This Is Why The Internet (And Twitter) Wins | Hacker News Reader

This Is Why The Internet (And Twitter) Wins

techcrunch.com

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Yesterday, I was thankful for not paying any attention to the news while I cooked, served friends, and then relaxed. I turned the radio off and didn't check any websites. It was nice.

I don't mean to be callous about Mr. Woods' injury, but is this example really important? To put it a better way: it is of zero (maybe negative) value to me to hear "X happened to celebrity Y", or "celebrity Z died", for that matter, 45 minutes earlier than I would have otherwise. What would be of value to me (and seriously, I would pay a lot for this) would be some kind of magic device that filtered out such items out of my media consumption and coughed up a precis on Saturday afternoon after I do the crossword.

That's a brilliant idea!

I agree I would pay for that!

Plus one to you!

How significant is a 45 minute delay to news that Tiger Woods was in a car crash?

Unless it's 30 minutes to the start of a tournament and betting hasn't closed yet the delay is insignificant.

One thing that is hard for most tech people to understand is that the line between news and entertainment is blurry. Why do you need to watch a sports event live? You don't, but you enjoy it.

There is very little news that most of us really need to know. However, many people enjoy learning about events that are potentially interesting to them as early as possible.

It's not so much that you enjoy the event live as you are annoyed when it is going on and you are not watching it. The same can't be said of news. You can't be annoyed by not knowing Tiger Woods was in an automobile accident. You can be annoyed, however, by reports that turn out to be false. I don't see of any downside in ESPN waiting 45 minutes so the report can be verified.

If this is also representative of what the delay would be for a more major event (whatever one might consider one to be, with the added caveat that getting the knowledge quickly be very important), it's quite relevant, albeit in a more "this could be an issue in the future" sort of way.

I think you are missing the point of the post. Tiger Woods getting into a car accident in a non-tournament day is for the most part "useless" breaking news. Some might argue that it's still useless even in a tournament day.

However, what if you received flooding information 45 minutes before it happens in your area. (I'm from the Philippines and we experienced heavy flooding recently and my house was nearly flooded b/c the "normal" news channels didn't know how bad it got before it got really bad). Of course, that's just one example.

Point is the power of Internet/twitter allows for breaking news that might be relevant to you and might give you enough time to avoid disaster, etc.

You're missing the point of the parent. If CNN breaks it on Twitter, they COULD break it on cable immediately. They've done it many times when real news occurred. They COULD break the flooding in your area (and probably would) as soon as they learned of it. I'm guessing the actual lead time, if it's something as important as a major flood, is a matter of at most a minute or two.

Which means that all Twitter in this case did is bombard people with stupidity 30 minutes before cable TV did the same. That's not a value add. If anything, it's an extra 30 minutes before this stupid fact pushes something useful out of my brain. Because I avoid Twitter, I knew who won the Battle of Trafalgar for an extra half hour before cable ruined that.

If you wanted to give an example of Twitter being useful, you'd give one where some normal person (not a cable news network) broke a story that got big before the MSM even found out.

That is my point. Someone else (a normal person) breaks a major flooding news in her area via Internet/twitter before CNN or other MSM. In our area at least, it would be at least 10 minutes or more before our MSM gets any news on this.

Another recent example, tied to the flooding, we had brownouts but the MSM was reporting incorrect brownout schedules. We went to twitter and got the tweets directly from the utility company. This example is not breaking news per se but it affects our daily lives.

Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

Right, but that sadly wasn't the point of the original post. Like most MG Seigler entries, it was logically incoherent and claimed that Twitter "wins" because CNN broke a story there before they broke it on their news. That's just dumb.

For CNN to break something on cable it has to be really important. There is a very serious filter there. It must be important.

Twitter requires no such filter. This allows much more breaking news through.

I don't think that news needs to be defined as 'important' against an objective standard. Of course "Tiger Wood hurts finger" isn't objectively time sensitive. If it is important to you, you could read about it in a monthly with no consequences. It appears & is read in dailies regardless.

It is news if it interests people. If it is news, speed is probably an issue. People like to be in the loop for (possibly) irrational reasons.

You are trying to make the time sensitivity of a news item objective by attaching actionability to it. Most news is not actionable. People want it fast regardless.

I don't think it is even controversial that "you heard it here first" is important to most news outlets.

