Twittering the news

Posted: February 12th, 2009 | Author: James Duncan | Tags: Twitter | Comments Off

In this article about search trends, John Borthwick describe the way that Twitter searches can create a real-time text-based news feed. Rather than waiting hours for a single reporter to research and write a story, these feeds gather the observations of multiple witnesses.

A few weeks later I was on a call with Dave Winer and the Switchabit team — one member of the team (Jay) all of a sudden said there was an explosion outside. He jumped off the conference call to figure out what had happened. Dave asked the rest of us where Jay lived — within seconds he had Tweeted out “Explosion in Falls Church, VA?” Over the next hour and a half the Tweets flowed in and around the issue [...]. What emerged was a minor earthquake had taken place in Falls Church, Virginia. All of this came out of a blend of Dave’s tweet and a real time search platform. The conversations took a while to zero in on the facts — it was messy and rough on the edges but it all happened hours before main stream news, the USGS or any “official” body picked it up the story. Something new was emerging — was it search, news — or a blend of the two.

The web provides the raw facts and lets the reader interpret.

A newer, fresher kind of we report, you decide.

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This blog is mine alone and does not necessarily–or very often–represent the thinking or sentiments of anyone who disagrees with me, my wife, my employer, my friends, my family, my pastor, my brother, my church and, almost certainly, God. After I hit the Publish button, it doesn’t always even reflect my own thinking. It does seem to often reflect the thinking of Tommy F, Twit Conway and some guy in Minnesota, however.

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Twittering the news

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