May
2
Osama Bin Laden and the Impact of Social Media
I appreciate and use social media tools in my business and personal life, and know how to analyze their effectiveness. But once again, the kiddies of social media have been promoting the “scoop” of twitter in regard to the Bin Laden announcement without providing a “ROI”. The problem with this is the “boy crying wolf” syndrome where equal importance is given to ANY report until NO report has any significance. I hate seeing the true possibilities of social media diluted by attributing importance where there is none.
What I mean is that the various twitter reports added nothing of significant value or exclusivity to the news announcement. Many mainstream media are also giving significance to various twitter reports, so they cannot hide from lack of analysis either.
I was first made aware of last evening’s event by a push announcement from the New York Times on my iPad. It started with the teaser of a mysterious announcement to be given by the president.
I immediately turned on various cable news networks to get further details. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all started reporting the same information.
Simultaneously I popped up various twitter trending tools, the Google realtime newsfeed, and I also tuned in international news sources like the BBC, NHK, and Al-jazeera on the internet.
Ultimately nothing came up any faster or with more details than the Mainstream media. Social media played the role of distribution medium, not an insignificant role, but not the news powerhouse that is often attributed to it.
The first significant twitter announcement has been reported to have come from Keith Urbahn, a former chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld. This was interesting, but insignificant because Urbann simply “jumped the gun” while other media held back similar information they had at the time, to get it confirmed. That could be seen by the reports on news networks only minutes after Urbann, reporting the same news. Later, Urbahn himself tweeted, “Stories about the ‘death of MSM [mainstream media]‘ because of my ‘first’ tweet are greatly exaggerated.”
After the main new announcements, there was reporting of an on-location twitterer named Sohaib Athar, writing under the ID @ReallyVirtual. This was also spread far and wide by media and twitter users as a significant use of social media. Unfortunately, his reports were just random reports of noises and sights, with no knowledge or detail regarding a raid on Bin Laden. They were simply the complaints of curious citizen, and added nothing to the information on hand.
ALL the significant details of what occurred, when it occured and who was involved came from mainstream media – without exception. Excellent international coverage was supplied by Al-jazeera on their live news broadcast available on the internet. They provided confirmation of the event from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, comforting those of you who might not trust U.S. news for whatever reason.
The end result is this: Social media got the news out very quickly to those who use social media, but it provided no benefit in speed, details, exclusivity, or broadcast distribution.
I appreciate and even use the power of social media, but the simple announcement of unconfirmed news to a few people is not the same as an inside scoop or exclusive report. A significant social media insight would have been a report from inside the Bin Laden compound, and interview with military persons involved, details from U.S. or international government officials, or other details not provided by the mainstream media.
That did not occur last night, so again there is a failure of social media – actually a failure on the part of reporting about social media as much as anything else.
Reporters and fans of social media crowing about any and all twitter or facebook postings during major news events creates so much background noise that real, IMPORTANT social media reports will not stand out. That would be a shame, as there is a lot of power in the people’s hands IF they know when they’ve used it on target and when they haven’t.