July 30, 2008
Link: Tweeting the quake
Twitter traffic on earthquake shows
power to collect, disseminate news
If your news organization has not been using, or at least following, micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, Jack Lail’s “Twitter as personal news wire” gives ample reason why news organizations need to pay attention. These are powerful tools, not only for pushing out breaking news feeds but for monitoring eyewitness accounts when news breaks.
Lail noted that the Associated Press moved a story nine minutes after the quake hit Southern California on Tuesday. “By the time AP moved a story, Twitter already had thousands of first-hand reports. Twitter has often been described as micro-blogging, but the Twitter blog says that for many people, the concept of Twitter is evolving to personal news-wire. We’ve seen this all along, but it’s growing.”
Update: Chris O’Brien, who is heading up the Next Newsroom project, posts his thoughts on Twitter, the earthquake and implications for newsrooms. It’s worth reading in full.
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