Here’s Why Twitter As Glorified RSS Misses The Point

If  you simply use Twitter to pump out a stream of headlines and links from your news website, you miss the opportunity to do things like this:

channel4news: http://twitpic.com/bbe8l – As the floodwaters lap about his feet, Krish bravely presents the Noon prog.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy presenting Channel 4 News at Noon

A flood in ITN’s Studio 6 may not add to your understanding of (important) world events but the fact that the Channel 4 News* team went into contingency-overdrive this morning has more than a passing appeal.

Using Twitter to share what’s happening behind the scenes gives the viewer a sense of the “inside” and a flavour of the personality and character of the programme and its maker. It may even cement the relationship between programme and viewer.

Or perhaps that’s reading far too much into it. Either way, you would have clicked on the link.

Twitter as glorified RSS misses the point.

(*Declaration of interest: I used to work there)

Related:
- Five Ways News Organisations Should Use Twitter