Twitter the first for big news?
January 22nd, 2012 by Jason
Last week I read an article about the new Google initiative Search plus Your World. In this article Twitter argues that this new search innovation will make breaking news harder to find for users also stating that Twitter is first for big breaking news. The article can be found here:
http://www.stateofsearch.com/who-do-you-think-is-right-google-or-twitter/
After reading I couldn’t help but wonder is Twitter becoming the best for breaking news? Some eye opening points were made in the article like how many tweets are made per day (250 million!) most of those tweets will be made by news readers, celebrities and even companies trying to promote or market new products. Twitter has helped inform us in some of the biggest stories last year like the John Terry racial abuse incident during the Chelsea v QPR game in October 2011. As a very passionate Chelsea fan when the story broke out that a fan filmed John terry allegedly using racial abuse and posted it on twitter I was shocked. I was even more shocked to hear the next morning on Sky Sports News that the media never caught up with it during the game….in fact nobody knew until it was posted on Twitter.
This became one of the most controversial sports headlines over the past year and has now prompted a government investigation into racism in football.
Twitter over the years has become one of the most powerful online sources in this case becoming more informative than the media themselves. Before if you wanted to know anything new you will go to Google first or purchase the latest newspaper but the power is shifting towards social networks. Will people start to look at social sources to be the most relevant therefore making the Rupert Murdock’s of this world insignificant?
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It does seem to me that Google will have to pay more attention to Twitter when it comes to assessing the relevance of websites for search rankings. That of course could lead to a crazy, real time requirement for search ranking calculation, based on the real time buzz around links in tweets and twitter users. Which then comes open to abuse.
Reality for me is that once I start getting more referrals from Twitter than I do from organic search, Twitter has become relevant as a real marketing tool, not just a news breaker.
Nice post!
Phil