[Infowarrior] - Twitter is the New CNN

[Richard Forno]

Twitter is the New CNN
ARTICLE DATE:  05.03.10
By  Lance Ulanoff

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=250555,00.asp?hidPrint=true

A new study paints the popular micro-blogging service Twitter in a whole new light and sets it up to take on traditional news media.

Here's something I've always known about Twitter: It's about information not socialization. Twitter's called a "micro-blogging" service, after all. If it were all about social interaction, perhaps it would be described as a micro-social network. Of course, with millions and millions of users, Twitter is anything but micro.

And now, my Twitter hypothesis has some academic support. A group of Korean researchers recently completed and presented the results of a unique quantitative study that paints Twitter, in fairly stark terms, as the likely future of news.

Here are some of their more interesting findings:

Twitter isn't like a social network because it's not "mutual."
On Facebook, we have to friend each other to really engage. On Twitter, people will follow you if you're interesting and they get something out of it, even if you never follow them back. That sounds a lot like the reasons why people buy The New Yorker, subscribe to a newspaper, or watch a particular television news program.

Following equals subscribing.
Is there any clearer signal that Twitter is an information and news service than this? My Twitter stream is, for all intents and purposes, a feed. I wonder if I should rename my followers "subscribers."

Twitter fits the definition of a "news medium."
Tell me if anything in the following definition does not fit Twitter. Medium: The means of communication, as radio, television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely.

Tweeters talk about timely topics.
Not only do we talk about timely topics, people on Twitter break news and, as the study notes, Twitter spreads information rapidly via digital word of mouth. How quickly did you learn on Twitter about Flight 1549 or the car bomb in Times Square?

Twitter is full of timely tweets.
Twitter members do not, as they sometimes do in forums and other social networks, talk about old news. The majority of the tweets are about topics that occurred yesterday or, more likely, today.

User participation is tied to timely topics.
Twitter's user patterns actually align with major global events. Again, this is much more like a news service, such as CNN, Fox News, or CNBC. During the economic meltdown, CNBC's ratings skyrocketed. The researchers observed Twitter's numbers rise during the Iran Election and just about anything to do with Apple.

Headlines, headlines, headlines.
If you follow my Twitter stream, then this isn't news to you. Typically, I post headlines with a little analysis thrown in. I like to think of  my Twitter feeds as my own tiny little newspaper. Apparently, I'm not alone. The researchers found that 53 percent of tweets are headlines; 31 percent fall into the "ephemeral" category.

Most of the activity on Twitter is driven by super users.
These users form super information hubs. The researchers were a bit unclear about how these power users generate more and more followers, though I think one of their theories "Recommendation by Twitter" is partly right. How they generate followers aside, the concept of a small cadre of influential Twitter users, once again, aligns with the news media model. So while everyone likes to talk about the democratization of news, it's really the same old story. A relatively small group of people are delivering the news and most Twitter users are simply passing along what they've learned.

Those with many followers tweet more.
Those with the most followers tweet the most. This helps drive the "one to one million" Twitter hop. So, one person tweets breaking news and, potentially, one million see it because thousands retweet it. It's the last part where Twitter is actually more efficient than traditional news media. Stories from CNN or the print edition of The New York Times may be retold to a handful of people, but it's hard for the average person to disseminate information without a platform like Twitter. One caveat here, however, is that researchers found what most on Twitter have known for a long time, there are many followers, and people on Twitter in general, who do not tweet or retweet at all.

Everyone tweets news, especially the top users.
Twitter is turning everyone into news reporters. The Korean researchers found that everyone from sports stars to musicians and actors are tweeting or retweeting headline news. I probably tweet more general news than I would write about on PCMag.com. It's simply the nature of the service.

It's a miracle that so much news does get through.
Most retweets, it turns out, get retweeted just once. So, how does so much news get disseminated on Twitter effectively? One retweet almost guarantees hundreds of additional content readers. Those readers may then go on to create a new tweet based on the news content. While I generally retweet news, there are times when I feel the need to recast the topic with an entirely new tweet. It's like a newspaper's concept of a "write-through" (non-reported write-up of someone else's reporting or a press release).

Tweeting is real- time.
Most retweets happen within the first hour, which is how Twitter's information flow remains timely. This makes sense. When I follow a Tweeted news link, I pay close attention to the date on the story and the time stamp of the tweet before I retweet. According to the study, 35 percent of retweets happen in the first 10 minutes. Timeliness is, of course, a hallmark of news media.

Clearly, it's time for us to stop describing Twitter as a social medium, or even a micro-blogging service. It's an information dissemination platform. At this moment, Twitter users and the news media are leveraging Twitter to disseminate news, but that could change. If more users start to view Twitter the way I do, as their own personal news service, then traditional news media will need to view Twitter in a new light, too—as a competitor.