Twitter

Twitter, a form of micro-blogging, has grown in numbers in recent months. In fact, Time magazine called it the "next killer app", which I guess in computerspeak means it's going places. Newspapers are trying to get in on Twitter and find uses for it in the journalism world. (The blog GraphicDesignr has a list of newspapers using twitter. The data is a few months out of date, but it seem to be the most complete list I can find. Ignore the messy code at the top of the blog).

However, it seems like a lot of newspapers are just using their twitter feed as a modified (or even just an additional) RSS feed. Examples of this is the Detroit Free Press, freep, and the Wall Street Journal, whose account is cleverly titled, wsj. Every one of their posts is an announcement of their latest story. Just like an rss feed.

The Chicago Sun Times has 4 twitter feeds. Their main one, suntimes looks like it posts news, but it also converses with the audience. I like this, although the feed does make me feel like the Suntimes is a person, not a large newspaper. One of their twitter feeds, cst_roeper, is also quite active, but cst_ent and cst_fashion haven't seen any action since February. It's not clear if these only twitter certain events or have been abandoned for other projects.

My conclusion: I'm not sure twitter is for me. At least, I'm not sure rapid fire twittering is for me. It's too much of an overload of information for me, although I do enjoy the ones that are a conversation more than 'here's our latest news story'. I could see twitter replacing live-blogging, for instance at an event or at a football game. But for news? I'd rather have an rss feed.

Edit: While at work today, I discovered this twitter feed from the Jackson Free Press. I like it. It works as commentary, and I presume that the feeds make sense to those in the Jackson area. Of course, it's more of a supplement to the news for those who are up-to-date on what's happening and wouldn't work for the uninformed, but, it's the twitter feed I like best so far.