I wrote about Twitter a few months ago in my CJOnline Blog. Yesterday, we saw how effective Twitter can be when communicating information quickly. According to various reports, cell phone coverage went down during the Los Angeles earthquake, but Twitter did not.
You see, Twitter has fought for legitimacy since its inception. The concept of microblogging is still relatively new. Those of us who use it probably use it more than any other web 2.0 service and there is a great reason. The idea is quick information as it happens, which just happens to be suited perfectly for breaking news.
Immediate posts during the earthquake notified people across the world of the event, creating citizen journalists, minutes before the news media broke in and announced it on the traditional news outlets. In the breaking news world, especially if life might be at stake, minutes are huge. It was reported as it happened, by those who were there.
No longer are we a world that waits for the traditional media outlets to report to us. Technology gives us the chance to report information that needs to be told and told quickly.
Twitter is an excellent tool for for putting the power of the media in our hands. Yesterday in Los Angeles, Twitter proved that.
2 comments:
I learned about the earthquake yesterday via twitter (possibly one of your tweets). It drove me to traditional media outlets to learn more details.
Twitter is a powerful tool indeed!
Nice blog, Greg
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