When I talk about speed and social web, I’m really just talking about news and how fast it spreads. Without the use of the internet, how would the world know about all the riots that happened in London during last summer? In my opinion the impact of Twitter, Blackberry Messenger and Facebook helped a lot as well as the odd few that used it to spread information about which JD Sports store was next to be raided. We have news channels that bring us news 24/7 but the technology has not allowed them to give us up to date news at 3 o’clock in the morning and this is where social media takes it place. Its straightforwardness is so important to today’s internet obsessed society.
Does anyone on this blog follow Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVitrtual)? I know you’ve heard of him before whether you cared about him or not, his name was passed around in the news at the same time of the capture raid on Osama bin Laden. Athar first heard helicopters during the raid and he shared his updates on Twitter. This guy is a real Twitter legend! Why do so many people follow Lady Gaga when this guy did something for the social world? (I don’t have anything against those who follow Lady Gaga by the way. Someone who has 16 million users is clearly doing something right).
News does move amazingly fast now, especially on Twitter. News reporters nearly always have their Twitter username alongside their name rather than their email address now because it’s just easier to forward news and to be up to date. For a journalist not to have a Twitter account is like them not having a mobile phone today.
I think we also have to account for the power celebrities have these days especially with social interaction. They market and endorse through social networks and could effortlessly make millions just with a couple of words. Celebrities these days don’t have to be supremely talented at what they do, some of them don’t have to be talented at anything at all. Let’s look at Kim Kardashian. No talent, really just a socialite with a pretty face. But she tweeted this to her 11 million something followers:
@KimKardashian: Wow seriously in tears watching this Chilean miners getting released on CNN! What a tough struggle they made it through!!!
How can we calculate the impact of this tweet to her followers?
Soon enough, any sort of news that surfaces will be passed across the globe in a second because of Twitter and Hashtags. (Has anyone seen someone on Facebook hashtag in a post? Does that even work the same way?) I know it is a wrong to reflect on negative news and the thought of “could social networking have helped things?” But could they? If a child gets abducted and someone curiously tweets about something they may have heard or seen, how fast could this news spread to the masses?
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/heres-the-guy-who-unwittingly-live-tweeted-the-raid-on-bin-laden/
You raise an interesting point and a great post I might add :)
ReplyDeleteWhen you compare social networks to traditional media such as 24hr news stations it does look like services such as twitter are getting there first.
For example a twitter user managed to upload the first picture of the US Airways plane which crashed into the Hudson River before the news networks.
However there is one risk to reporting tweets (for example in the case of Sohaib Athar, assuming you even following him) Reliability and rumour. News networks have established guidelines to check sources. Whilst the twitter sphere is open by definition.
I certainly think twitter is a news gathering source I personally feel its not going to replace it. Fear not the blond beauty pageant news readers of today, your P45 isn't coming any time soon..
Any interesting point you raise is how fast ideas and news spread on twitter. I am looking to investigate this as part of my FYP.