Twitter goddamn useless: the WWW equivalent of scribbling on the bathroom wall

You'll be great in upper management since you seem to love Twitter.

 

When I'm trying to read factual information, whether a news story or a historical story, I have zero need for errors (aka "noise") in my reading that I have to somehow identify as such (aka "tune out.").

I can only imagine how many "The Lunar Module crashed into the moon's surface!" tweets we would have had to endure during the suspenseful Apollo 11 landing had Twitter been around then. And during Apollo 13, they would have been declared dead a few million times.

 

What I meant by that is follow the right people. I don't really follow too many friends (and those I do, don't post often), so I'm not getting the back and forth between people picking up every rumor. Someone tweeted to me it was the same person as the missing Brown student and I responded I wouldn't tweet that until I see actual confirmation.

I said it before: I knew well before our newsroom when Bin Laden was killed. They had no clue for a long time. Ditto with this Watertown incident. They shook it off as "well, just on Twitter." And I said, "well those Tweets are coming off the actual Boston emergency system scanner from multiple people."

Twitter has a usefulness. I'm sorry if some can't see it that way.

 

No reputable journalist would rely on Twitter as a source for anything. Anyone can post anything on there. "Hi, I'm bigfoot. I just ate your poodle for lunch!"

 

Mark2010 and Starman, fighting the good fight together.

 

Twitter is the electronic age's equivalent of gossip at the local pub. No more, no less.

 

I always say Twitter is like taking your ass and sticking it out the window for all to see. Just make sure it's covered.

Our local coaches would be mortified at the stuff their players tweet sometimes.

 

As the proliferation of "truthers" of all kinds show, much of modern America has much less interest in factual, truthful reporting than in off-the-hip bullshit that can later be co-opted to serve different purposes.

And, yes, Twitter sucks. Because a good journalist spends as much time thinking and writing as they can before deadline. I am not really sure how to describe someone who posts everything a "source" tells them to twitter first thing, but it's not good journalism.

I have long wondered if lazy journalists love twitter because it allows the athletes to voice themselves to everyone all at once -- and therefore allows them to spend less time standing around in a locker room, doing their job, waiting and trying to get a player to talk.

 

Mark2010, Twitter is like any other medium. Some people are more reputable than others. To dismiss something you read it on Twitter is like saying you don't believe something because you heard it on TV, or on a phone call. What matters isn't the medium in which you learned it, it's who you learned it from. This is the same ignorance that called things "Internet rumors" 10 years ago. Question the source, not the method of delivery.

 

Seconded. I found Twitter a good source of information during last week's attacks, and the subsequent man hunt. That said, there was a lot of misinformation on the Twitterverse, and alot of people waxing political on what should happen to the suspects, and what law enforcement measures should or shouldn't apply. Needless to say, I "unfollowed" quite a few folks.

You just have to take what you read on Twitter with a grain of salt. Multiple credible media outlets were reporting conflicting things about Suspect #2's capture. Some said he was dead, some were saying he was being cuffed and put into a cruiser. Despite some of the erroneous reports, it turned out that there were plenty of credible details out there being reported in real-time (such as the UMass Dartmouth connection, the hide and seek in the boat and most amazingly - Suspect #2's twitter account, which was verified by some of his classmates).

 

Many conspiracy theories "prove" their legitimacy by pointing out all the disparities between various news sources in the initial hours after a tragedy. There is a cost to being wrong by running the latest reports up the flagpole as soon as you get them.

 

ZOMG!!! Twitter reports explosions at White House!!! ZOMG!!!!111!!

Scribble scribble scribble