I just read the article that Twitter beats news story reports earlier than online news sites. The story was on Techmeme and other technology blog sites. Lately there has been a lot of noise about how useful twitter is and how it is helping these tech bloggers break news even before anyone can post.
All this crazy non-sense started me thinking the whole purpose that these tech bloggers are going after. Now who cares if a news story breaks 3 minutes before a major news site breaks it. For many of the readers, whats more important is the content and substance not just breaking headlines.
So, techcrunch Michael Arrogant mentioned recently that he cannot live without twitter and how its a journalistic arsenal. I agree with him, but I think many who subscribe to those thoughts just care of breaking headlines and who beats who, instead of substance.
Many people I know and have talked to mentioned the same thing. They do not care if a particular news site breaks a headline 3 minutes earlier. What they care about is "Predictable, Reputable content that can be trusted".
Case in point: how many of M. Arrogants stories proved to be false. They seem to be chasing rumors of this and that using twitter and many of these does not pan out.
So, who do I trust?
NYTimes Journalist - who waits to corroborate the story and are delligent in giving THE correct story or bloggers who use twitter and jump up and down to break stories early without going through the pain of corroborating thier stories.
Well, I will stick with true and tried stories and bloggers/journalists who corroborate thier stories.
References:
http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/12/quake-in-china/
