Twitter breaks Earthquake news first

Posted by Andrew Chapman, 10:29am 12/05/2008. Leave a comment

OK, this isn't a wine or food story, but I think is still interesting none-the-less. So gets a mention anyway.... I come in for a fair bit of stick about my love of all things technical. I've been banging on to anyone who'll hear (well, mainly the family) that Web 2.0 is the way forward, as it's stuffed full of possibilities. And I think I've just been vindicated! (I just had to blog about it today, because as my wife kindly points out, it's not often I'm right.....!) It seems Twitter (a micro-blogging service that I've belonged to for some time) is now making history. Members claim they were the first to break the news of the China earthquake - before any established news agency got hold of the story. Rory Cellan-Jones is the BBC's Technology Correspondent. Read his interesting article here. Robert Scoble is mentioned in the BBC article, and is actually someone I have been following on Twitter for a while now. Mostly for his writing on web 2.0 and other techy stuff. I too woke up and saw his Twitterings, just like Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC. In fact, I found the BBC story because Robert mentioned it on Twitter - nice to know I'm following the right people! This may not seem a big deal, but it is. Several news providers like the BBC, ITV and Sky have flirted with "citizen journalism". (This means using first-hand reports from witnesses to crashes and crimes, using photos and videos of things like tornados in Birmingham and the aftermath of bombs on London Underground. Although as Private Eye magazine points out, they have to be careful of mischievous citizens using stills from films or photoshopping pictures of celebrities into crowd scenes!) Twitter's gone one step further, and reminded us how we're all interconnected these days. If you've ever wondered what other people's lives are really like; what they dream about, hope for and get down to doing then I can heartily recommend Twitter! (By the way, if you want to find out what I'm up to, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/surf4wine. We're trying hard to make the most of new technology at Surf4Wine. I can't report any earthquakes in this part of the world, but it looks as though something seismic is happening in cyberspace. You heard it here first!

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