By Stephen Cooney
Apparently the new wave of international journalism is Twitter.com. Since first hearing of the website and all of its inane mini-blogging last year, Twitter has taken the world by storm. Many people have dubbed it as as a mobile revolution and a great new program for the world to share events in real time. From what I have heard this is going to revolutionize our perspective of time and proximity. Even better, Twitter is going to do it in 140 characters or less per post, making the comments neither too long nor too in-depth for everyone to read. Insightful little bugger. It will have the whole world traveling in thoughtful minimalism that smacks you in the face at record speeds.
Unfortunately the above argument and movement is not anywhere near what Twitter is going to be or is currently being used for. In reality, Twitter is a completely useless invention that is more self-indulgent than both Facebook and MySpace combined. The service has all the potential to reach these goals at first glance until one comes to terms with the fact that Twitter is essentially a ‘micro-blog.’ Even better, Twitter is a Live Journal account on the mobile scale that happens to text message individuals your information if one is willing to accept this aspect of friendship-or, more voristically, what Twitter calls ‘following.’
Twitter is already being degraded to the status of a cheap marketing tool or a more mobile social network for small groups of individuals. On a grand scale, it’s an easy way to do a celebrity magazine’s job at a second-by-second basis. Except the celebrities are claiming to be doing all the tweeting themselves-useful tool for avoiding the paparazzi or more useful for making sure they are there when you do anything at all including wiping your own ass.
The essential problem with Twitter as a journalistic or revolutionary tool is that Twitter will only be as useful as those who are willing to use it. For the most part the crowd has been computer techs and celebrities. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that news organizations could use Twitter. but who could possibly need second-by-second updates of anything that is either currently playing on television or already being covered in-depth. Also the wide spread use of blogs across the globe already allows for the same actions of Twitter minus the annoying word limitations.
If you are a Twitter fan then by now you probably think that I have no clue what I am talking about. Or perhaps you think that I am scared of a digital revolution. Either would be a terrible misconception. The Internet is an amazing global tool that will improve journalism but I do not believe that Twitter is going to be at the forefront of a journalistic revolution. It is a combination of two products that were already in existence: blogs and social networks. The problem is that while blogging is a marginal form of journalism, Twitter takes all of the marginality of blogging and combines them with a social networking twist.
The tweeting so far has only had limited credibility and also no true show of what it will eventually be used for. Right now it is not being used for any amazing journalistic work.
Stephen Cooney is a senior print journalism student and Editor-in-Chief of The Chronicle. You may e-mail him at