Twitter Talk

Alright, so it's pretty clear from this blog that I'm not a Twitter-mad person. I'm not a crazed 'Tweeter' - is that the correct term?

But I'm trying very hard to see its benefits. I've realised that although the poor sod who must continuously update a news organisation's Twitter feed probably doesn't need the extra task on top of his/her obscene workload, these posts do have quite a relevance to other lazier journalists who need a story! Just kidding, that's not the only benefit, I guess....

1 - Journalists' ability to find stories fast
News organisation's Tweets are produced almost the moment a story is released - it's instant. Although there is not a lot of detail, most are able to get the main idea through quite sufficiently. As a journalism student who just engaged in two practical radio and television weeks, finding stories was a big part of my day. And a tricky one - trying to source relevant, local yarns can be quite a task. But on certain mornings, Twitter did pull through with the material. By keeping my eye on news tweets, I was able to grab stories the moment they were released, produce a follow-up piece with a different angle and release my own story while it was still newsworthy.

2 - Up-to-date
One of the things Twitter is good at is keeping people up-to-date. Whether or not the individual wants to be kept informed of every ongoing event in the universe is debatable, but hey, for those who do, Twitter does the job! But in a news sense, this can be rather handy. It's good to keep track of where journos are heading, which stories they're covering and what audience reaction was to their last report - any information ABOUT journalism is valuable TO journalists.

3 - Networking
Twitter has the capacity to get your name/brand/opinions out there. Particularly if you're a regular, interesting tweeter (people really don't care what brand of milk you just purchased from IGA). Ashton Rigg, a fellow journalism student, shared with me a fantastic story about landing Channel 7 work experience simply by tweeting about one of the station's van's which was cheekily parked! Amazing! Although it's not Twitter, just through commenting on a PR publicist's blog, I have also landed an interview and potential internship with the company's director. You just never knew who will read your comments and take an interest. And the same goes for businesses - there are many companies which have bloomed after establishing an online presence.

Although I still don't understand how to use a hashtag, or what half of people's tweets actually mean, or how to operate Twitter on my iPhone, I guess I'm slowly grasping the idea. Slowly...