Scott Loftesness
Twitter really is quite amazing for following breaking news.
Today, I was periodically watching my friends’ tweets out of the corner of my eye when I saw one saying “breaking news – plane down in hudson river”. I checked the CNN website, nothing. Turned on CNN on TV and they were just beginning coverage.
Then I fired up Tweetdeck and setup 3 quick searches for USAir, Hudson, and plane – and followed along reading the tweets in real-time. Amazing…
My first experience with this was back after Thanksgiving when the Mumbai terror attacks had just started. I followed mumbai on Tweetdeck and stayed up to the minute with coverage from both Mumbai and around the world.
Yesterday afternoon on Twitter, I first read the news about Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence. See David Pogue’s “Twittering Tips” – “…it’s also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting.”
Journalism is changing indeed! You can follow me on Twitter here.
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Great post, Scott! You really capture the essence and potential of the Twitter experience.
Thanks Andy. Twitter really is amazing for this kind of stuff – truly the real-time web in action!
Scott
I think the journalism horse has bolted the old media barn, as it were, Scott. News seems to self-assemble on the web remarkably well, complete with error-correction. As old-school newsrooms flicker and fade, my hope is that citizen journalism will provide a viable, possibly better, alternative…