Lately it appears that if you watch TV, listen to the radio, read newspapers, attend college related events or even talk to the people whose computer skills are limited to turning on their Mac and struggling to launch an application, the word “Twitter” will come up before the end of the second paragraph.  Twitter and tweet seemed to become thoroughly ingrained in communication so quickly and so thoroughly that it almost had to be a fad.  After all, how much information content let alone value can there be in a 140 character (0.546875 byte) message anyway?

In the last 24 hours or so, even the ubiquity of “Twitter” succumbed to the media “feeding frenzy” surrounding the death of “pop star” Michael Jackson.  There are n 7 day, 24 hour a day news sources on cable.  There are about six facts known about Jackson’s death (on 6/25/09 about 1230 PM Pacific Time, Mr. Jackson was found unconscious in his home, CPR was performed, he was taken to the LA County Medical Center and was pronounced dead about an hour later).  Do all other news events become frozen in time when a press “feeding frenzy” occurs?  Probably not.  However, one would never know given the almost complete 24 hour a day blanket “news” coverage devoted to the ~six facts surrounding Mr. Jackson’s death. 

Twitter’s ubiquity prompted an interest in gathering information responding to the question of Twitter’s value in the “information marketplace,” and the over saturation of communications channels by all things Michael Jackson appeared to reduce the probability that valuable Twitter content might be uncovered at this particular point in time.   

The result of this singularly anecdotal research was stunning.

Pasted below is the first Twitter encountered. 

“Please send this to any reporter who does a story on Michael Jackson: http://bit.ly/3PkW3F #

 2 hours ago”

This tweet links to a graphic video of Iranian pro-democracy protests, suggesting that real journalism on the Internet is being done by individuals not mega-corporations with agendas and conflicts of interest, and that traditional sources of news appear devoid of perspective, having evolved into little more than sensationalized tabloids apparently incapable of discriminating between news and celebrity exploitation. 

Although it is clear that Twitter content in general cannot be evaluated by a single “tweet,” this “first impression” suggests there might be a reason that Twitter is so popular.