Twitter Invades Mainstream Media
Once thought as merely a novelty for geeks and tech folks, Twitter has started to take over as a means of getting information out that mainstream media (television, radio, and even major news outlets’ websites) aren’t producing when it comes to breaking news. In fact, when breaking news happens, it’s often isn’t breaking news with outlets like CNN, Fox News, or even major networks. Sure, they are subject to fact-checking and standards & practices, but with the introduction of Twitter, you’ll truly get a first-hand account from people who can easily send out a 140 character SMS message to the entire world courtesy of this web-based portal.
Several individuals have foreseen the success Twitter has had in broadcasting the news in small bits. Applications like FriendFeed, TweetScan, and even Summize have allowed followers to easily track what’s going on in the world. Take the amount of “tweets” that emerged during a media experiment conducted by Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter during the Super Bowl. The purpose of the experiment was to gauge response of the public to the different ads. Within the span of perhaps close to four hours, nearly 3,000 responses had been tracked by Terraminds. This holds a lot of potential for advertisers and creates a user-generated real-time version of Nielsen’s Net Ratings.
But when it comes to local and worldly news, Twitter has become a beacon of information. From the Chicago earthquake to the jailing of an American student in Egypt, to the disasters in Myanmar and in China and most recently in India, Twitter has been able to spread the word. Why? Because of the accessibility of communication. With power outages and limitations in other technology that hinder broadcasting of information, SMS technology has been a blessing. Just check out the different messages that have been posted just recently. Even information on the front-lines of disasters and news is found on Twitter these days.
So how do you find the latest information going on? Just log into Twitter and track the latest major event going on near you.
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5 Comments for this post
You made some very good points. I have started to use twitter recently. While I see the value in it, I need to maintain my productivity and I am not sure how to do that and find the time to really use twitter effectively.
But let’s not forget that you can receive quick notifications from Twitter from specific users. I follow @BreakingNewsOn and that’s how I find out quick breaking news even before CNN or other news outlets! It’s my own way of being on the up and up…
I have only been using Twitter for the past couple of months or so, and have found it a good way to find recent news. Key example is Techcrunch. Mike posts on Twitter just as the posts are launched live, so you can become high up on the conversation in the comments.
However, productivity has been hurt due to twitter, because it is just basically an IM. So chatting on the site can become the norm, thus no time for actually work.
Imagine if you had family or friends in China and you were worried as to what’s happened to them. You could send out a 140 character message and see if anyone has heard from them. Just track the stream of tweets on Summize and you’ll probably link up with someone that is near their last location and can give you real-time descriptions of the action instead of what you’re seeing on MSNBC, Fox, ABC, BBC, or CNN - all the footage on mainstream media seems to be the same all the time during the story anyways.
I think we all knew it was only a matter of time before mainstream media found Twitter — the same way they found Second Life. Give them a little time and they’ll be gone just as fast as they arrived.
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