For some reason, Twitter hasn't yet taken the journalist community by storm

A journalist's best friend? Maybe, one day.

(Credit: Twitter)

After the derision that greeted The New York Times' blogging-will-kill-you story on Sunday, I'm probably not going to do much for the reputation of the mainstream media with hard-core bloggers. So it goes.

Out of curiosity, I drew up a list of 55 technology journalists to find out how many use Twitter, arguably one of the most important social-media technologies on the scene. I included names of some online reporters--including colleagues from CNET as well as TechCrunch--but in the main, the list is comprised of people employed by A-list newspapers and periodicals.

I don't pretend to have come up with a statistically representative list. Call it my weekend science experiment. What's more, some people may have crossed me up by hiding behind pseudonyms. Truth be told, I only changed my "coopeydoop" handle to "Charles Cooper" on Saturday after realizing it made searching for me on Twitter that much harder. So, apologies in advance if I inadvertently lumped anyone in with the wrong list.

Out of the 55 names I randomly came up with, 15 were found on Twitter while the remainder were missing in action. When I pinged one of the reporters asking why--sorry, names of the innocent are being withheld--here's what he answered:

"I don't have a Twitter account, because I think it's silly," the answer came back. "Twitter is lame."

OK, but my guess is that by year's end, most of the folks on the holdout list will get with the program. Not because it's necessarily an elegant system--I'm keeping my pet list of Most Needed Improvements on the service if any of the Twitter folks is interested. Rather, it's a question of self-interest. News often breaks on Twitter before it hits blogs. And companies are paying attention to what comes over the transom. For instance, Mike Arrington's Comcast novella over the weekend did not go unnoticed by the company's monitors.

"Within 20 minutes of my first Twitter message I got a call from a Comcast executive in Philadelphia who wanted to know how he could help. He said he monitors Twitter and blogs to get an understanding of what people are saying about Comcast, and so he saw the discussion break out around my messages."

You're going to see more of this in the weeks and months ahead. More than anything else, self-interest will decide the question for the Fourth Estate. As TechMeme's Gabe Rivera twittered a few days ago, resistance is futile.

The Twitterers
Michael Arrington, Techcrunch; Charles Cooper, CNET; Caroline McCarthy: CNET; Kara Swisher, The Wall Street Journal; Tom Foremski, SiliconValley Watcher; Ina Fried, CNET; Saul Hansell, The New York Times; John Markoff, The New York Times; Om Malik, GigaOm; Duncan Riley, Techcrunch; Dan Farber, CNET; Jim Kerstetter, CNET; Sara Lacy, BusinessWeek; Elinor Mills, CNET;Maggie Reardon, CNET; Stephen Shankland, CNET; and Dan Terdiman, CNET.

The Holdouts

George Anders, the Journal; Mark Boslet, San Jose Mercury News; Anne Broache, CNET Networks; Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek; Ben Charny, Dow Jones; Don Clark, the Journal; Elizabeth Corcoran, Forbes; Don Clark, the Journal; Cliff Edwards, BusinessWeek; Benny Evangelista, San Francisco Chronicle; Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet; Deborah Gage, San Francisco Chronicle; Jim Goldman, CNBC; Dan Goodin, The Register; Rob Guth, the Journal; Quentin Hardy, Forbes; Miguel Helft, The New York Times; Mark Hendrickson, TechCruch; Rob Hof, BusinessWeek; Michael Kanellos, CNET; Rich Karlgaard, Forbes; Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle; Matthew Karnitschnig, the Journal; Tom Krazit, CNET; Brian Krebs, The Washington Post; Martin Lamonica, CNET; Adam Lashinsky, Fortune; Declan McCullagh, CNET; Stefanie Olsen, CNET; Therese Poletti, Marketwatch; Benjamin Pimentel, Marketwatch; Mike Ricciuti, CNET; Eric Savitz, Barrons; Erick Shonfeld, TechCrunch; Jon Swartz, USA Today; Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat; Pui-Wing Tam, the Journal; Wendy Tanaka, Forbes; Ashlee Vance, The Register; and Troy Wolverton, San Jose Mercury News.

*******

Oops. The original post lumped Tom Foremski and Saul Hansell with the wrong group (though Saul writes that he doesn't really use the account much.) Also, Benjamin Pimentel is now with Marketwatch. Sorry guys.

[abrenna]

Twitter is both the perfect journalist tool for being first with breaking news, and the best relief from the tyranny of breaking news.

There is no way to faster publish the most important fact of a breaking news. 140 chars is not much, but enough. I did this when I wrote about Norway's formal protest against the Yes-to-OOXML vote. Then I wrote the normal article.

This way, I could both to the lightning fast breaking news, and then afterwards calmly write the full story.

I've written a bit about the Twitter experience on my blog.

