Imagine if real people were reporters.
If instead of requiring a college degree in journalism, followed by a job search and climb up the ladder, (which in media usually means jumping from job to job), all you needed was a way to communicate that the rest of the world could read or listen.
Last night shortly after 10pm, I saw a tweet on Twitter that President Obama was going to address the nation at 10:30pm on an issue of "National Security".
While the press corp waited and waited and waited for the official announcement, word was already out and the news organizations stole the thunder from the President by telling us what the announcement was going to be about.
But back to my original question,
What if virtually anyone could get the word out, and you didn't need all the millions of dollars that networks spend to run their news operations?
This has been going on over and over again since the birth of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.
It is 9:30 Monday morning as I type these words and about 30 minutes ago, I found an eyewitness account of one man who was where the action was in Pakistan and was tweeting about it, initially without realizing what was going on. I have selected a few of the tweets.
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter :-/
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S
Then @ReallyVirtual is found by the mainstream media:
And this is one of my favorites:
And watch what he does to handle all the new Twitter follower notifications in his Gmail:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
The abbottabad helicopter/UFO was shot down near the Bilal Town area, and there's report of a flash. People saying it could be a drone.
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Here's the location of the Abbottabad crash according to some people http://on.fb.me/khjf34
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Interesting rumors in the otherwise uneventful Abbottabad air today
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it. Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
I need to sleep, but Osama had to pick this day to die :-/
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.
Then @ReallyVirtual is found by the mainstream media:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
and here come the mails from the mainstream media... *sigh*
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
For the curious, here is life in abbottabad two minutes ago http://twitpic.com/4s8nfq
And this is one of my favorites:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That's all.
And watch what he does to handle all the new Twitter follower notifications in his Gmail:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
For the people who are trying to email me to reach me, I simply can't filter out the notifications from the emails :-(
And his tweets continue:
And finally:
So who is this tweeter? According to his profile:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
I guess an 'is now following you' GMail filter is the next logical step
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Thank you Google, thousands of email reduced to a few dozen.
And his tweets continue:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
@jovensclaudio The gunfight lasted perhaps 4-5 minutes, I heard. That was around 10 hours ago. There are no other gunfights that I know of.
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
I'm sorry to all the journalists trying to reach me via phone/email etc. for not being able to reply to their queries individually.
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Need to sleep after talking to @mosharrafzaidi and @OmarWaraich as they got to me first in person.
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Reuters got to me before I could go to sleep.
And finally:
ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar
Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now.
So who is this tweeter? According to his profile:
Sohaib Athar
@ReallyVirtual
Abbottabad Lahore Pakistan
Abbottabad Lahore Pakistan
An IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops.
What led me to this was a tweet by @DonKincaid that caught my attention.
Click here for more info on Don.
This is the power of Twitter and other social media networks. Pass this on to your skeptics.
BTW, I just read from several other sources that Twitter broke this story and at one point there were 4,000 tweets PER SECOND as word spread.
ReplyDeleteAs the afternoon continues the stories keep popping up regarding "Did Twitter REALLY Break the News?"
ReplyDeleteThat is not really my point.
What Twitter did was allow an ordinary person have a voice that thousands have now read about.
When I wrote my story this morning @ReallyVirtual had 38,000 followers on Twitter.
Less than 5 hours later that number has grown to 63,000. And apparently he was able to take a nap because he is back online.
Social Media is a force to give respect to, and in turn Social Media needs to also give respect to Traditional Media as they support each other.