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MySpace put social networking on the map, the Facebook made social networking popular, and now Twitter might just make social networking relevant. Whoa wait a minute . . . Twitter relevant? . . . Really? Yes and now more than ever!
I’m constantly hearing questions and comments in the vain of “what’s the purpose of Twitter” or “I don’t care about the everyday miniscule happenings of people’s lives.” The latter comment refers to people’s incessant commentary like “Going to the bathroom now”, “Just got back from the bathroom”, and “I’m reading John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government while doing my business in the bathroom.”
While we all agree that useless information doesn’t add any substance to our ever expanding noggins, Twitter can provide real-time and uncensored broadcasts from the places where news happens. The Iranian election uprising marks only the most recent and obvious example of how Twitter is useful as a “Spread the Word” type of device. When Twitter broke the news about the Iranian election and its resulting riots and government censorship, CNN was busy broadcasting reruns of Larry King Live!
We can’t knock down the news networks for not covering these types of stories; it’s impossible for them to be anywhere at anytime (especially when cameras and cell phones get suddenly banned by a country’s government). Unfortunately for the TV networks, Twitter can provide news updates at anytime, from anywhere, and by anybody. We don’t fault the network, but we do notice the weakness.
Twitter becomes an outsourcing of the news from our field reporters to the everyday person on the street. Thomas Friedman speaks to the world’s everyday navigation toward globalization in The World is Flat. Since everyday people can now broadcast the news as it happens, Twitter has essentially flattened the reporting business by providing a more efficient way of spreading the word. The news networks that can collect, analyze, and rebroadcast the news coming in over social networking websites like Twitter will survive . . . the rest will become irrelevant and outdated.
Woah . . . all of a sudden Twitter has become relevant and we actually have to start questioning the relevancy of our TV news stations.
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4 comments:
I disagree to an extent. Twitter is relevant now and may continue to be for a while but Facebook offers essentially the same service if people choose to use it as such. I think twitter was the beginning of something but it won't be the end. Personally I still find the medium to much of a pain to actually follow. I'd much rather subscribe to a CNN RSS feed where CNN does report in near real time.
Disagree with your disagreement to an extent. Facebook almost offers the same service, but falls short because you only get feeds and updates from your friends (to my knowledge). Twitter has a little sidebar with the hot topic issues.
Well, I don't use the feature but fair enough. Touche my friend, touche.
From Brian Smith:
Whilst pondering Twitter's relevance I searched for it on Wikipedia and lo and behold it has it's own page. Since Wikipedia is the ultimate source of knowledge, and Twitter is on there, it must be relevant...case closed.
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