Twitter is one of those web 2.0 services that gets mentioned when technologically minded newspaper types talk about the future of the industry. I signed up a month ago and it’s both better and worse than I expected (let’s not get into Twitter’s chronic downtime issues). It’s essentially blogging in 140 characters or less but the real draw, at least for information publishers, is that an organization can push headlines to mobile devices thereby driving traffic to their main site.
The problem with this concept? Organizations are trying to push headlines to mobile devices thereby driving traffic to their main sites … burying the stuff I actually care about under a wave of inane links. I’ve stopped following the Seattle PI and the New York Times, which is painful because I need some journalism content to justify connecting at work, but the updates got to be too much (careful APRN, you might be next).
At any rate, even in a tech hub like Seattle, the PI can only manage 142 followers. A search on ‘Anchorage’ shows 155 total users listing the city as their location so Twitter is not likely to do much for us back at adn.com. It’s certainly not worth the effort, at least not yet.
But Twitter does work as a social network — I’ve ‘met’ local media professionals via the service and have been able to keep in touch with colleagues in other states — and it can work as a news service if there’s a strong voice delivering the tweets (unfortunate term, but what can you do?). I am completely hooked on NASA’s Mars Phoenix feed. Their Phoenix Twitter updates managed to capture the entry, descent and landing of the lander in something like real time (side note: my new dream job is making videos for NASA.
So my best friend turns out to be a robot. On another planet.
