Twitter is fast becoming the best source of “What’s Happening?” in any given area, on any given day. If you are one of those people who thinks it is “silly” to record “What are you doing?”, think about it from the perspective that you might be doing what someone else would consider doing, if they knew it was happening.
You become the “news” source for local events, when you report your whereabouts at a local event. You become the restaurant critic when you tweet from a local restaurant about the food and service.
Like it or not, the collective “we” values real information from people on the street, having the experience and noting that experience in “real time”.
So what IS happening in Seattle? Twitter has a “search box” into which I will now put the word “Seattle” and this is what we learn:
@MyWashingtonSt tells us “The Bite of Seattle” Open til 9pm tonight!! Premier Food Fest FREE ADMISSION www.biteofseattle.com
Now that we know that there is an event today called The Bite of Seattle and that it is open until 9 p.m., we might want to know if it is “worth” going to? What do people who are actually there have to say about their experience?
To dig deeper into real time info on the event, change the words on the search box to the event title. In this case I change “Seattle” to “Bite of Seattle” and find:
@Mr10K: We will be reporting to you live from the bite of seattle today people. The Neema taste tests will show no mercy on any booths today!
Maybe you and Mr10K don’t have the same tastes in food, but at least you know you can get a “merciless” review of the booth offerings by him throughout the day, so you can try to hit the “best” booths when you head out to “Bite of Seattle” later today before 9 p.m.
“Using Twitter” is not simply about telling people what you are doing at any given moment. It’s a huge and growing way for people to get the news THEY want at any given moment in time, and pretty much just about any where.
Using Twitter is not all about “I have an appointment at 2 to show a house in Bellevue” from @ARDELLd 🙂 It’s a way for people to use search terms to help them get a glimpse at what other people are doing, that they themselves might like to join.
Twitter has become my news source. Twitter reported that Michael Jackson passed, before CNN could “confirm” that. Twitter told me that Walter Cronkite passed away. Twitter told me that I could catch a radio show with Jeff Turner @respres, 5 minutes before it aired so I could turn on the audio while continuing to work.
Twitter can make you more productive and keep you on top of everything that is happening. You can control how much or how little “noise” you want, by limiting the people and news sources that you choose to follow, or by using a “sort” application like TweetDeck (just one of many).
The search box opens a door to over 2,700,000 people talking about…and you choose which topics are of interest to you, when you pick a search term.
If you have never, ever been to Twitter and have decided you are not going to…it may be time for you to think about why…and what that says about you vs. Twitter.
I need to look into this Twitter thing. Right know I’m deciding if I want to go see Chelsea Vs. Sounders at the the Quest Field (very high on my list), do the Bite of Seattle or watch my daughter in a Western Gaming Horse competition.
🙂
Tim,
I don’t think Twitter will get you off the hook with Lynlee and your daughter, if you don’t choose the Western Gaming Horse competition. Twitter’s good…but it ain’t THAT good 🙂
The West Seattle Blog used Twitter to cover the Hi-Yu Parade today http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=18922#comments It’s amazing to see how people are creating uses for Twitter.
While I was at the parade, I felt like I needed 8 arms so I could post to twit-pick, write a tweet…maybe post the photo to Facebook or Flickr…or heck, just take a photo and enjoy the parade. 🙂
I was thrilled to see JP Patches there. Last year he was not able to make the parade due to his health–he looked great today!
(For the folks not from around here, JP is the handsome clown on my Facebook proflile photo and RCG avatar).
twitter kinda bypasses the whole journalistic integrity thing. its pretty unmoderated. i dont know that it should be your main source of news.
You got it. My concern still remains the source of and how we get our so-called news. News isn’t what some other person thinks, feels, it’s the reporting of the who, the what, the where and why…
After seeing your article Ardell, we set up Breaking Seattle News to aggregate and display the best Twitter feeds in Seattle. It only took a few hours to put the site, it’s a demonstration on how easy it is for even non-programmers to develop Twitter based applications.
To fillmore and bright moments, the “news” I am most interested in is in my field of endeavor. Changes as they happen can pile up for a year or even 5 years before a normal news source picks up “the story”. More often the story never makes the news at all, until the devil in the detail rises to huge catastrophic proportions.
To keep on top of my game, I clearly cannot rely on normal news sources to be more reliable than “man on the street” real time info.
Yes, this post is about the kind of news that I see flashing by me as I’m looking for the tidbits of good info in my field. I am not there to see “Bite of Seattle”, I am there for news that helps me be a better agent. Just trying to pass on the other uses many may have for this invaluable “tool” that is called twitter.
Pat,
Very cool!!! I encourage everyone to click on that link.
Unfortunately, I am finding that some unreliable sources are calling themselves “news” in their handle, but are not, or are at least suspiciously looking like spammers in sheep’s clothing or phishers.
The one you used, King 5, is absolutely legitimate and I know this for fact. But people would be wise to first identify trusted tweeters before setting up a website feed like that. Many are “posing” as…
Thx Ardell, we’re always getting feedback from readers and make adjustments to the site when we get them. In particular, we like recommendations and encourage folks to add themselves to the Business Directory so we might include them in the feeds if appropriate.
Would have been great to have had Twitter years ago when I was working with a dozen custom home design clients and their craftsman contractors at a time. Here’s one of them- Ray Brandes (Click)
http://tinyurl.com/nqkxv2