You've Got Tweets

At least one other blogger beat me to it (I did a "just in case" Google search on the topic), but at least it was an original idea among my friends, and besides, we have a different angle.

With Borders bookstores closing all over America, and various social media replacing that quaint, old-fashioned practice known as electronic mail, it's time for a sequel to that quintessential 90s movie, You've Got Mail. Yes, it's a generic love story - "oh, no, I hope they end up with each other and not with the uncomfortable, incompatible person they're currently dating!" plot regurgitation, but the backdrop of the rise of internet, email, online relationships and mega-bookstores makes this the kind of movie future historians will watch as they consider the 90s.

The plot of the sequal could be something like this: Played by Tom Hanks, widower Joe Fox (Meg Ryan's cold at the end of the movie was actually a warning sign) is also grieving the loss of 60% of his mega-bookstores, forced to close in the wake of fierce competition from a popular web-based discount store called "Nile." From his iPhone, Joe vents his sorrows through his anonymous Twitter account, @NY154. He begins to be followed by another anonymous person known as @Netgirl. The two begin playful but earnest banter and begin to fall through instantaneous messages of 140 characters or less.

Of course, @Netgirl is really the owner of the Nile website, who mostly tweets inside her expensive but lonely office, located in Nile's 150-acre Silicone Valley complex. She could be played by... oh, I don't know, Reese Witherspoon, or how about Gwyneth Paltrow? Of course, the love regurgitation story is beside the point (I'm sure they'll both be dating undesirable comic-relief characters who you pray they don't end up with). The real point will be to show future generations the rise of smart phones and social media, along with the demise of outlet chains. One of the classic movie moments will be where Joe Fox waxes on about the good old days, when people sat around in bookstore coffee areas reading magazines instead being glued to a screen all the time. At another point, @Netgirl would tweet from Fox Books: " Only 40% off for a best seller? Who pays that much!?" She will also make fun of Fox Books' awkward attempts to come up with a rival to her successful electronic reader, "The Blaze." At the end, of course, we'll learn that love conquers all, even sentimental attachment to your doomed business.

Yes, I think this is the movie you've been looking for - the one you'll use when telling the grandkids about early 21st century life.