practicehacker

In “How Twitter is Changing the Face of Media” @Mashable guest poster @SorenG shares his take on how the micro-blog phenom is affecting the 5th Estate. In his estimation the big changes brought about by Twitter are

• Our News – items get around via reTweet – more immediate than RSS or Blogs
• People Power - “news” is no longer just what “they” say it is; now it can be what the mob says it is
• Competition – just because it comes from a given source doesn’t make it news; everyone is a source today
• Personality – news is more pesronal when it is local and affects your narrow interest or interest group
• Interactivity – reaction and interaction could be more important and interesting than the story itself

I should be all for these changes. Strangely however, I’m on the fence. Here’s why. People-powered information sounds great and has the potential to be much better for society than information being in the hands of the newserati. But when it comes to us in an immediate, raw, unfiltered feed, news still should be vetted and processed before it is trusted. The alternative could easily be panic caused by a cascade of misinformation.

Still, that’s the democracy of Twitter – everyone has a chance to succeed and an even bigger chance to fail.