Is Twitter the newspaper of the future?

In our ever-changing media world, it’s hard to determine exactly what Twitter is.  From the beginning, its chief purpose was always under debate.  The dying out of Facebook contrasted with Twitter’s growth and strength indicates the difference in their pedigrees.  The difference is Twitter is an informational media site, while Facebook is a social media site.

As we’ve seen over the past several years, Twitter has become a fantastic crowdsourced news platform.  In fact, it might be the best.  The most spectacular aspect of Twitter as a news source is that it gives the user ultimate control.  You choose the sources you want to read from.  That is something that no other newspaper can offer.

Additionally, as print grows to be archaic, Twitter has emerged as an ideal platform for today’s media culture.  Those on-the-go can sample potentially interesting stories with Twitter’s 140-character “headlines.”  From there, one can follow a link to more in-depth online stories with multimedia coverage.  Twitter is appealing to the fast paced younger generation of media consumers with its minute-by-minute feed of stories.  It is also appealing to older generations, who still desire to read a good story and see a quality photo set to accompany.

As Twitter begins to toy with designs which resemble Facebook, we need to recognize and appreciate this future-oriented “digital newspaper” we have at our fingertips.  Since the design is not broken, should it be fixed?  If we make enough noise, hopefully the designers of Twitter will listen to their crowdsourced creation and leave it as the masterpiece it already is.

Read the full Huffington Post article from Adam Wexler here. Written 2/12/14.