Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

That’s the slogan twitter could go with, considering everything that has happened within the last couple weeks. It all started on June 12, with the Iran Election debacle with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being declared the winner over Mir-Hossein Mousavi with Mousavi claiming vote fraud. Since then, with many news outlets unable to report from Iran to discuss the current chaos, people have been relying on Twitter to communicate with the rest of the world, and has been at the top of twitter’s ‘trending topics’ section for the last week and a half.

That is, until yesterday happened. Twitter was where I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, found out about Farrah Fawcett’s passing. Though her passing was not a surprise, it was still a newsworthy event that created a lot of discussion. Fans paid tribute to her in their own ways on Twitter the entire morning. This story dominated the conversation and the ‘trending topics’ section until 4:40pm central standard time.

At that time, when I refreshed my twitter page, I noticed that Michael Jackson was #9 on the ‘trending topics’ section. Upon clicking it, I find that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest. The source was TMZ. I read the brief article, even refreshed it to make sure I was seeing things correctly. Upon the refresh, they had a new update about his condition. At 4:50, people on twitter were posting links to TMZ reporting Jackson’s passing. I instantly checked @cnnbrk, cnn.com and cnn.com/live, abcnews.com, nytimes.com, latimes.com, bbc.co.uk; a few of the mentioned sites were just breaking that he was sent to a hospital, with no further information. It was around 5:15 locally when some sites were finally reporting his passing. That is a 25 minute gap from when I found the story verifying his passing on twitter to when very reputable news sources reported it. Twitter had an overflow of people talking about is passing, and effectively crashed twitter for a few minutes. Jackson’s passing was 1-4 on the ‘trending topics’ right after, and currently holds six of the top ten topics: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9.

The above stories are only the most recent examples of how social media, in this case: twitter, kept myself and millions of others in the loop for current events of all types. I found out about former Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad’s passing on twitter an hour before any local news sources reported it. I found out about US Airways Flight 1549 and the crash into the Hudson River from twitter. This image was taken by a person on a ferry, who was able to post it to his twitpic account. Anyone with a cell phone and an internet connection has the ability to be a reporter, and the ability to share their story instantly.

I will use twitter and the people I follow as my number one news source. Since twitter does not censor regulate what people say (freedom of speech), I still check more reputable news sites to get verification. Recently, there were false reports of Patrick Swayze’s passing that spread fast through the social media community. As with any news report, you must consider the source.

My choice source: twitter, the number one news source.