Today’s post by Robert Scoble on the earthquake that rocked China brings out an important distinction about the nature of a distributed messenging service like Twitter. Scoble eulogizes over the speed of information delivery in his post, thrilled that he knew about the earthquake 50 miles from Chengdu three minutes before anyone else did:

I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. [...] Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!

While this is a great leap in keeping the world informed about what is going on in any part of it literally at the speed of light, what Twitter does is let you share perception and opinion with the rest of the world. This is different than sharing facts about what is going on. For example, the USGS report which came out three minutes after Chinese citizens began twittering that there was seismic activity, is full of precise details:

Magnitude: 7.9
Monday, May 12, 2008 at 06:28:00 UTC

Location: 31.099°N, 103.279°E
Depth: 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region: EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
Distances 90 km (55 miles) WNW of Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Location Uncertainty: horizontal +/- 5.8 km (3.6 miles); depth fixed by location program
Event ID: us2008ryan

If you look at Robert Scoble’s twitter stream, what you get instead is a succession of misinformation, subsequent corrections, noise, predictions of doom, and frenzy:

• 06:37:49 - @dtan just reported an earthquake in Beijing. Wonder how large it is?
• 06:40:50 - @keso reported earthquake too. @dtan said it lasted 10 seconds. I’d guess it’s a 4.5 then.
• 06:41:21 - @michaelrice says it was a 7.8.
• 06:44:14 - @gaberivera says it’s 57 miles from Chengdu, which has 11 million residents.
• 06:57:46 - @jwalkerjr says to hold off on predictions. Well, I need to pass along my experience with earthquakes. This is a HUGE one.
• 07:15:20 - @casperodj just said it felt like the earth was going to split. Literally everything was shaking.
• For more just wade through the mud…

To his credit, you can get an impression of the event, as seen through his and others’ eyes. You can get an idea of the scope, and the impact it has had on people around the world. But, you can’t get trustworthy facts from listen to what the general public is saying in the face of a disaster. A calm rationality is needed that Twitter cannot provide.

Still, Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC is holding out hope that Twitter can mature into a real-time news service:

Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen. Twitter is fast, and it will let you share your experiences, but it will never replace solid journalism and hard facts. What do you think?

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  Chris 6 months ago 1 point

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  Thanks for writing this. As much as the "New Media" facilitates sharing of information, I think we need to figure out a way to better integrate rigorous (fact-checked) reporting into this medium, so that we have sources we know we can trust with the facts, as you say.
  
  Maybe that means newspapers need to figure out how to better establish a web presence. I think the New York Times is doing a decent job of that. But it's a work-in-progress.
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  http://www.appleiphonereview.com /people/1fe6a3cf1edd1e08734c7f0ce581ebb0/

 

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