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A lot of outlets are calling this Twitter's CNN moment. It'll be interesting to see if Twitter has the legs to maintain this crowd sourced news momentum that it

A lot of outlets are calling this Twitter's CNN moment. It'll be interesting to see if Twitter has the legs to maintain this crowd sourced news momentum that it has been building.

zaidf 15y ago
I was telling my brother earlier today how I have a nagging feeling twitter will end up as the myspace of short-message sharing. From the outside, it seems like a confused org with too many changes at the top much too often. Add to that the main founder cashing out 100M and it sounds a lot different than a founder cashing out to buy a decent house etc. Instead it sounds like a founder who isn't sure twitter's value will increase a whole lot more. To contrast all this, we have Zuck at facebook providing smooth stable leadership that can clearly be seen in how fb as a product has scaled and evolved. Twitter meanwhile may be scaling and sue that can require significant effort - but as a product in year five, it's a relative fail for the hype and valuation.
- coliveira 15y ago
  Twitter is the kind of company I wouldn't bet against... You have a lot of power when you get free advertisement 24x7.
  - benologist 15y ago
    MySpace in their prime were ridiculously popular too.
    - enjo 15y ago
      I feel like MySpace never quite penetrated the mainstream the way twitter has. It was always something people were largely aware of, but outside of the segments it did really well in, people rarely engaged with it. Twitter seems to be a bit different in that regard.
      - benologist 15y ago
        Back then the internet hadn't penetrated the mainstream like it has now where we're always connected. Relative to that I think they're not incomparable.
      - zaidf 15y ago
        people rarely engaged with it IMO user engagement is one of twitter's biggest issues. As it stands right now, twitter is a great tool for journalist research and other niche research. That's been true for a few years now. The problem is twitter has done little to break beyond it OR to completely own that space. It's similar to if facebook never really broke out of its college roots or had high account abandonment rates for non-college crowd. Both of those were proven wrong for fb; fb long ago made critical product decisions to break beyond college(such as complete removing course listings) and working country by country to ensure penetration and engagement.
shimonamit 15y ago
Live coverage is only valuable if it is live. For most, this only came in the clear in the aftermath. Twitter is more akin to a real time, universal log + interactions, but it doesn't come with a central studio that sifts through the materials and gives you the good stuff. If you don't know where to look, for most it will always be a hindsight experience.
- palish 15y ago
  Actually, the Twitter stream was the first news I'd read about OBL. I woke up a short while ago, checked HN, thought "Huh, 'Osama'... I wonder if they're referring to Bin Laden?" and read the Twitter stream. (I had the good fortune of not seeing "Osama Bin Laden Is Dead" at #6.) For me personally, that was far more satisfying than hearing about it via "traditional" sources. (Including Reddit.)
  - bbgm 15y ago
    Likewise. I was working when my Twitter lit up. And it's not the first time this has happened.
brk 15y ago
I tend to disagree with this. The benefit to CNN is that almost every household had/has access to CNN. It's some channel on basic cable, even if you didn't regularly watch it, it was easy to find and was pushing the same news out to everyone. Twitter on the other hand is not as simple to just start using. You need to sign up, and then find the right people to follow (granted, Twitter does try to make this easier), but for any given event it's hard to find in real time a tweetstream that is going to be better than just watching CNN or other major news outlet. On top of that, Twitter is filled with parody accounts, people making stuff up, and lots of other noise.
- lreeves 15y ago
  That's a pretty narrow view of global access to things. Yes, probably most households in the US have access to CNN - but I'd bet a much larger slice of the planet has Internet access and therefore can reach Twitter.
  - brk 15y ago
    s/CNN/BBC/ or whatever. I bet more people still have access to broadcast news than they do to Twitter.
    - noahlt 15y ago
      Half of the world has SMS access and can therefore use Twitter.
      - brk 15y ago
        And how would they functionally leverage an SMS-only Twitter feed to get breaking info to something like this? Yes, conceptually a lot of people have access to Twitter. However, from a practicality standpoint my personal opinion is that it's not very effective tool for a scenario like this.
- nradov 15y ago
  CNN is not included with Comcast Limited Basic cable. That's the cheapest TV option, which you get automatically if you sign up for cable Internet service and nothing else.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

