TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

Scoble and Twitter in the Borneo Bulletin: the future of news?

Wow - a funny occurence, in light of my growing interest in Twitter of late. I was flipping through the Borneo Bulletin at a cafe in Brunei, and amidst the coverage of the catastrophic earthquake in China, stumbled across coverage of none other than the tech blogosphere’s two darlings: Robert “Andrew” Scoble and Twitter. It looks like a wire excerpt, but still fascinating to see in a tabloid format local Borneo paper…

“Twitters Beat Media in Reporting China Quake (Sanfrancisco, AFP): The world had real-time new about China’s massive earthquake as victim’s dashed out Twitter text messages while it took place, in what was being touted Tuesday as microblogging outshining mainstream news. As the earth shook with tragic consequences, people in parts of China that felt the quake used their mobiles to send terse messages provided by the San Fransisco-based Twitter Inc. News of the deadly catastrophe reached Twitter devotees such as blogger Andrew Scoble in San Francisco even before the massive tremblor, which killed more than 12,000 people in Szechuan province, was reported by news organizations and the earthquake-tracking US Geological Survey. “Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake while it was going on!” Scoble wrote in his popular Scobleizer blog. Twitters are abbreviated text messages that can be instantly posted on online bulletin boards and personal websites and sent to the mobile phones of selected friends.

For me, this post, found in this paper in this place highlights the parallelism rapidly emerging between the blogosphere and mainstream media: for breaking news and on the ground reporting, blogs and micro-blogging services are rapidly becoming the global-standard destination. Connecting web users and mobile users, first world and third, journalism with ad-hoc/off-the-cuff/street-cred reporting, the net is the first place more and more are turning - in the developing world, its setting a precedent that will shape the evolution of nascent news/communications/entertainment industries. The mainstream media is assuming a new shape as well: in depth coverage, background research, and historical context are services that are more easily provided by a news organization…

Anyway, in a nutshell: blogs/microblogging provides instant, unfiltered news; MSM provides a longer term perspective on a given story. Both have a place, neither is mutually exclusive. Its late, I’m tired, I hope this point is coming across - more on this later.