Breaking News on Twitter-some thoughts

20Aug09

So Mashable posted today two breaking sports stories that were first “heard” on Twitter. News outlets now are afraid to be scooped by others that they immediately post to Twitter and THEN follow up with a longer post with the details. They listed the benefits to breaking first on Twitter including the amount of awareness you gain, less chance of being scooped, etc…

I’m all for this. A quick “post on the go” with follow up later on the details once you have time to read it is awesome. For people that are busy, sometimes just knowing the headline of the news is good to keep going. 

But, I also thought of something else.

In a meeting this week iLike came up and I had remembered seeing on my Twitter feed that MySpace was in talks to buy it for $20 million “or something.” (News later reported it was official.) While the news was insightful for those in the room that didn’t know, not having further details left a lot of open questions. Questions that I wish I had the answers to. 

So, what’s the ideal? 

• Waiting for the full story to provide the details and get everything right?
• Quick post on Twitter in fear of not being the first to break it. (Doesn’t this also remind you of those blogs like Perez Hilton where people comment to only try and be FIRST?)
• A combination of the two? But then what would that happ medium be?

I don’t have a full opinion on this because I can’t decide what I think works best.

What do you think?

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