A lot of outlets are calling this Twitter's CNN moment. It'll be interesting to see if Twitter has the legs to maintain this crowd sourced news momentum that it has been building.

zaidf 15y ago

I was telling my brother earlier today how I have a nagging feeling twitter will end up as the myspace of short-message sharing. From the outside, it seems like a confused org with too many changes at the top much too often. Add to that the main founder cashing out 100M and it sounds a lot different than a founder cashing out to buy a decent house etc. Instead it sounds like a founder who isn't sure twitter's value will increase a whole lot more. To contrast all this, we have Zuck at facebook providing smooth stable leadership that can clearly be seen in how fb as a product has scaled and evolved. Twitter meanwhile may be scaling and sue that can require significant effort - but as a product in year five, it's a relative fail for the hype and valuation.

coliveira 15y ago
Twitter is the kind of company I wouldn't bet against... You have a lot of power when you get free advertisement 24x7.
- benologist 15y ago
  MySpace in their prime were ridiculously popular too.
  - enjo 15y ago
    I feel like MySpace never quite penetrated the mainstream the way twitter has. It was always something people were largely aware of, but outside of the segments it did really well in, people rarely engaged with it. Twitter seems to be a bit different in that regard.
    - benologist 15y ago
      Back then the internet hadn't penetrated the mainstream like it has now where we're always connected. Relative to that I think they're not incomparable.
    - zaidf 15y ago
      people rarely engaged with it IMO user engagement is one of twitter's biggest issues. As it stands right now, twitter is a great tool for journalist research and other niche research. That's been true for a few years now. The problem is twitter has done little to break beyond it OR to completely own that space. It's similar to if facebook never really broke out of its college roots or had high account abandonment rates for non-college crowd. Both of those were proven wrong for fb; fb long ago made critical product decisions to break beyond college(such as complete removing course listings) and working country by country to ensure penetration and engagement.

shimonamit 15y ago

Live coverage is only valuable if it is live. For most, this only came in the clear in the aftermath. Twitter is more akin to a real time, universal log + interactions, but it doesn't come with a central studio that sifts through the materials and gives you the good stuff. If you don't know where to look, for most it will always be a hindsight experience.

palish 15y ago
Actually, the Twitter stream was the first news I'd read about OBL. I woke up a short while ago, checked HN, thought "Huh, 'Osama'... I wonder if they're referring to Bin Laden?" and read the Twitter stream. (I had the good fortune of not seeing "Osama Bin Laden Is Dead" at #6.) For me personally, that was far more satisfying than hearing about it via "traditional" sources. (Including Reddit.)
- bbgm 15y ago
  Likewise. I was working when my Twitter lit up. And it's not the first time this has happened.

brk 15y ago

I tend to disagree with this. The benefit to CNN is that almost every household had/has access to CNN. It's some channel on basic cable, even if you didn't regularly watch it, it was easy to find and was pushing the same news out to everyone. Twitter on the other hand is not as simple to just start using. You need to sign up, and then find the right people to follow (granted, Twitter does try to make this easier), but for any given event it's hard to find in real time a tweetstream that is going to be better than just watching CNN or other major news outlet. On top of that, Twitter is filled with parody accounts, people making stuff up, and lots of other noise.

lreeves 15y ago
That's a pretty narrow view of global access to things. Yes, probably most households in the US have access to CNN - but I'd bet a much larger slice of the planet has Internet access and therefore can reach Twitter.
- brk 15y ago
  s/CNN/BBC/ or whatever. I bet more people still have access to broadcast news than they do to Twitter.
  - noahlt 15y ago
    Half of the world has SMS access and can therefore use Twitter.
    - brk 15y ago
      And how would they functionally leverage an SMS-only Twitter feed to get breaking info to something like this? Yes, conceptually a lot of people have access to Twitter. However, from a practicality standpoint my personal opinion is that it's not very effective tool for a scenario like this.
nradov 15y ago
CNN is not included with Comcast Limited Basic cable. That's the cheapest TV option, which you get automatically if you sign up for cable Internet service and nothing else.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]