Blog post of the day – Live Twittering and the 140 character news cycle

Shel Holtz writes an interesting post about Twitter and other social media applications as vehicles for breaking news entitled “Live Twittering and the 140 character news cycle“.  He provides a great example of how Twitter is an old concept, just a new medium when he talks about covering a local sports event in his earlier days.  He had to phone in an update every so often so the news room could have a story crafted and ready to go for the morning paper.  Imagine what Twitter could do?

My favourite point though, is when he talks about note taking in classes or at conferences:

“Live-tweeting (and blogging) simply adds a sharing dimension to note-taking. So the fact is, you’re listening better if you’re live-tweeting (or blogging) a talk.”

I’ll have to keep that rebuttal in my back pocket…