Twitter

Let me say it first and foremost in 5 short words: I do not like Twitter.

Why, you may ask?

Twitter, to me, is just a version of Facebook's "status" updates, except people are more obsessed with it. And apparently, after scouring the website, people seem to use it to describe every moment of their day. Not exactly something I would consider newsworthy. However, some news organizations believe that this could be newsworthy.

@Bostonupdate, the twitter account for Boston.com news updates, is basically a complete failure. First of all, it's the same thing you get in the RSS feed except without a few sentences saying what the headline is all about. I'd rather just go to the Boston.com webpage, or go to Google reader, rather than "follow" them on twitter and end up on their webpage reading the rest of the story.

I briefly (read: for less than a day) followed @mumbai, to see what updates were coming out from Mumbai during the terrorist attacks. I'd consider this newsworthy, although I couldn't tell you who or what runs this account.

Some guy named @joethunk continues to post every hour or so a bunch of #googlenews links through his account. I don't really see the point, and if he's trying to be newsworthy and helpful, because I don't think he's doing that much.

Twitter altogether is just too confusing to figure out in itself with all the @ and the # and after awhile, it just gives me a headache. It says from Twitter's about us page that "In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends." Twitter, clearly, wants to be a newsworthy source. But the whole play-by-play of events can be taken a bit too far, like the example from the Rocky Mountain News funeral coverage that was covered in class. I feel that Twitter is more of a weapon for journalists than a tool, because I don't think it is helpful enough or relevant enough for journalists to use on a regular basis.