Perhaps more than any other technological advancement, social
media network Twitter has helped feed our increasing desire for short, quick
bursts of information. The micro-blogging service delivers news, opinions,
jokes, inspirational quotes and other information in 140-character snippets, at
a rate of about 6,000
tweets per second.
One major benefit of Twitter is that it enables journalists and
everyday folks to “break” news. For example, Twitter users were first to report
the death of singer Whitney Houston and the Boston Marathon bombings, according
to Mashable. “Twitter has revolutionized global news delivery and
consumption,” Mashable
noted. Indeed, millions of people around the world now turn to Twitter as a
primary source of news, especially when a major news event has taken place.
Many of us have come to view Twitter as a go-to news source, in a vein similar
to that of cable news network CNN.
It’s worth noting, though, that not everyone is part of the news
revolution fostered by Twitter: According to the Pew
Research Center, just 19 percent of online adults in the United States used
Twitter as of January 2014, compared with 71 percent of online adults in the
United States who used Facebook as of September 2013. Furthermore, according to
Pew, just half
of Twitter users in the United States get news from the micro-blogging
site. Still, the power of Twitter to help change our expectations of how
information is delivered — quickly and succinctly — is undeniable.
Sources
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