While a social media team can still bring a post all the way to the top in the social sharing world, it’s not going to last unless the general public deems it popular.

We have to remember that social media sites basically “feature” the best of the rest of the web.

I don’t know about you, but I had a twitter account. How much of the news feeds are relevant and truthful, and how much are spam?

Perhaps if twitter had news feeds from verifiable journalist, etc., and one just for expressing whatever you wish, I’d consider twitter a valuable source of information. But it’s like being in high school, everyone waiting to hear the latest gossip. Whether it was true or not, that’s all twitter is to me gossip!

So essentially, tweeting journalists are essentially live-blogging – how good of them to catch up with livejournal et al 18 months after finding twitter!

Or how about those Internet forums where people were able to live-relate to an event, or those modern advanced websites that started in the 90′s that can now, only thanks to the power of twitter, can update their stories without waiting a whole day.

Let’s ignore past teletext.

How about that modern invention of the SMS, that allows live news-alerts (and yes, included group/broadcast chat capabilities just like twitter in the 90′s), or the more advanced still pagers provided by Reuters in the 80′s with finance and news-wire stories – newswores that have been providing real-time news almost forever.

And we’ll also ignore the capabilities of live news and radio, able to use the advanced phone system to include actual witnesses.

No all this is only possible because of the miraculous invention of the proprietary privately-owned twitter don’t you know.

Honestly all this hype reminds me of exactly the hype in the 90′s, but from people who should have learnt at least some perspective if their self-interest and IQ’s allowed.
This need for people to act as if they’ve discovered the wheel, almost with a religious fervour.

The earlier references, can ultimately be summed up as plus ca change!

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak

I respect most journalist, as they not only have to investigate their stories, but they must try to report the “Truth”! On twitter, there is no recourse for someone saying…”Donald Trump is a Communist”, “President Reagan Was An Alien”, etc.,

Twitter though I believe is a dying company and fad, just like facebook, and a few others.

I personally got sick of facebook, twitter, and linkedln. So I created my own social networking site onlymworld.com! We are the adult version of facebook, practical version of twitter, and people friendly version of linkedln all combined into one! We don’t ask for full names, protecting our members privacy rights, and we’re more of a tool for our members to connect and stay connected with those in their various social networks, then everyday life.

History will someday show, that web 2.0 was like the great american industrial revolution back in the 1900′s. There were many mighty companies and families back then, but only few have survived.

Journalism is an Art though that will never die, nor can it ever be replaced!

I see Jeff’s post as trying to make inroads on the larger issue of “The Content Creator’s Dilemma”: Caught between the pincer-like twin threat of Content Overabundance and Content Decay.

And in the case of journalists in particular, caught between the additional problem of the rise of “Expert-in-field” media (experts blogging directly from fields where previously only journalists would have created content for wider consumption , e.g. Chris Dixon’s blog on startups and angel/VC financing, etc. etc.).

And the thing that wasn’t noted in the post and the rebuttals from Jarvis is the echo-chamber of Twitter (as noted in today’s NYT). People tend to not go outside their personal views or beliefs with followers, so are not getting real news but slanted information that jibes with what the person believes.