Twitter Power

LeShenanigan from this week led to several realizations regarding Twitter.

1) For the maximum exposure to the LeBron update, I was sitting in front of tv with my laptop, refreshing both the espn.com and the twitter feed.  Not only was Twitter the most abundant with the new information, it was also the most entertaining.  High production value, talking heads, and fancier types of media still could not compete with 140 characters of fresh information delivered to me real-time through a live feed.

Furthermore, for "breaking news" situations, it seems Twitter benefits even more from the improvement of mobile hardware.  Twitter w/ a mobile device allows a reporter to bypass several steps (i.e. acquire information >> report) compared to pre-twitter era (i.e. acquire information >> find a platform to emanate information >> parse/package information to the specs of platform >> report).

2) Its character limit and indiscrimination of users (i.e. anyone, from the expert to Joe-the-plumber, can add his/her 2 cents) have allowed the pundits to disparage twitter from being a viable news source.  That's missing the point.  Regardless of whether you think this way of exchange information is inferior to the existing way or not, "this way" is hear to stay -- I think Twitter is more than just a phenomenon, and the information exchange process Twitter has helped invented/defined will be around even when/if Twitter:the company goes down.

Potential reasons why:

   - Instant Gratification: News is no different; you want it now.  I think the speed at which the information is being delivered increasingly holds more weight now to the point that, not to say the integrity of the information is no longer important, how fast you get the information from t(0) is just as important.

     So, in the function:

          Usefulness of information = f(speed of information, integrity of information)

     It's a lot more acceptable now to compromise the integrity of the information with the speed of delivery.  Yesterday, the most-used phrase among all twitter feeds was a variation of "Source/s says/say/said."  It may be premature to make the announcement before the information/sources have been verified, but taking that chance doesn't have as big of a stigma.

   - Facts Vs. Opinions: You search for all tweets containing the keyword "LeBron James," and the engine spews out a live feed that's a jambalaya of reported facts and Joe Shmoes' editorials.  Pundits think this is a big deal because the result (i.e. live feed) isn't "pure."  I think these pundits are discrediting the herd's (i.e. our) intelligence/common sense.  (Crossing my fingers) as you come to deal with bits and pieces of information throughout your life, I believe that you grow an eye for what are facts and what are opinions.  Once you're effectively able to extract the facts out of the jambalaya of information, is it so bad to formulate your opinion based on what you have extracted?

     We are now crossing the line of no longer having to make sense by providing facts (my high school English teacher is crying somewhere) -- maybe the line itself between the facts and the opinions is being diluted from this, but wouldn't the wisdom of the crowds eventually win out?

   - "Live Feed" Vs. "Dead Text:" As I was getting into Twitter, I realized how different this was from, for example, learning something from reading the New Yorker.  Realizing this also made me think about the current struggles of print media.  I'm not sure whether the print media is adapting/changing quickly enough to align itself with how people emanate/absorb information.  When people are expecting real-time updates on the topic of interest through a live feed but you're still delivering your information/editorial in a manner of "written-in-stone," wouldn't this be inevitable that people are turned off by such a method of delivery?

The print media is betting much of their livelihood on the advent of Kindle and iPad.  I think this is the right direction.  But their salvation may lie in more than just adapting to the hardware improvement.  Maybe Twitter (or something that's built upon its principle) is the software-equivalent of what the industry should adapt to in order to persevere.

3) Kind of a cute thought -- maybe this was how the true democracy in the ancient Greek court worked.