DISQUS

emma · 11 months ago

let's see, number of followers of that twitter loser! 143, number of people who watch the news on tv or follow it via the web, probably a lot more than that! you net web twats need to get your fucking heads out your fucking arse!

bfos7215 · 11 months ago

I'm so glad that there's at least ONE other person here who is actually thinking this. This guys tweet was marginally more important in breaking this news story than someone working at the airport that said, "Oh, shit, that plane just crashed." That's not an act of breaking news.

Ken · 11 months ago

A badly spelled hysterical sentence on Twitter does not herald the age of Twitter any more than my calling the LA Times city desk from my cell, on the CA91 at 3 a.m. to say "fuck! OMFG an oil truck just caught firez" herald the beginning of the age of me on a fucking cell phone at 3 a.m. on the freeway. Witnessing an accident.

Twitter is the first new tech thing that made me think: fuck, I'm too old for this shit.

deepikaur · 11 months ago

Well, it's not just limited to Twitter; this change encompasses any site where users can update statuses (stati?)/micro-blogging tools. For example, I wouldn't think that it'd be uncommon for people who don't use Twitter, but do use Facebook to update their status when some large event happens via mobile.
The people I've asked about news sources say that they'd be more likely to believe in news coming from someone who actually experienced the event rather than a news report for a major corp. It's easier to relate to eye-witnesses rather than reporters.
With that in mind, I'd say that major corps will be filtering sites like Twitter for breaking news (and eye-witness accounts), but will have to justify whatever they find with more plausible facts before they release a story (because, well.. anyone can post anything, but that doesn't make it true), if they aren't already. Which I'd highly doubt, especially after the hype Twitter got after the Mumbai attacks.

Brian Sherwin @ Myartspace Blo · 11 months ago

This is classic. :)

David · 11 months ago

Here's a down side for twitter...did anyone confirm that he was actually on the plane?

It's very easy for the "SEO" minded online world to jump on key news stories with "fake" information knowing that we will all be searching for it.

Kalena · 11 months ago

Yep, social media is our first port of call for breaking news now. Just wrote an article about that very subject: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2008/dec/5.... Journalism is now in the hands of Joe Public :-)

KathleenLD · 11 months ago

I think you made a good point about the role of news agencies so I blogged about it :) http://bit.ly/GuGH

Anrkist · 11 months ago

@Emma - Bitter much?
I recall when Hurricane Ike was hitting the area, how nice it was to get various POV from people in the local area via Twitter. I really doubt an event such as a plane crash is going to be a breaking news event on Twitter because it is a random unknown event. However, if there is time to prepare for the event then I believe a place such as Twitter can be an invaluable tool.

emma · 11 months ago

bitter? fuck off, i don't work for cnn but i bet they don't give a fuck about twitter and the 15k of people following their feed compared to the millions that watch their channel and visit their site, now piss off back to your basement

David · 11 months ago

@emma You hostility is understood, sometimes change is hard to accept and understand. The networks, cable outlets and print are struggling to cope with the fact that social media presents yet another outlet to pull aware your audience.

Focusing just on one users followers are a misunderstanding. For the millions of users of Twitter, there is segment (typically PR and media types) that know how to scan these resources for live info. I remember searching for cell phone pictures on google and Flickr from the London train bombings as one source for information. During major news events (and even the football game today), I will spend time on services like search.twitter.com to see if there is anything interesting surfacing. This type of "crowd reporting" is just a fragment now but it will infuse itself into the way we all discover news.

Take this as a glimpse into the future.

Anrkist · 11 months ago

@emma - If you read my previous statement and had any knowledge of the coastal regions of the United States, you would know there are no basements here. Didn't you ever see Pee Wee's Big Adventure when they laughed in his face for asking about a basement in the Alamo?

Mark · 11 months ago

The news loves this stuff

David Leonhardt · 11 months ago

Twitter is ideal for breaking news, but not for inside news. Every medium has its strengths, and while Twitter can break news stories before the media arrive, the Twitter user doesn't have contacts in the know who can get information from behind the lines. This became clear to me with the recent incidents at UQAM...lots of noise from Twitter, constantly being updated, but not a single tweet offering any new information.

LJ Jones · 11 months ago

2drinksbehind might have only 143 followers, but that fact is, somehow the tweet it found its way to Mashable and now we are all talking about it. Major news sources have already started incorporating social media and user generated elements into their news cast. CNN has a segment called iReport and other networks are developing their own programs. Somehow, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and other platforms will figure into the way we receive our news. And if the major news organizations didn't think social media mattered, they wouldn't be starting Twitter feeds, and turning to user generated content.

Bret · 11 months ago

Yeah Mashable got it somehow - but don't you think the news agencies picked it up first? I just don't understand how this would work - yes his 143 followers would know about it before it hit the news, but no one else will. Maybe I'm too old to understand this?

bfos7215 · 11 months ago

You're not too old. Twitter is being made into WAY more than it is. Unless you're reading the thousands of tweets a second, you're not going to get this kind of "news" on twitter first. Twitter is not a news outlet. Even things like the attacks in India were "broken" on twitter first. You might be able to get the earliest, first-hand accounts on Twitter. But you're not going to try and do that overt search until you've already learned about it from real news agencies (and likely already heard the first hand accounts in a more informative format than SMS).

Turnip · 11 months ago

If I was in a life or death situation, and some moron started tweeting instead of focusing on reality, I'd use my last moments to shove his I-phone up where the sun doesn't shine on him. With video camera turned on so youtube gets the scoop.