity.”

Two of his favorite submissions:

• “Why should I be the one to take the kids to see their psychologist? I don’t even love them!” –Fireland (Joshua Green Allen)

• “Way to go, hiccups. Thanks for ruining my street cred.” –sween (Jason Sweeney)