You know why the Internet really wins? Because I DON'T have to deal with stupid worthless news like this. Sorry, but unless I suddenly wake up as the CMO of a sponsor company, a trader with options in such a company, a competing golfer, or David Murdock (who owns the Sherwood golf club), this news is NOT essential to my life and I am glad my only connection to it is this stupid TechCruch article.

By allowing me to customize who and what I consume, the Internet allows me to get rid of all of the crap that CNN et al try to shovel at me. That's mainstream media's real problem -- they have completely alienated the most affluent and intelligent among their readers.

And in case you're wondering what I'd consider "vital news" -- how about the potential default of a sovereign nation (Dubai) which could trigger a CDS event which could re-trigger the global financial crisis?

I think the point is-- no matter what you consider vital news, the Internet is a better way to get that news faster and more accurately than traditional mainstream media.

It only wins if it supplies and continues to supply correct and timely information.

The internet is like the telephone game with millions of people and until something changes I trust my local news station many times more than the internet on breaking news stories.

Where the key word is correct. It would be very easy to spread a bogus story via, e.g. Twitter. It would be debunked quite quickly too -- but the fact that it can happen devalues the speed with which things are reported. Those in the profession of reporting news do provide the value of actually checking their sources (or, at least, they should).

And this is the part that society has to cope with - at least for the time being. As a population we are still used to trusting authoritative news sources, ones that are presumably bound by law, ethics, or policy to verify their information.

The result is that we react rather quickly to news. This can (and has been) disastrous in internet communities where the news has turned out to be incorrect or fraudulent.

The consequence of the Twitter phenomenon is that collectively we all need a much better bullshit filter than the one we have right now.

> Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV.

I see this as a problem for twitter and the internet. They got a very important part of the new wrong.

Tiger Woods has already been released from the hospital and wasn't injured.

Actually, here's what MG gets wrong.

The Twitter story was this: "BULLETIN — REPORT: FAMED GOLFER TIGER WOODS SERIOUSLY INJURED AFTER CRASH NEAR FLORIDA HOME."

And the CNN story (30-45 min later), was this: "(CNN) — Golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident near his home, Florida officials say."

When all was said and done, which was more correct? The answer is CNN's. Woods was not "seriously injured," he was treated for facial lacerations and was, quote "fine," according to his agent (http://twitter.com/darrenrovell1/status/6121135958).

Twitter might win on speed, but CNN ultimately won (this time) on accuracy. They knew about the Woods incident as soon as everyone else did -- to think they don't watch Twitter like everyone else would be silly -- but they likely spent that extra half hour doing what no one on Twitter does: actual journalism (as in, checking sources).

(Note: I'm personally not a fan of process journalism, something that MG's boss avidly promotes... report first get the facts later is a sad future if it is indeed the future of how the news is disseminated, imho.)

The question arises - do I really need to know about the details of celebrity golfer's lifestyles the very second something happens? If I read the news the following day, would that really make a significant difference to my life?

Maybe if I was an professional golfer it would.

But I generally agree with the idea that microblogging, blogs and other sorts of online media will eventually replace newspapers and even TV news reporting. Most newspapers already have a significant online presence and an entourage of bloggers.

Win what? I don't even know who Tiger Wood is. And I certainly don't care if he had some accident or whatever so much, that I would want more than a short notice later that day (in fact, I simply don't need to know it at all).

If you think that "win" is delivering uninteresting tabloid allcaps "news" 60 minutes ahead of CNN, then, well... you have a problem.

While I generally agree with your point the way you present it smacks a little bit of http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

(At the very least if you have been to an airport in the last 5 years you will have seen an Accenture ad on a wall somewhere.)

While it is possible that I have heard the name before, I didn't remember it. I don't live in the USA and I'm not interested in golf, I might have heard the name few times in similar short notices, like I have heard about thousands of other people that I don't remember either. It's quite simple, really, I didn't know who TW is, and said that only to stress my point. It's surprising to me that it could be considered such a basic knowledge.

I didn't hear it from the news on TV or Radio or the web or BBC News alerts, via email, IM or twitter.

Which is why the TV news wins over the internet - because I can turn it off. Misery from all over the world doesn't route around the TV's off button and get to me anyway - well, I guess it does these days. :(

"The internet treats off buttons as damage and routes around them", to paraphrase a famous comment.

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