Twitter, New Feeds and Social News

Do you "twitter?" Have you been "twittered" (or is that "twattered" or "twuttered")? Do you twittercast? Or worse, have you been "twittercasted?"

Lately I've been surprised to find myself doing all these things against my better nature. I've been sucked into a new form of social media behavior that I don't completely understand, but am trying to put into the context of what I do understand. And what I do understand from my training is news.

The question I keep finding myself asking lately is, "What exactly is social news, and how does it relate to 'real news?' " And from that comes another question: "What exactly is 'real news,' if there is such a thing?"

I don't have a pat answer to that question, but I can tell you what I've experienced and where I think things are going. I'm interested to hear your views, so I urge you to add your comments to this post if you, too, are coping with life in a post-Twitter world.

I ran into something like Twitter quite by accident about a year ago through Facebook. Like many other people over 30, I triumphantly broke my way into the social networking site when it allowed more than just college students in. Facebook has something called the Personal News Feed, and part of that includes the ability to update your status, which gets broadcast out to your Facebook friends. You can also read their updates. It's deliciously addicting and a huge waste of time, which is another way of saying it's probably going to take over the world.

On one hand, I feel like the Facebook news feed is not really "news" per se because it's all about my friends. But at another level, I feel like I've never been so well connected to the larger world around me through my friends. On any given day, I see things like this -- some of which, like American Airlines canceling flights, or our latest snow storm in Colorado, are related to news:

- "Growing nervous about my American Airlines flight tomorrow evening. At least it's on a 737-800"

- "Another spring snow in Boulder, very pretty :-)"

- "Whoops! Hit wrong key on phone and updated prematurely."

- "Rock > Glass. Stupid landscaping trucks."

It seems stupid until you find yourself nodding in agreement to what everyday people who share something in common with you are thinking, feeling, seeing or doing.

I now update my Facebook status about 10 times a day, sometimes from my cell phone when I'm standing in line or taking a walk. It's a fun way to stay in touch with people, and I'm always amazed at how quickly people respond to me when I post something that connects with them. For example, when I updated my status to say that my bicycle was stolen, immediately heard from three friends, one of whom told me that "people who steal bicycles hate America." I immediately messaged him back with something like this: "Yeah, those @#$#@$#S!!!!"

Twitter is like the Facebook news feed on bovine growth hormone.

I'd seen Twitter a few months before and even registered for an account, then sent an e-mail to some friends and colleagues asking them what the heck this thing was and if it made any sense to them. Those who had heard of it basically agreed with me. They could tell there was a lot of activity on twitter, but they couldn't understand why anyone in their right mind would post random tidbits to complete strangers.

And then one day, I saw this in Facebook: "Bob is twittering: back from London. Everyone changed their little pictures."

Low and behold, it was possible to pull your twitter updates into your Facebook status automatically. I did a little more digging and realized that I could block the public from seeing my twitter updates so that only people I approve could get them (although I later turned that off). And then I saw people subscribing to my twittercast. This was starting to look a lot like blogging for the common person. Now I have a whole separate friend list in Twitter and I check that a few times a day.

So here's my dilemma. Is this "news"? It seems to fill a lot of the same functions, although it doesn't give me exactly the same information. And probably most embarrassing of all is that I check my Facebook and Twitter feeds more often during that day than I check Google News -- which used to be an outright addiction. That's quite a confession for someone who was once a newspaper reporter.

Poynter's Mario Garcia once said, "News is what people are talking about." Lots of people are talking in Twitter and Facebook, and how knows where else. And there is legitimate news flowing through those channels, along with a lot of social banter that sometimes seems even more relevant to daily life than "news."

The revolution will now be twittered, or Facebooked. Or whatever.

Now post or twitter your thoughts!

Topics: social media , twitter