Twitter: Trusted News Source?
Robert Scoble and others are reporting that Twitter broke the story of the recent Chinese earthquake faster than even the United States Geological Survey.
Scoble, noted Twitter fiend and earthquake news follower, received tweets reporting the quake from Beijing as it was happening. Not only did he relay in the information before virtually any other source, but it was faster than the automatic reporting on the USGS site.
Many Twitter users reason that by having the right friends, they are receiving important news at least slightly sooner than other forms of media can report it. Since Twitter is a service that is worldwide, breaking events from more remote locations are more quickly reported on Twitter than other sources. Scoble reported that his reporting of the quake beat CNN and other major press sources by a whole hour.
This in and of itself is not particularly amazing, but Online Journalism Blog asked us to consider the possibilities if Twitter is fully realized with the use of Twitterlocal: if a journalist could to target location-specific and keyword specific tweets, and use a service to translate the tweets into the language of their choice, it’s possible they could come into contact and receive real-time information from the exact people relevant to the story. If there’s a nuclear meltdown in Vladivostok, somebody could target the city and get it translated. If it’s something with a wider swath, they could target “China” and “earthquake” and translate that. Those with the most relevant news could then be contacted to obtain more information.
If the whole world was on Twitter, it remains to be seen what it would become and how it could best be aggregated, but there are obvious advantages to using it as a real-time news sources in breaking news situations.
Just think of Twitter had been fully utilized in the Katrina disaster. Maybe the press would have been on it sooner and a quicker response could have saved lives.
Thanks to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, Robert Scoble, and the Online Journalism Blog for the info.
Technorati Tags: twitter, chinese earthquake, china earthquake, robert scoble
