How to use twitter to find breaking news
Newspaper brought us daily news and then radio and television gave us up to the hour updates. Now with the explosion of the internet and social media we have access to breaking news pretty much right as it happens. CNN and other news outlets only have so many reporters while twitter users number 1+ million all over the globe. This affords us the opportunity to find out about news just seconds after it happens and someone gets to twittering about it. More and more stories are breaking on twitter and I expect this to become more common as twitter enters the mainstream.
With all of the twitter chatter out there, however, how does a person go about finding out what people in general are talking about and what's in the news? Here are a few links that when used properly could keep you up-to-date on everything being talked about in the twitterverse.
Twitter Search - The official search engine is a good place to start if you are looking for a specific topic on twitter. Just enter a search term and see who is talking about it. This is also a good place to start to find people with similar interests who you can then follow on your own twitter feed. Topics are updated in realtime and to find more tweets placed since you started searching just hit the "refresh" button to see them.
Hashtags - Any time someone wants to talk about a subject on twitter and have it tracked/indexed they will use a hashtag (# symbol) before it when they are tweeting. You can try this yourself by just adding the # symbol before the word you want tracked without any spaces. Hashtags.org indexes all of these terms and then presents them on a webpage. You can browse through the topics based on popularity and how recent they are.
Twist - Think of this page as a sort of combination of the official twitter search and the hashtags page. You can enter a search term to see how many people have been talking about it over the past day, week, and month. The most recent tweets about the topic are embedded in the page and other popular terms are listed on the side.
Twopular - Most of the time you probably don't have a specific search item in mind when you're looking for breaking news on twitter, which is where a site like Twopular comes in. Just go to the site and you'll see listed the most popular trending terms over the past 2 hrs, 8 hrs, day, week, month, and overall. You'll be able to see which terms are trending up and which are trending down, and you're provided links to the twitter search engine, google news, and yahoo news for further information as it breaks on more traditional reporting outlets.
Twitscoop - Here's where you go when you want to find out what people are talking about RIGHT NOW on twitter. The page shows a cloud with popular keywords that are auto-updated every 20 seconds. Click on the keyword you're interested in and you'll be taken to a page with a graphical representation of the number of people tweeting about it as well as a list of the most recent tweets on the subject. This is a super resource if you want to use twitter to follow breaking news and popular trends.
Tweetgrid - The ultimate resource for the avid twitter user. Go here to create your own twitter "command center" and find out about the topics important to you. You can customize a grid of real-time twitter searches that will show up simultaneously on one page and make sure you never miss a great tweet on a subject you're interested in. It's hard to describe without seeing it in action, so just check out the trending topics page to see the possibilities.
