Twitter proves its worth for timely news
I came back from a run Saturday morning to hear of the tragic shootings in Tucson. CNN and other major news services were reporting that Congresswoman Giffords had died.
As I’m apt to do with any significant news story, I began to follow Twitter to get more timely updates. I wanted to get updates from people on the scene as well as national sources. National sources, no matter their location, could crowd source the story so as to identify leading information.
I monitored the news by setting up a search feed for ‘Giffords’ on Twitter on my iPhone. News started pouring across the screen with the most re-tweeted (crowd sourced) items at the top.
I learned that Congresswoman Gifford’s husband was an astronaut and that he was on his way from Houston, where he was training for the last shuttle mission. I learned that a federal judge had been killed. And much more, including info on the shooter and his YouTube manifestos.
During the course of following Twitter, sources on Twitter told me Congresswoman Gifford was still alive, and in surgery. CNN was still reporting she was dead.
The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones had a similar experience following the shooting on Twitter which he reported on this morning.
When I remarked – on Twitter – how useful a place it had been to watch the news, some immediately responded that it had been full of inaccuracies and that rolling TV news had been a better place to watch. True, you needed to have the television on as well, but it was just as guilty of running with lines that turned out later to be false. The faster the news cycle has become, on television and then online, the more we are likely to hear half-truths and untruths before the clear picture emerges – “never wrong for long”, as some have put it…….Tweeters were also rapidly providing information about the background of the alleged shooter, with links to his bizarre YouTube videos and even grabs of a MySpace page before that was taken down. You can still argue that the television is still the best place to watch live news unfold – but you needed Twitter to get background and the arguments.
Cellan-Jones counters the popular criticism of Twitter that it’s just a fad and that you can’t say much in 140 characters.
It’s long been derided as a vehicle for the vacuous, and a web fad which will fade away as soon as its backers realise it has no realistic business plan…….The other criticism of Twitter, that in 140 characters you just cannot say anything important, really does not hold up. Because it’s the links to other web addresses – shortened by services like bit.ly – which are the website’s most powerful tool. Within minutes, you could see America debating the causes of the incident – the liberal left posting links to Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” message, showing Gabrielle Giffords being “targeted” during the mid-term elections, the right responding with links to similarly inflammatory messages from Democrats.
Many of you as lawyers like to criticize Twitter as a means of getting timely information and as a means of sharing news, insight, and commentary to establish yourself as a reliable and trusted authority. The use of Twitter over the last weekend ought to demonstrate its value.
For lawyers already using Twitter, not so much to share content of your own, but to share news and commentary you are following, you ought to feel more confident than ever that Twitter is here to stay as an information network. An information network which enables you to establish trust as a news source.
Will there be inaccuracies on Twitter? Yes. Just as there are with traditional major news sources. But with so many sources on Twitter, and with more timely updates, the errors will be corrected faster. It will be “never wrong for long” as Cellan-Jones puts it.