Company

Basically, book lovers (and tech enthusiasts). It was books and writers that brought us together. One in particular, Cesare Pavese, from where it all started. One evening, at dinner, we invented what then became the TwLetteratura method: choosing a book, setting a reading schedule, commenting the passage of the day using a specific hashtag on Twitter. It was 2012. 

Soon after our followers started to grow. Among them, many teachers, who pointed out the didactic potential of our approach. We thus designed our first projects for schools: students and readers from all over Italy read together and commented on the great classics of the Italian and European literature. A community was born. And along with it the non-profit Associazione Culturale Twitteratura.

In 2014 we won a grant for cultural innovation funded by one of the main Italian banking foundations (Fondazione Cariplo), which allowed us to turn our passion into an actual business. We wanted to create a space where people could meet to read together, just as it had happened to us. So, in 2016 we launched Betwyll, an app specifically thought for social reading and developed on our community’s feedback and experience. With this new solution we drew attention abroad, designing pilots with schools and universities in Europe and North America. We gained several prizes and awards and since 2018 the pedagogical quality of our method has been acknowledged by Education Alliance Finland, the main certifier of edtech solutions worldwide. 

The success of our approach in education was such that the main educational publisher in Italy showed an interest in our work. This is how our partnership with Pearson started, which then led to the creation of a new app specifically targeted at Italian schools: Pearson Social Reading with Betwyll, released in 2021.  

Meanwhile, we managed to complete the development of Betwyll – until then still in a beta version – and to release Betwyll 2, the completely renovated app on which individual readers, teachers and students and teams can read and interact now. Enjoy it!

PS: many of you ask about the meaning of Betwyll. Actually, it is a fancy name that combines our history (tw, from TwLetteratura), what we do (creating relationships through stories and perspectives that intertwine just as in a fabric, like twill), and how we do it (inviting readers to be the protagonists)