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This would be a brilliant move. Apple is flush with cash so 700m is cake. The will come out with a new twitter client that pushes GPS, photo/video support, and

This would be a brilliant move. Apple is flush with cash so 700m is cake. The will come out with a new twitter client that pushes GPS, photo/video support, and long form tweets over 3G. Once this happens they can identify news events in real-time. A surge in tweets from a local area dynamically creates news stories. Accident on the 101? I get photos and video within minutes. The ultimate glocalized news service. Apple ran over top of the established music industry and they are about to do it the news too. If this goes through go crazy on AAPL.

natrius 17y ago
I really don't understand what value people see in Twitter as a news service. Do I really need to find out about something right when it happens as opposed to 5-10 minutes later? How can I even find out about things without wading through tons of crap? I doubt that the frequency of messages from a certain area would accurately surface events of note. Processing the text of the messages could help, but it still wouldn't be a service anyone would want. I bet there are surges of tweets for all sorts of random stuff that no one cares about, so if they're sending me a text whenever there's a surge, I'm going to end up turning it off pretty quick. Editors are valuable. Gaining a five minute head start on news is next to worthless, and the signal to noise ratio will make it far worse than just signing up for breaking news text messages from an actual news source. How many people even sign up for those now? If 140 character messages from random geeks off the street ever supplant other news sources, I will eat my phone.
- oldgregg 17y ago
  I think it's all in the algorithm and software implementation. Maybe you use #news, or maybe you implement a voting system, maybe there is some kind of revenue sharing or identity/trust model.. something... Realtime photo/video/text is where it's going, the question is how we get there. You're right that it's scary if that is our only news source, but that doesn't mean "real journalists" won't come in and back-fill relevant events with more details. How the heck they will make money is the big question to me.
  - natrius 17y ago
    Photos and videos of events before news crews get there are definitely very valuable. Getting those things in real time isn't very valuable in my opinion. After all these years of spam filter development, I still get spam regularly. I don't think there's a way to deliver news from Twitter to people in real time with more accuracy than spam filters, and that would be annoying. Again, I don't think that many people use the breaking news text messaging services that already exist and are curated by human beings. The Twitter messages and pictures when the plane landed in the Hudson River were awesome. I didn't care that I only saw them hours after the fact. I don't think anyone else cared either. It might have been nice to get them in real time, but not at the cost of noise. Noise is impossible to reduce to a manageable level when you're text messaging people because it interrupts whatever they're doing. You could send emails instead, but then you either are still interrupting people who check their email constantly, or you're losing the real time aspect.

natrius 17y ago

I really don't understand what value people see in Twitter as a news service. Do I really need to find out about something right when it happens as opposed to 5-10 minutes later? How can I even find out about things without wading through tons of crap? I doubt that the frequency of messages from a certain area would accurately surface events of note. Processing the text of the messages could help, but it still wouldn't be a service anyone would want. I bet there are surges of tweets for all sorts of random stuff that no one cares about, so if they're sending me a text whenever there's a surge, I'm going to end up turning it off pretty quick. Editors are valuable. Gaining a five minute head start on news is next to worthless, and the signal to noise ratio will make it far worse than just signing up for breaking news text messages from an actual news source. How many people even sign up for those now? If 140 character messages from random geeks off the street ever supplant other news sources, I will eat my phone.

oldgregg 17y ago
I think it's all in the algorithm and software implementation. Maybe you use #news, or maybe you implement a voting system, maybe there is some kind of revenue sharing or identity/trust model.. something... Realtime photo/video/text is where it's going, the question is how we get there. You're right that it's scary if that is our only news source, but that doesn't mean "real journalists" won't come in and back-fill relevant events with more details. How the heck they will make money is the big question to me.
- natrius 17y ago
  Photos and videos of events before news crews get there are definitely very valuable. Getting those things in real time isn't very valuable in my opinion. After all these years of spam filter development, I still get spam regularly. I don't think there's a way to deliver news from Twitter to people in real time with more accuracy than spam filters, and that would be annoying. Again, I don't think that many people use the breaking news text messaging services that already exist and are curated by human beings. The Twitter messages and pictures when the plane landed in the Hudson River were awesome. I didn't care that I only saw them hours after the fact. I don't think anyone else cared either. It might have been nice to get them in real time, but not at the cost of noise. Noise is impossible to reduce to a manageable level when you're text messaging people because it interrupts whatever they're doing. You could send emails instead, but then you either are still interrupting people who check their email constantly, or you're losing the real time aspect.