1) Newspapers were early adopters of Twitter to distribute their content and engage with readers. 2) Individual Twitter users also began live tweeting major events, sometimes distributing information more quickly than traditional media. 3) However, the race for speed on Twitter may undermine credibility and reliability as verification of sources and facts becomes more difficult.

1. Tweeting
the

2. Image: Common
Pixels - flickr
Let’s go back in
time for a second

3. The first newspaper is said to be the
Relation aller Fürnemmen und
gedenckwürdigen Historien which started
printing in 1609.
Image:
Wikimedia
Commons

4. Almost 100 years later, The Boston
News-letter started printing weekly
papers in America and the newspaper
industry hasn’t stopped since.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

5. 200 years after that, the Internet fuelled
the next major change in the newspaper
industry

6. Image: Hamed
Saber - flickr

7. Let’s
jump
forward
in time
once
again to
the year
2006
Image: Jonathan_W - flickr

8. Fledgling start up Odeo was formed to
take advantage of the podcast trend...
...but quickly became defunct when Apple announced that
the iTunes store would support podcasts
Image: Mingo.nl - flickr

9. Like a phoenix,
Twitter was born
from the ashes of
Odeo
Image:
Wikimedia
Commons

10. Designed so that users could post from
their cell phones, Twitter slowly caught
on in the technology industry
Image: Johan Larsson - flickr

11. However, it was an earthquake in
August of 2006 that proved the
power of Twitter.
Users posted about the earthquake
as it was happening and by the fall,
Twitter was growing quickly

12. Image: Mutasim
Billah - flickr

13. The 100 most popular newspapers all
have Twitter.
The average account has 3447
followers.
These accounts tweet around 11 times
a day.
Source: Bivings Report - The Use of Twitter by America’s Newspapers Image: Pablo Charlon- flickr

14. 37% of
newspapers
responded to
users in 10% of
their tweets.
Newspapers
weren’t just
tweeting the
news either.
Source: Bivings Report - The Use of Twitter by America’s Newspapers Image: Scott Beale- flickr

15. Almost more importantly than
newspapers using Twitter was the start
of regular people tweeting major
events.
Image: National Library NZ- flickr

16. Image: Skept - flickr
In June of 2009, following a controversial Iranian election,
the Twitterverse exploded with Iranians sharing stories
and news from within the country while the media was
being banned from entering the country.

17. Similarly, here in Canada, the recent election had
the results posted in real time on Twitter before any
major news network was allowed to release the
results.
Image: Eyeline Imagery - flickr

18. So with the chance to get instant
news from around the world,
who’s big on Twitter?
Image: Jo Peattie - flickr

19. The highest ranking news network on
Twitter is CNN at 20th most followed
user.
Of the remaining top 20, 17 are celebrities and
2 are Twitter’s own accounts.
Image: Matt Becker - flickr

20. Image: cishore- flickr

21. With the race to get the
news out fast, credibility
of the stories and the
reliability of the people
reporting them becomes
questionable
Image: Tintin44- flickr

22. Image: Michael LaCalameto- flickr
With no source of income from Twitter,
newspapers need users to click through to their
own websites to get advertising revenue...

23. ...but Twitter users don’t rely on ad
revenue which makes real reporting
financially unsustainable
Image: Giovanni Orlando - flickr

24. So faster but more unreliable news seems
to be the way forward, with Twitter at the
heart of the news-volution
Image: Stephen Poff - flickr

25. Image: Xava du- fli
The real question then becomes,
is this progress?
Or are we seeing the end of
journalism as we know it?
Only time will tell...