Exactly this. Twitter *can't* be a thorough main news source for many things with a limit of 140 characters...BUT it can give you a very basic fact...such as "bin Laden is dead"...and prompt you to go looking for more. I got my first "news" of his death from Twitter.
This said, in certain narrow scopes and topics, if you follow the right people, twitter can be a breaking news source with info you can't find elsewhere. I'm a big SF&F reader, and would-be writer, and I follow many authors, agents, publishing houses, and editors. These are the types of people a journalist would contact to get "news", but instead of it filtering through the journalist, it comes right from them to me. I'll often see one of these people tweet about things before it hits the "official" blogs. And with some tweets, nobody follows up with a full blog post anywhere...a tweet is what you get. But it's interesting information, all the same, and more relevant to me and my interests than the big news sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly this. Twitter *can't* be a thorough main news source for many things with a limit of 140 characters...BUT it can give you a very basic fact...such as "bin Laden is dead"...and prompt you to go looking for more. I got my first "news" of his death from Twitter.
This said, in certain narrow scopes and topics, if you follow the right people, twitter can be a breaking news source with info you can't find elsewhere. I'm a big SF&F reader, and would-be writer, and I follow many authors, agents, publishing houses, and editors. These are the types of people a journalist would contact to get "news", but instead of it filtering through the journalist, it comes right from them to me. I'll often see one of these people tweet about things before it hits the "official" blogs. And with some tweets, nobody follows up with a full blog post anywhere...a tweet is what you get. But it's interesting information, all the same, and more relevant to me and my interests than the big news sites.