Journal: Twitter Aggregation Way Cool – Public Intelligence Blog

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Fort Hood: A First Test for Twitter Lists

In the aftermath of violence, lists suggest the benefits of collaboration

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, news outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post to The Today Show created lists that aggregated the Twitter feeds of, among others, national breaking-news sources (CNN, the AP), official sources (the U.S. Army, the Red Cross, the office of Texas governor Rick Perry), local news organizations, and local individuals.

Twitter lists were tempering conjecture with the wisdom-of-crowds brand of mediation that is built into their multi-channel approach.

“The Internet” is, in its way, a one-stop news shop; and through, in particular, the deceptively simple innovation that is the hyperlink, news outlets are increasingly defined by connection rather than separation. (Thus, the “Web.”) And that, in turn—fundamentally, if not completely—topples the competitive underpinnings of newsgathering as a profession. Do what you do best, and link to the rest.

Twitter lists suggest the institutionalization of this connected mentality, a kind of rudimentary codification of the media’s increasing openness to—and reliance upon—collaboration. They suggest the myriad benefits of cross-pollination. Even at this nascent stage, they represent, simultaneously, both the collapse and the expansion of the journalistic brand—and the recognition that, increasingly, brands are at their strongest when their owners prove willing to weaken them.

Phi Beta Iota: Read the full story–this author offers some DEEP insights into the future of intelligence (decision-support). We thought the “rival store” (as Alvin Toffler described us in “The Future of the Spy” was going to emerge from a multinational network that shared information and made sense at an organizational level. We were wrong. Twitter is the World Brain at puberty. This is VERY exciting, and also spells the death of the secret unilateral expensive paradigm of intelligence. Way cool! BRAVO ZULU.