Citizens utilized crowdsourced information for timely data about news that would directly impact their lives and could lead to the development of a more effective response system based on this time-based information.
“Twitter is crack for media addicts,” he writes. “It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it.”
Call me a digital crack dealer, but here’s why Twitter is a vital part of the information economy — and why Mr. Packer and other doubters ought to at least give it a Tweet.
Most importantly, Twitter is transforming the nature of news, the industry from which Mr. Packer reaps his paycheck. The news media are going through their most robust transformation since the dawn of the printing press, in large part due to the Internet and services like Twitter. After this metamorphosis takes place, everyone will benefit from the information moving swiftly around the globe.
We are no longer just consumers of content, we have become curators of it too.
“In the past, I may have used this time in the day to read newspapers, magazines or books. Now I have just substituted the same time with reading and sharing news online.”
This year's technology is Internet video, which protesters have leveraged to self-report their protests. The Drudge Report had at least four links to such videos yesterday, and Instapundit, which has reported on continuing "tea parties" since they started, has more.