The future of online news, twitting its way into journalism

July 2, 2:05 AMMinneapolis Tech Culture ExaminerAnthony Carranza

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screenshot twitter.com. About the company.

      The death of Michael Jackson, the Iranian protest over the elections on twitter have become the forefront and epicenter of this social networking website success and its quickly becoming the go to source for news these days challenging the traditional media, challenging the journalism industry.
      The website is muscling its way against other social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Digg, and many others. The news source is the internet and TMZ.com, owned by Time Warner,  leaked  the Jackson death online before other major newspapers and television stations could uncover it. From this point, the Twitter posts had flooded the website when it became apparent the singer was reported dead.
      According to a news release report by ComScore found Twitter to have a growth spurt in the month of March growing 131 percent and adding 9.3 million visitors. This does not include the latest reports, or tweet on the site for the Iranian election and the death of the King of Pop.
      Twitters own website tool that monitors trends about the latest news Tweetstats.com has the Iranian election is the main topic and surge of Jackson not far behind. The website features the trends button, which allows viewers on a day by day basis what are the main topics of interest on the site.
      The power and influence of Twitter has reached the attention of Journalism.org site, reporting on Pew Research Centers Project on the “Twitter Revolution” finds between the dates of June 15-19 98 percent of the posts were related to Iran, according to the report.
      The industry of news has changed and traditional media has received criticism in the wake of this events. According to news reports online, CNN received criticism from viewers on its coverage of the Iranian crisis. Even the Daily Show John Stewart made sure he blasted and mocked CNN with videos available from YouTube to Hulu, etc.
      How powerful is Twitter? It is becoming the go to source for news and companies have become aware of its usefulness. Whether there are many readers or skeptics of twitter, the city of Minneapolis has issued a warning to twitter users not to post vacation plans because of the dangers of this information available to burglars, according to Fox9.com report.
      Time and time again, the social media is the center for news information and how it develops in the upcoming years will be interesting to see if it’s the future of news, and the tool for new age journalism.