- Mar. 2: Lessons to be Learned by Legacy Media
- Feb. 18: New News Site Mirrors Others
- Jan. 4: 2010 New Media Trends
Twitter Tips: Today’s Must-Have Tool for Citizen Journalists
By Amy Gahran,
I, Reporter
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| Twitter has fast become one of the most popular and useful social media services. |
When a major earthquake struck Sichuan province, China, on May 12, 2008, the very first reports came from cell-phone-powered eyewitnesses in the affected region. Before the ground even completely stopped shaking, people were firing off text messages announcing the quake. Some of those messages went to a popular social media service that integrates easily with both cell phones and computers: Twitter.
Once word of the Chinese quake hit Twitter, the world took notice. In fact, according to a detailed analysis by Search Engine Land, the news broke on Twitter a full three minutes before even the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Center announced the quake.
From those first moments, Twitter users around the world were instantly sharing quake-related news, resources, and personal accounts. In fact, for several hours famed blogger Robert Scoble became a one-man China quake info clearinghouse, funneling information to his more than 25,000 Twitter followers.
Similarly (but on a smaller scale), on May 22, 2008, a large tornado struck Windsor, Colo., just 50 miles from my home in Boulder. I was first alerted to my local severe weather via Twitter - by a friend who lives in California! I then used a combination of Twitter and mainstream news sites to track events. I instantly shared what I was learning as I learned it via Twitter, sending updates to more than 700 of my friends, colleagues, and other interested people - many of whom I don’t even know, but they’ve chosen to get updates from me.
From a citizen media perspective, that’s pretty powerful. Not only can anyone’s news matter - it can matter fast!
As a “microblog,” Twitter is built for speed. Posts are capped at 140 characters and can be updated via the Web or cell phone text messages, meaning even if you happen upon breaking news and don’t have your laptop handy, you can still break the story.
Over the last several months Twitter has finally hit its stride as a leading tool for finding and sharing timely information from all sorts of places and sources. Its usefulness for breaking news is obvious. However, Twitter is equally useful for tracking ongoing stories and issues, getting fast answers or feedback, finding sources, building community, collaborating on coverage, and discovering emerging issues or trends.
All this from a free service that only lets you post text messages up to 140 characters long. Well, it’s amazing what you can say and do in just 140 characters.
In this learning module I’ll explain why citizen journalists should use Twitter and how to get started with Twitter. I’ll also show how using Twitter on a daily basis can improve your citizen journalism. I’ll recommend some handy Twitter tools, and I’ll warn you about some Twitter pitfalls and shortcomings.
NEXT: Top 10 Reasons Why Citizen Journalists Should Use Twitter
Comments
this article was so great. thank you. does anyone know if there is a way that citizen journalists can post breaking news right to the home page of my site? i can, of course, as i configured it that way, but can others do so my twittering me?
I’m not a journalist, but as an internet strategist behind many very successful and high profile marketing campaigns, I’ve been interviewed by journalists AND I know quite a lot about Twitter.
I’m rather sure that the Twitter Tips I’ve researched and tested below, will be of great benefit to journalists. Perhaps not every tip, but from 100, you’ll certainly find a gold nugget or two.
http://twittinsecrets.com
I want to say: this article was so great. thank you.
I didn’t know anything about it before. Bravo!
Great article. Twitter is already one of the most popular news websites and will only continue to gain popularity over time. Definitely a fantastic site!
Hi. I like your article, it is well written. I believe that Twitter is very useful when it comes to spreading news. Have you heard about the terrorists attacks in India? people already know what happened before the attacks were being aired on the news…and it’s because of Twitter! now, with the use of Twitter, I think every citizen can become journalists, too.
Yeah, really great article. Twitter is very useful for beginners
Great writing. I am really indebted to Twitter for some reasons.
I am also not a journalist, but this article is for me very interesting. I work on the Internet.
I was debating on if i should really start using twitter or not recently. With these new tips i think I’m actually going to give it a shot! Thanks a ton.
Twitter has been a great tool for people of different categories,I have been noticing the alexa of twitter for a while they were around 1500 alexa just 6 months and now they are around 200-300, that is a great improvement. Twitter will always be popular. Thanks for such a nice article
Thans for this post. I love how we are all slowly finding the power of decentralized media reporting.
I’m putting together a video tutorial series on how to be a citizen journalist and video journalist.
I’d love to talk to you about it if you are interested in helping contribute.
Hope all is well…
Arin Crumley
This information is great, definitely these kind of strategies would work pretty good and make businesses grow.
very good article, twitter is a good place to go to keep up with just about anything you need to know. thx
You only have to look at what happened in Iran around the elections to see how powerful Twitter can be as a journalistic tool. I’m sure it was never conceived in that way.