Twitter delivers the news faster than the media

There are still enough people that don’t get what all this social networking/microblogging thing is about. I was one of them, when I first learned about Twitter when it launched. I mean, why should I inform the public of what I am doing? Why is it so important to post details about my (probably meaningless to others) daily activities? Heck, I was even negative to blogs at first. Social networks, I deterred from for some time. But Twitter? Come on, that’s absurd!

But after some time, I realised that focused people posting articles about their domain of expertise was a good thing and blogging is not useless after all. The social stuff was harder to grasp though; I admit that I wasn’t an early adopter to Facebook, MySpace or the rest of the social networks. For quite some time, I stayed away from them, but then I started to realize the potential that comes from connecting to people. There’s no better advertising than virally spreading the news to your connections, and they forward it to theirs and so on. It’s fun too.

But Twitter? Posting status updates in 140 characters? Why go back to a primitive Internet-style SMS when we’ve got computers, and Internet, social networks- I couldn’t get it. But as in all things, it’s more probable to grasp the idea of something if you participate in it, rather than judging as an observer.

The power of microblogging

Had it been only for status updates, I’d still consider it silly, but it turned out that Twitter evolved into the so-called micro-blogging platform which has potential and momentum. Messages are instant, short (hence easier to read), spread around all followers immediately, it allows personal communication and it’s accessible on-the-go from virtually anywhere on Earth there’s cell signal. If you provide useful content, people follow you and get informed; you can evangelize and promote your stuff and services; you can get the news first.

Get the news first? There’s no “breaking news” sessions in Twitter, that’s only in TV. But the latest tragic incidents in India, showcase (in a very sad way) that the microblogging platform is not only a news source, but the news come faster than traditional media. At least that’s what Arrington claims, and I agree with him. In fact, when I read about the Mumbai attacks on Twitter messages from the people I follow, I asked my wife “hey what’s going on in India?” but she didn’t know, even though she was on the TV.

Uses and abuses of the microblogging wonder

Twitter may not be the most credible news source out there (but is the media credible anyway?) since people can always lie. But when many people seem to claim the same thing and it reaches a critical mass, it becomes a reality. When, for example, you witness the public timeline and everybody’s talking about the attacks, you can’t claim it’s false news, there’s no way all these people would lie at the same time.

But there are cases where people could lie. Think of it, even before Twitter and the Internet, rumors still spread fast and many times they were proven wrong, but it would take longer to span the globe. Today, with the power of the interconnection of billions of people, a malevolent rumor can spread like wildfire affecting millions of people before they get a chance to distrust it. For example, imagine how some fake news could impact the stock market, if some “insider” claimed something “hot” is going on. I bet that a hoax about Steve Job’s heart attack originating from a paramedic (perhaps with a photo attachment of poor Steve in the ambulance) and then being confirmed by numerous other witnesses and insiders, could travel faster than an official statement of Apple about the matter (and Apple is indeed a bit slow when it comes to press releases).

When a critical mass of people lie, that lie becomes a reality. It may not be true, but all that matters is what people believe to be true.

Power to the people

Traditionally, the power of information was a privilege of the media, so when people begin to claim back some part of it, it sure is not a small thing. De-centralizing the news sources and spreading it to individuals around the globe could potentially harm long-standing balances in society. People-casting is radically different from news media, yet quite powerful. The strange thing with people is that there are too many of us and almost totally uncoordinated, yet from within this soup of (mostly useless) information, patterns begin to emerge and it’s not at all improbable for a small piece of information to cause a “hurricane” in a worldwide scale. It’s chaotic, and it can’t be controlled.

I’m pretty sure more and more power will come to the hands of individuals and if the media don’t jump on this wagon they’ll probably regret it. But perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this interconnected information chaos is how it can be (ab)used to deliberately inject information into the network. Will the people maintain the power of information-anarchy, or are they simply going to be the medium through which the same old powers are going to rule the world?