[dahowlett]

Ding! - Tom Foremski does have a Twitter account, and he uses it.

[waynesutton]

Good post, fyi there more news organizations using twitter than many know of. Take a look at this list already complied in early March of news organizations using twitter: http://red66.com/2008/02/a-list-of-news-organizations-using-twitter/

I work for NBC17/ mync.com in Raleigh, NC and we're using twitter for breaking news, weather, blog pr, and more. I've done some actual twitter training to reporters, newsroom editors and we have hosted twitter meetups in the community see http://triangletweetup.pbwiki.com

Twitter is being used way more than what people think, it's just now that main stream blogs and journalist are catching on.

I'm @waynesutton on twitter and I approve this post.

[ricoflan]

Ironically, given the timing, last week we started a focused Twitter circle for IT Journalists and Publishers here in Asia!

The immediacy of Twitter is compelling, however the inanity of most posts is a major turn-off. Hence our goal to created a focused group of people with common interests. As Twitter has no built in groups function, you can "follow" who you wish and you can vote with your mouse -- dropping those will provide nothing but dross.

Feel free to join us -- Just "follow" this account: http://twitter.com/ricoflan, then I will "follow" you in return. Users can select from the people the ricoflan account is following to create their group of preferred users.

[krosavcheg]

Work that buzz! Press those buttons! Build that hype! Twitter IS greater than the second coming of Jesus H Christ himself. Jump on the Twitter bandwagon today or you'll miss out, you won't be cool and your friends will laugh at you behind your back.

PS: The check is in the mail. Keep up the good work.

[charlie cooper]

As DaHowlett rightly points out, Tom Foremski belongs with the Twitter group. My bad.

[Barbara Iverson]

I slept in today, to avoid any blogger health effects, but then I twittered this story. If you aren't using it effectively (e.g. don't follow everyone, just a group that informs your work) then you don't get twitter.
barbara i aka drbarb

[waynesutton]

To find out more about the nextnewsroom conference which talked about the future of journalism using social media see the wiki http://wiki.nextnewsroom.com and ning site. http://www.nextnewsroom.com

http://twitter.com/waynesutton

[zimmecl]

Someone at CNET made a comment recently about Twitter becoming a household word lately, just like Google. Sorry, not so much. Go meet some non-IT friends and talk about Twitter... you'll find no one knows what you're talking about, even if it is as wonderful as you say.

[charlie cooper]

you're probably right about that. again, this is just anecdotal but i haven't found much of a twitter groundswell there either. but still, this is fairly early in the game. let's revisit six months' hence.

[ashworthm]

Is it really a surprise that the journo community hasn't embraced Twitter?

I find, more often than not, that most journalists in the UK haven't yet embraced the concept of blogs yet.

I can imagine that a lot of Technology Journalists are using these tools.

Mike Ashworth
Dynamise, Effective Marketing for the Small Business
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, Uk

[Sea of Cortez]

Twitter, is just one more useless Junk out of Silicon Valley.
I mean for God sake, what is new about Twitter that has not existed since mid 90's? NOTHING.
The only reason we hear about Twitter, we see it hyped by such places as Cnet is that some SV venture capitalist have investment in it. No other reason.

[kathy_torez]

Twitter, is absolutely lame. There is nothing new, interesting, innovative or productivity enhancing about it. The only reason we see it Hyped by Silicon valley media such as Cnet is because some big money SV VCs have money in it, otherwise we would never hear about it, since it is nothing new or special whatsoever.

[ogman]

Yawn. Twitter is lame: that's all you really needed to say. I signed up for an account, used it for a few hours, and have never been so bored in my life. You get one of two things; boring, inane idiocy from the masses, or boring, inane idiocy from pretentious elites. I can easily live without both.

[graphicdesignr]

Several U.S. newspapers are on Twitter -- there are almost 100 usernames already, and I know a few more have joined since the first of the month. Most newspapers are using it to push headlines. A few offer something more unique, like @mlive or @hwy40 or @oregonian2008.

[PinoyPod]

Too bad Coop was so busy Twittering that he didn't bother doing his journalistic duty to actually call me to verify whether I had a Twitter account before calling me out.
I do have one. That said, I find little use for it.
Benny Evangelista
San Francisco Chronicle

[etanhorowitz]

I was surprised that some few of the tech journalists surveyed use Twitter. I'm a tech journalist and I use it for story ideas, source building and just to keep tabs on what's going on.

Here's a blog post I just wrote in response to this article:

http://snipurl.com/23xfg

[deantak]

I'm another one who was listed as a hold-out. Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat is in fact on Twitter with the name deantak. Another correction is in order.

[lbsterling]

I have medium-high hopes for Twitter, but until/unless more newsmakers start using it, its value is limited. Also: high static-to-signal rate.

-Random journo