Twitter Is A News Source Rather Than Traffic Driver

Twitter October 4, 2010 5 Comments

Out of all the communities who have joined Twitter I would say it is journalists who have embraced it with the greatest vigor. Before Twitter came along I would have known a couple of journalists through my own real world network but I now follow over a hundred on Twitter and see their thoughts and the content they share on a daily basis. So why are there so many journalists on Twitter and why did they all show up within the last year? (Exclude tech journalists as they have been clued in for some time!). The answer is pretty obvious in that Twitter is fast becoming an indespensible real time news breaking source that most hacks simply could not live without as they go about their daily job of delivering us the news we all crave. It’s not as simple as that though and Twitter really is shaking up the whole industry in front of our eyes…

Forget About Traffic From Twitter

There has always been a bit of a myth about the amount of traffic that Twitter actually send to websites. Many would have seen it as a savior and an instant way of driving traffic to their sites but in actual fact the tarffic Twitter sends is not that big at all. You can see on our monthly stats below that the amount of traffic referred here by Twitter is actually well under 1.5%. We are a social media blog which is largely read by people who would be well clued in to Twitter so I really can’t see that number being much higher for any publishers.

Journalists As Sales People?

A trend that I am seeing more and more is journalists pimping their own newspapers, radio shows or publications online. As some of these people build larger profiles through social media and gather a following it is clear that the pressure is coming down from above to promote the content being produced. In some ways this is fair enough as many journalists and broadcasters are being allowed to promote their own personal Twitter accounts to huge audiences through their traditional media channels. I’m not sure how the public think about this one but I guess it is ok as log as it is done in moderation.

Twitter Marginalizing Mainstream Media?

Last week in Ireland somebody drove a cement truck in to the main government buildings as an act of protest against the people who run the country. Although fairly tame the attack did draw the attention of the country for the day and get picked up all over the mainstream press on radio, TV and print. The problem for the media though is that even though they were all on Twitter the story was pretty much dead by the time they got it. A simple photo taken by @davidmaybury and posted to Twitter was all I needed to see to understand the story. I didn’t need to see it on the cover of the Irish Times, I didn’t need to tune in to the TV to see photos of the truck being towed away nor did I need to buy the paper the next day for analysis. One simple picture posted on Twitter and delivered by my own network on Twitter spoke a thousand words and marginalized the entire press in terms of delivering news to me. There is no doubt that we will always need to get more in depth analysis from the press but to a large extend some of their lunch is being eaten by punters in the street and Twitter means they are losing more and more control over how a story breaks. If you work in the industry and that control is taken away that has to be a very scary thing.

Nobody Knows Where It Is Going

The speed at which Twitter is changing industries from politics to journalism is scary and to be honest nobody knows where it is going. I personally think the traditional media is hugely important to add relevance to everything we see in real time. The world needs professional journalists who are paid salaries that give them the freedom to report and analyze the news. How those journalists are going to get paid is the tricky part because it remains to be seen if the pay walls will work (my guess is they will struggle unless universally embraced by multiple organizations but that is unlikely to happen) but the fact is we need professional journalism going forward to compliment and enhance these new mediums. The only real winner here are us the punters. We get to sit back and get the best of both world’s and really watch an industry being transformed in front of our very eyes. Everybody is part of the news, anybody can break stories globally with one simple photo on their mobile. The control is gone and that is largely down to Twitter. Interesting times.

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