Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says that he wants to create a Twitter news service — “something that would be very open and shared with many different news organizations around the world.”
During an interview on Reuters Television, Stone said he is eager to utilize the millions of tweets that pass through Twitter’s servers for what would essentially be a news wire. Twitter wouldn’t manage a Twitter news service alone, though; Stone envisions that it would be a partnership with other news organizations with a focus on being open.
Stone also said that a Twitter news network would help news organizations keep in touch with people on the ground. We’ve seen this in action with the Iran Election crisis, the Haiti Earthquake and many other world events. Because tweets come in at lightning speeds, they provide a wealth of on-the-ground information to news networks not available just a few years ago.
Since that interview though, Twitter’s head of communications Sean Garrett has stated that Twitter is not working on a news network. That’s not a surprise; Biz Stone is known to talk about off-the-wall concepts using his rather impressive imagination. Still, that doesn’t mean a Twitter news service isn’t a good idea.
Twitter should (eventually) build a news wire for media organizations. Here’s what it should look like:
Twitter Doesn’t Want or Need to Be CNN
Before we get worked up by the hype of a Twitter news service, let’s be very clear: If Twitter ever built something for media outlets, it wouldn’t be a “news network.” In other words, don’t expect Biz Stone to be anchoring a Twitter TV network where he reads tweets off as if they are indisputable news facts (though we’d pay to see that). Instead, what Stone is talking about is creating a firehose of relevant tweets that news organizations can use when stories are breaking.
In that regard, a Twitter news service would be more like its firehose partnership with Gnip than last year’s rumored Twitter TV show, a rumor the company quickly debunked.
In my view, a Twitter news wire would be focused on selecting and repackaging relevant tweets based on queries from traditional news outlets. I can even see Mashable using the Twitter firehose to supplement our coverage of events, announcements and breaking world news stories. It just depends on how the content is delivered and curated. Would Twitter’s partners write stories based on the tweets, deliver raw tweet data, or offer something in the middle?
In the end though, news organizations tapped into Twitter’s firehouse would have a big advantage over their competition. As we now know, Twitter often breaks news faster than the media. Real-time access to Twitter’s data could give news organizations a major advantage by helping them quickly dissect the situation on the ground. Photos, videos and multimedia from the scene would be at their fingertips, ready to be included in a blog post or a breaking news report on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC.
As I’ve argued before, Twitter is an “information network,” not a social network. It’s designed to deliver information as quickly and as widely as possible. There really isn’t anything that can match Twitter’s combined reach and speed when it comes to disseminating information. That’s why a Twitter news service would definitely succeed, so long as Twitter avoids the trap of becoming the one actually reporting the news.
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More About: Opinion, twitter, Twitter News Network, Twitter News Service
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