Monday, June 29, 2009

Tip Of The Spear, Part II

Parking deck at Georgia Tech's Centergy Center collapses.

Also follow on Twitter.

6 comments:

Rusty said...

Twitter's growth now reminds me of blog growth here circa 2003: one day recently I realized there are too many people around here with Twitter accounts for me to ever get to know them all. The difference is it wasn't nearly as easy to search all the local blogs as it is to search Twitter. That stream is fascinating.

griftdrift said...

It just amazes me that there may be people who still don't understand what a channel Twitter is for news dissemination. I now get almost all my news from twitter first.

By the way, the AJC once again linked to a Twitter stream today.

Change happening right before our eyes.

Sara said...

I recognized the power of Twitter for the first time when we heard about Tim Russert's death well over an hour before any news outlet reported it. It's as close to real-time as we are going to get, and as it grows we will be more and more likely to have a Twitterer on the ground nearby when news is happening. Why wait for CNN or local news to send a crew, or for the AP to put something on the wire, if you can have Twitpics just minutes after a parking garage collapses?

Of course, last week showed us the downside too with all those rumors about Jeff Goldblum dying on the same day as MJ and Farrah. Verification lags well behind real-time and hoaxing is still pretty easy to accomplish. That is the one big hurdle with Twitter becoming a trusted news source.

griftdrift said...

And when Google Wave debuts....

Unknown said...

Aside from news, I'm finding Twitter is my source for blog links, book reviews, friends photo links, etc.

As far as news, I think it's a good source for breaking news, but I hesitate to RT anything that isn't a fairly sure source. I doubt Twitter will ever become "a trusted news source" but it is a way for trusted news sources to get the news out.

I am a fan of brevity.

Rusty said...

To give a real world example from just a few minutes ago:

I didn't retweet the person who first notified me that Hardin built both the collapsed Botanical Gardens bridge and the parking deck until I verified that was true through an independent source. In this case, that source was the local CBS affiliate.