One of the more interesting things to come out of the controversial presidential elections in Iran is how Twitter is becoming a powerful and valuable way to report the news. The “reports” via Twitter from ABC’s Jim Sciutto are a perfect example of Twitter as a news dissemination platform.
Given how Twitter is becoming a way to distribute and report the news, it raises the idea about whether Twitter should evolve into a news platform. By that, I wonder whether it’s time for Twitter to launch Twitter News – much like Google launched the highly-popular Google News.
Twitter News would provide Twitter with a variety of benefits:
1. Create an even higher profile and attract more traffic
2. Provide a valuable tool to see the news in real-time from millions of “reporters”
3. Put the spotlight on Twitter’s ability to do real-time indexing.
4. Establish Twitter as a news organization or, at least, an interesting players within the news ecosystem.
The popularity of Tweetmeme and similar sites illustrate there is demand and interest in Twitter’s ability to provide a different take on what’s happening around the world and what people are talking about.
I’m not sure where Twitter News would fit into Twitter’s strategic priorities but it’s an entity that could probably be created pretty quickly given the company’s growing number of employees.
For more on Twitter and the Iranian election, check out ReadWriteWeb. As well, Andrew Sullivan has an interesting blog post on the news coming out of Iran via Twitter.
2 Comments
Hey Mark
Have you seen Conan's feature "Twitter Tracker"? It cracks me up.
-Robo
Robo,
I haven't seen the "Twitter Tracker" but will check it out.
Thanks.