Surprise! Facebook, Twitter still not THAT important for news

Twitter and Facebook are failing to create the sort of news revolution that some Web2.0 junkies might like to believe is already largely in play, a new report about the current state of media has revealed. Pew Research Center (PRC), which surveyed 3,000 participants in the US, found in its new study that "recommendations from …

[Graham Marsden]

You could have put the full stop...

... after the word "Important" in that headline...

[Mr Lion]

Missing the point - Twitter is important, but not for any of the reasons in this article

Twitter is still used by a vanishingly small proportion of the population - however one of those sections is journalists, and this is really critical.

If you are a journalist on a print newspaper you probably got a degree from a top university and struggled really hard to get your job. Now you are faced with vanishing budgets, reducing headcount and a profession which is in a state of cynical despair. So where do you go for stories?

Twitter, facebook, mumsnet...and you use wikipedia to verify your sources. Big brands recognise this, which is why making complaints on twitter gets you so much better support - not because they are worried what IT savvy navel gazers like me think...but because they know if it isn't responded to, and it's a slow news day, they might get into a *proper* news source.

[uktech]

Hmmm .....

A sample of 3,000 from a country with a population of over 300 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm .....

Yes, that seems fine to me (at least 99% of the time) though the population is more likely to be about 230 million (ie, adults only). Look up how to determine sample size some time.

Caveat: I do not know how rigorously the survey was conducted but I imagine someone in PRC must have read one or two books on probability and sampling.

[Dogbyte]

Well... yes and no

I go to news sites for detailed information but these days it's very often Twitter that alerts me to the existence of a story in the first place.

[Jeebus]

The quality of information a person possesses is inversely proportional to the amount of time they lend to these worthless entities.

[Anonymous Coward]

All but given up on Twitter

It's primary purpose these days has become a PR spool and intelligence gathering portal for lazy security industry workers looking for low hanging fruit.

[ratfox]

Thank God!

That is all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bulls eye!

"Indeed, those people who do nothing else but fondle their slabs all day long are the same crowd who gobble up the most news through social media."

.. very true in my wife's case.