A Nerd and a Blog.
Archive for August, 2010
The Mystery of Twitter: Why Some People Are Confused
544 days
by Brad
in Uncategorized
If you spend much time on forums, in places like Digg, etc., you’ll notice a trend: there’s a group of people who cannot see why people use Twitter.
There are different uses for Twitter. Companies and Celebrities alike have found it as a way to reach out directly to their masses, 140 characters at a time.
However, for the average user, there are many more ways to use Twitter. But to use Twitter properly, you have to understand what Twitter is.
Imagine, for a moment, Twitter as the offspring of SMS, RSS, and Social Networking. SMS is the technical term for Text Messaging. RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication, and it’s used by websites to update you the end user with their content through an RSS feed (basically, an RSS feed finds the stuff you want for you). And finally, most people know what social networking is.
So, outside of things you follow like your favorite Clebs, the USGS, NASA, etc., you can also follow your friends. You can also select some friends for mobile following, meaning their tweets are sent to you by text message, and you can update by text or phone app. Like RSS, it finds things posted by friends and things you’re interested in, into your timeline. Like SMS, you can communicate with your circle of friends and family instantly with only one text or tweet, thus augmenting your social network.
It’s not for posting long blogs, or updates on everything you do (some people think that posting bodily functions is part of the Twitter experience, no body cares). It’s about updating simple things, thoughts, etc. on the go.
This is what confuses some people. “If you can’t post a long blog post, why would you want to post 140 character messages? Who cares?” Well, your friends might if you update on your Twitter: “Flat tire sucks, even worse on the freeway” or fun things like “New rollercoaster at Theme Park is AWESOME.”
It takes a little creativity to know when to use Twitter, and with services like Twitpic and Trunc.it, you can expand your Twitter experience, but you still need to know when and where to use it. As you can tell I don’t Tweet very often, and for good reason: I don’t have that much that is that interesting, but when I move, I will.
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Journalism and the Future
The closure of newspapers means for us as Americans that we will have less accountability, less access to information, and just generally less. Journalists are an important piece of the puzzle in our country.
However, this is a scene that doesn’t need to happen. The outright closure of a newspaper never needs to occur, even if that is what the corporate bodies upstairs decide.
Journalism in our country needs to take a refreshing evaluation of itself and realizes different mediums call for different types of reporting:
Truth be told, part of the reason newspapers are dying is because they are focusing on the wrong stories. They try to report stories that are instant, immediate, and not suitable for the morning after. Newspapers are an amazing medium for in-depth investigative journalism. Not weather, not sports scores, but serious hard hitting journalism that takes a page and a half to discuss and dive into.
My advice? Newspapers in our country need to move from daily editions to weekly editions in areas that are not lucritive. I fully expect daily editions of NYT, LAT, and a few other big name papers, but by and large, most papers don’t need to be daily. There isn’t enough news. Weekly or biweekly print, featuring in-depth investigative stories, longer articles, and a ‘week in review’ of top headlines people may have missed has a better chance of saving newspapers.
That, or going to an entirely web-based system and again, focusing less on daily reporting of stories also seen on TV.
You can make money in Journalism, and still have most of your reporting staff if you ask them not to run around town chasing top stories likely seen on the news, but investigating and seeking out.
News agencies need to figure out how to adapt to our current world of electronic print, or they will continue to die off.