MIR reader Ashley Bolser sent me over this story he was reading at CNN. It describes how Twitter…
“stole a march on traditional media when it was the first outlet to publish dramatic pictures of the Turkish Airlines crash”
The report continues:
Moments after the plane crashed at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport on Wednesday morning the news was appearing on Twitter, iReport’s International Correspondent Errol Barnett said.
So Twitter nailed the international mainstream media? Again?
Well no.
Not quite.
SOME users of Twitter were on the ground when it happened. One, it seems, took a picture. One assumes that they Tweeted or Twitpic’ed the picture up to the internet. CNN then found out about it. Somehow. Then CNN checked with Dutch officials and confirmed the news. Then they took the Twitter picture ‘to air’.
This is really, really smart.
But there’s also about a billion different flaws with the approach.
If I was on the scene with ZERO Twitter followers, I sent in a Twitpic called DSC0101112.jpg, you’d never know about it.
Not unless I gave some context in my message. Like ‘plane crash in Amsterdam here is a picture:’ followed by the Twitpic URL. Or not unless I ‘atted’ the CNN iReport team.
You also need to be really smart with the text used in your Tweet so that people monitoring the public Twitter search system find the stuff. I imagine the CNN social media chaps have got permanent searches going on all the time like ‘plane crash’ and ‘nuclear missile’ or similar.
But Twitter isn’t an outlet. The frontpage of Twitter has absolutely NOTHING on the Turkish Jet Crash. So Twitter didn’t beat the Reuters photographer. Twitter replaced the Reuters/AP photo journalist platform and enabled CNN to get hold of the images.
Setting aside the obvious human tragedy of today’s news, the medium and the possibilities of Twitter are getting more and more exciting.
At some point I will be there when Paris Hilton falls out of a nightclub with Prince William, both naked, both kissing passionately and both holding previously unreleased Nokia N98 16 megapixel mobile handsets. And I will have my N95 8GB there, fully charged, with my 3G+ Vodafone data network poised to take my pixels to ShoZu and from thence to the world.
Have a read of the CNN story here.
I’m experiencing a renaissance in ‘value’ for mainstream media. I can’t be bothered to read through every single public twitter message and piece together what happened. Instead I’ll leave it to a journalist (or should that be ‘social network analyst?) to do the research and knock it together into a decent commentary that I can consume. I value that. Standby, I’m willing to bet The London Times will have an overview online in a few hours.
Twitter beats Reuters, AP, CNN and Sky News on Turkish Jet crash – http://tinyurl.com/bzvmes
Reading: “Twitter beats Reuters etc…” (http://twitthis.com/s288ew)
Great post!
Nicely demolishes the twitter fanboyism.
The hype will die eventually, and then it will just become another myspace/facebook/[insert-overhyped-“web-2.0”-app-here].
Twitter beats Reuters, AP, CNN and Sky News on Turkish Jet crash – http://tinyurl.com/bzvmes
Reading: “Twitter beats Reuters etc…” (http://twitthis.com/s288ew)
This is such an interesting study of society and the way we interact and learn about the world. The way it is constantly shifting is fascinating.
Call me old fashioned but I am glad that I didn't know about the crash within 3 seconds of it happening. I feel that to be constantly interrupted by news flashes is a very disruptive way to live ones life.
And it doesn't really matter whether it is a big and sad story like the crash, or finding out that someone is currently deciding between buying the brown leather gloves or the striped wollen ones…..actually it does matter, this total and desperate need to share the miniture of one's day to day life is very very sad; so I never want to know about that.
I think it is an interesting step that anyone can be a journalist, but I will remain convinced for a very long time that the best thing they can do with their news is to pass it to a professional who will disect it, chop it and filter it, before finding a slot for it in daily publication or scheduled tv news programme.
I guess I like to be in charge of my over-scheduled life and would rather pull stuff as and when I want it rather than this force-fed pushed world we are moving to.
just my 2 pennies worth…
steve
Why doesn't somebody invent a way to tag tweets with a single word which can group together entries on a particular topic so, even if you have no followers, your tweets can be found easily?
Oh, they have: http://hashtags.org.
But what about if there's no hashtags, how would you find those tweets with the same word(s), even tweets by people with no followers at all.
Maybe look on http://www.twitscoop.com.
Then again, the last tweets of the passengers may be found here: http://www.cursebird.com.
I'm sure mine would be.
Does MIR need a twitter correspondent? 😉
Maybe CNN has there eye on Twitscoop? That is where I heard about it that morning, or maybe it was the perfect storm of a news event.
Speaking of Nokia N98….
I have a small blog dedicated to the nokia N98 (in Italian language)
where I try to gather information on this new phone for my Italian
audience. Does anybody have any news on the release to market of this
cell phone Nokia N98?
Please let me know.
Thanks if you can share any information
Nokia N98 Fan
http://www.n98.it/
Speaking of Nokia N98….
I have a small blog dedicated to the nokia N98 (in Italian language)
where I try to gather information on this new phone for my Italian
audience. Does anybody have any news on the release to market of this
cell phone Nokia N98?
Please let me know.
Thanks if you can share any information
Nokia N98 Fan
Speaking of Nokia N98….
I have a small blog dedicated to the nokia N98 (in Italian language)
where I try to gather information on this new phone for my Italian
audience. Does anybody have any news on the release to market of this
cell phone Nokia N98?
Please let me know.
Thanks if you can share any information
Nokia N98 Fan