Why Twitter Works for News???

I am an active tweep and do tweet every day. I tweet a little bit of quotations, thoughts and some interesting things. Even though I track my fellow tweeps’ tweets, I never realized the active participation of most of them till last week. Some of them tweet regularly and others will be idle for all the day. (Sometimes, I too belong to the idle group who just reads others’ tweets)

One day, I happened to see Burkha Dutt’s tweet on Hyderabad Air Crash# and did retweet it. It amazed me that suddenly people started asking me questions related to this incident as if am reporting from the accident spot. I waited for other authentic tweets to answer my fellow tweeps’ queries. Also the # tag helped me to track people who were tweeting on this particular incident. The period of diffusion of the news was unbelievable. I checked a few news website out of curiosity, but the tweet world was ahead of them with new updates. I realized the factor that, more than a status application, now it is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news.

Next day it was nithyantha# ruled the twitter world. I just clicked on nithyantha# and it led me to whole lot information which will be difficult to collect in a limited period of time. People were retweeting the scandal with an urge to inform the world about such fake saints.

The twitter world amazes me a lot by its over growing popularity and people adapt it so quickly. When I was actually introduced to twitter by Ganesh, I found it as an arduous task to understand and recognize the features and functionalities of twitter. Now it has become the trend and other social sites were beaten by twitter because of its simplicity. There are plenty of desktop and mobile applications which will help you to tweet according to your choice. The interesting thing is that it won’t consume much of your time, also help you to develop your multi tasking ability :)

Actually what I wanted to share with you is that rapid dissemination is occurring through twitter these days. It has become a serious platform for discussion and news dissemination and it does get a great amount of coverage. I was just wondering why???

Why Twitter???

Quick: The information will reach you fast. Actually you can find most of the journalists, bloggers, writers and even big companies in twitter and they do maintain a twitter account and tweet actively and disseminate information. I am sure they are going to push twitter to mainstream soon.

Simple: the 140 characters make it simple as a text message. Tweet gives you the chance to listen to the news in context.

Easy: Twitter has smartly developed a large set of tools that help people use the service. This makes it easier for people to get content on Twitter in the manner most convenient and most comfortable to them.

Interactive: unlike any other medium it allows conversation. It does encourage feedback. Most of the political leaders and celebrities are interacting with people without any hesitation.

I would like to borrow Ruffini’s thoughts as my closing thought, “Twitter is built for the new news cycle. Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds," he writes. "It's not right for every piece of information. It's certainly not well suited for longer analysis. But when it comes to instantly assembling raw data from several sources that then go into fully baked news stories, nothing beats it."

you might also like: Twitter Killed Jyoti Basu

The five point THREE IDIOTS!!!

I recently watched the block buster flick 3 idiots. I can say, this is one of the over hyped movies which met my expectation. This is again an adaptation from one of Chetan Bhagat’s chicklits called Five Point Someone. This was his debut book and a best seller. Usually the ‘fiction to film’ stuff irritates. But, this one......Good work Mr. Hirani!!!

I read the book as soon as it was released, good, funny and light stuff. I really wanted to see the book on the reel. At last that did happen in a grand way.

As everyone knows, recently the movie and its creators were hit by a credit controversy. The so-called percentage controversy did a great job to boost the movie and book sale. 3 idiots interested the media for quite some time. It did get a wide reach than the promotion stunts. Easy PR ;)

Even though, the director said the movie is an adaptation (now they want to call it as initiation) of the FPS, I felt that only the thread was taken. Off course the main characters added and some eliminated. That’s the way it is for any adaptation. The hype was really high to promote the movie. Print, broadcast and online ads were flooding. I don’t think there was any need to publicize it so much coz movie goers always accept good movies whole heartedly. You would be thinking why I am talking about promotion which is a universal practice. That’s true, but the buzz is that, to diminish the Chetan effect, they publicized it in a larger level. This caught the media’s attention beforehand and when the controversy actually hit the roof it was a hot cake for our country’s fourth estate.

Mr. Bhagat penned in his website that "The setting, characters, plotline, dramatic twists and turns, one-liners, theme, message - almost all aspects that make up the story are from FPS. Yes, there are some changes, any adaptation requires that - but it is no way an original story. Leading movie critics have privately admitted to me that the film is 70% the book. Still, don't take my word for it - go read the book, watch the film." We tend to believe him when he comes up with the minute details. But when you read the creators’ point of view, you will nod for their arguments too. The spectators like us just take it as an instinct to watch movie/read book. What else can we do?;)

Anyway, the media, creators and the author utilized the percentage controversy. But was he really trying to take away the credit? The media came up with all possible answers. I strongly feel that it was a publicity stunt. Nobody defamed but profited in a larger level. The movie hit the box office and the book is out of stock.:) All is well!!!

Lucky / Unlucky???

Luck??? I always wonder what it exactly means. My wiki hunt led me to a statement which is not at all compelling, “A belief in good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chance which happens beyond a person's control”. Sounds interesting but don’t you think it is too much for a customary word?? (personal opinion). I agree with the belief part alone coz belief is the property of oneself. Your belief is you, you are your belief. Keep believing! (Courtesy: Ganesh)

Hmmm...It’s so easy to justify things on the basis of luck or bad luck. (Kind of escapism, right?) But people do take it granted. I am quite unsure about the existence of luck. Rather, I don’t want to believe that. My rational mind forces me to consider that luck is just a state of mind coz I am known for my bad luck. Many of us worry a lot for the unstable and unexpected causes in our life. Is it really an outcome of luck?

I tweeted my query regarding this and did receive many interesting replies. All replies were confirming to me that luck does exist. I never thought it in that way. One of my tweeps pointed out that many people are not worthy enough for what they get. That’s true…so I have been forced to believe that luck exists. Otherwise what we call this phenomenon??

Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. How can we prepare for luck? Difficult question……. I don’t think any preparation is really going into luck. Probably I can say, it just exists now and then to remind us its existence!!!