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.
3 replies on “Twitter for Breaking News”
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…
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